NativeSon5859
Conductor
I hadn’t originally planned on going just to Charlotte. After all, it’s far too close to be considered for one of my road trips…only 247 miles…three hours and change by car or five hours by bus or train. Not really that far. Nope, Charlotte wasn’t even in my realm of thinking. I was thinking about someplace farther…and some trip crazier. I was going to go from Atlanta to New York City on Greyhound, and back, in the space of two nights, and just under 47 hours. But as I’ve found out quite a few times over the years, you can’t expect everything to go as planned every single time. There are just too many unknowns to consider. And this time, the unknowns got the best of me.
My plan, though certifiably crazy, was fairly straightforward…take Greyhound from Atlanta to New York City, a 20-hour ride on the same bus (ie, no connections needed) and only making six stops along the way followed by a four hour layover in NYC, followed by a 12-hour ride from NYC to Fayetteville, NC, followed by the final 8-hour ride home. I planned the 4-hour layover to take account the expected weather conditions along the way. Also, taking into account that two of the stops between ATL and NYC had a planned layover of over an hour, I figured even if the ride itself was running over three hours late, I would still make my connecting trip back to Fayetteville with plenty of time to spare. So, with my bag packed, I was ready to go.
My bus was scheduled to depart ATL at 1:45pm. I had to get there an hour early to print my tickets and to buy the “priority boarding” for $5, which is definitely the thing to do if you’re going Greyhound, as it lets you board first, before the huge mass of humanity boards, thus ensuring you of a good seat. I left my house at about 12:30 as it’s only a ten minute walk to the station. Entering the station I found, as usual, a sea of people. Atlanta is one of the larger stations for Greyhound, and they have buses running through there 24/7, so it’s always busy. After waiting in line at the counter for about: 20, the nice agent gave me my tickets, and gladly took the $5 for the priority boarding. I went off and had a seat in the special priority seating area, and put on the ye old headphones. So far, so good. They usually board buses anywhere from 15-30 minutes before departure time, and all the buses heading out before mine…to such various cities as Chicago, Dallas, Cleveland, Mobile, and Savannah…all stuck to that rule. So at around 1:15, I was expecting to hear the boarding call for my bus, which had a huge line of passengers waiting to board at door #3. But none came. 1:30 came and went without an announcement, as did 1:45 and 2:00. At about 2:15, an announcement was made that the bus to NYC had not arrived at the station yet, but when it did, they would load up and go. No big deal. At least I got to avoid the line of people and board first…whenever that would be. 2:30…no bus. 2:45…no bus/ 3:00…still no bus. I was starting to get a tad concerned. I figured that if we left by 4, chances were, my connection would still be ok, since I still had, including the long layover times at a couple of the stations, several hours to play with. But if by 4 the bus didn’t show, I’d just reschedule this for a different day.
As fate would have it, the bus showed up at 3:15pm, and everyone was boarded and seated by 3:30pm…mostly full, but luckily, the seat next to me was empty. That’s always a bonus. The driver for some reason though took her sweet time to get going, and we didn’t physically leave the station until 3:45pm. I still had time to work with, phew. Sure, the snow was falling, but not really all that hard, and it was not sticking to the roads. But by the time we got on I-85, and I saw the sea of brake lights ahead of me covering all seven lanes, a terrible realization struck me: the snow can’t help the already notorious Friday afternoon rush hour.
It took us about twenty minutes to go three miles. And it didn’t improve. It took us about an hour and a half to travel fifteen miles. I had hoped that as soon as we got out of the “metro area”, things would improve…but, they didn’t. The snow couldn’t have helped. Also, we had the slowest bus driver in the world. I mean, she didn’t even drive in the H.O.V lane, where cars were going at least a little faster. No, she had to drive in the far right lane, so every single time traffic would merge, it would delay us even more. Perhaps she was being cautious, but in my opinion, it was overly cautious…we were getting blown past by cars, other buses, big rigs…and it’s not like they were doing 80…maybe 50…but compared to our 25-30, it might as well have been 80.
By about 8:00pm, still a good hour and a half from our first stop of Greenville, SC, and running, all in all, about four hours behind schedule, I was starting to formulate alternative plans in my mind. With the roads in S.C looking pretty bad, and the speed limit maxing out at about 30, I figured we’d only lose more time…and my chances of making the connection in NY…which I had to make if I wanted to be back in time for work…were looking slim and none.
We arrived in Greenville at 9:25pm…exactly five hours late. The schedule showed we'd be there for twenty minutes. So, I hopped off and bought a Coke and a candy bar from one of the vending machines in the back of the station. Some homeless guy asked me for money, and I gave him a dollar. I got back on the bus at 9:35, hoping that we’d be on our way and maybe, just maybe, make up some time between there and Charlotte, since the snow by that time had stopped, and the roads were looking much better. But our twenty minute stop quickly turned into forty five, and we were finally underway by 10:10pm. The schedule showed forty five minutes to our next stop in Spartanburg, and one hour and fifteen minutes from there to Charlotte. So if we were lucky, we’d get to CLT by midnight, still over four hours late, and still too late for me to risk it. So once we got going out of Greenville, I put my iPhone to good use and went on the Amtrak website to look into buying a ticket on the Crescent from CLT back to ATL. The train was due in CLT from NYC at about 2:45am, so I would in theory have plenty of time to work with once I got to CLT.
I was jamming out to the “Crazy Heart” soundtrack (oh so good and perfect for road trips) and enjoying our new breakneck pace of 60mph when all of a sudden, exactly 45 miles from Charlotte, the bus pulled to the side of the road. Uh oh. Not good. Memories of my first long trip on the long dog back in 2007, when our bus broke down in Texas, started racing through my mind. But no, we didn’t break down. The driver’s side windshield wiper did. Not the best thing in the world to happen under the current conditions. Mind you an announcement was never made, I just overheard the driver talking out loud about it and then calling dispatch to report the problem. And to my surprise, we got underway again, albeit a much slower pace. Still, my heart was filled with dread at the sight of the huge window in front of the driver being covered in liquid, with only small clear patches to look out of. Still, we pressed on. Slowly. We should have arrived Charlotte at 12:10am. We didn’t arrive until 1:45am. And right when we arrived, an announcement was made that made me happy I bought a train ticket: “Ok folks, welcome to Charlotte, everyone needs to take their personal belongings and get off the bus here. The windshield wiper broke so we’re going to have to fix it or get a new bus.” Ah, the joys of travel. Before I hitched a cab for the Amtrak station I went into the Greyhound cafeteria in the station and got some food because I was effectively starving at that point. I didn’t go for anything too crazy, just a pre-packaged, cold chicken salad croissant. It hit the spot. I also managed to almost get into a fight with some big guy with a NY accent because he thought I cut him in line, which I didn’t. It was…interesting. I’m a lover, not a fighter…although I’ll fight for love. Moving on…
The Charlotte Amtrak station was only a $7 cab ride away, thankfully. And when I entered it, I thought I stepped back in time to the 50’s. Certainly not one of Amtrak’s nicer stations and I’ve been to a lot of them. But the agent was nice who gave me my tickets and let me know that the train was an hour late. At this point, what difference does an hour make? I did find myself, though, becoming extremely tired, so I bought a 20oz. bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red, and picked up the new 2010 “Amtrak America” brochure, to kill some time. My iPhone battery was nearly dead, so I was glad to at least be able to charge it on the train, since every coach seat has a power outlet, and I didn’t find any in the station available for passengers to use. The time passed in a flash, and train #19, the southbound Crescent, en route from New York City to New Orleans, pulled into the station at 3:25am…:40 late, not an hour. Boarding took place at 3:30. The train was jam packed with people, and of course I was assigned an aisle seat, with a college aged girl in the window seat next to me. I felt sorry that she had to be woken up so that she could take her legs off of the seat I was supposed to sit it in, but she quickly went back to sleep. The train got going at 3:53am, and I settled in for a, hopefully, smooth five hour journey back to Atlanta.
I managed to sleep for about an hour, but honestly, the caffeine of the Mountain Dew I drank in CLT was preventing me from getting much of it. So I just listened to music. My seat mate got off in Greenville (talk about déjà vu…wasn’t I just there?) when we arrived there at 7:00am, so I took the window seat she once had and enjoyed being able to spread out over two seats now. We were about two hours late by that time, and they said we’d be in ATL by 10:30am. It was a very pretty ride through the snow covered landscape of South Carolina and then north Georgia. Trestles over lakes were crossed, mountains were seen, and small towns were passed through. I had thought of having breakfast in the Dining Car, but I wasn’t really hungry anymore…just thirsty. So at about 9:00am, I headed back to the Lounge car and got a nice big bottle of Apple Juice. At about 9:30am…still in the lounge car…we came to a stop. Thirty minutes later the conductor announced that a freight train had derailed ahead of us and that our train could not go past the next stop in Gainesville, which was only five minutes away. They said buses would be taking everyone to their final destinations. I just laughed and said “this figures”.
To Amtrak’s credit, they did what they could (including giving everyone on board snacks and bottled water while they waited for the buses), and most of the 231 passengers on the train, from what I observed, took things in stride. I felt bad for the ones that had to go by bus for the remaining 8 hours to New Orleans…and there were a bunch of people headed for NOLA…probably about 100. But for me and the 60 or so people going just to Atlanta, it wasn’t bad, since Gainesville is only 52 miles from Atlanta…less than an hours ride. It took the buses a while to arrive. Apparently the roads were still really bad around Atlanta, which delayed them more. But they showed up, all five of them, at 1:03pm, almost exactly three hours after we came to a stop in Gainesville. Of course it also took them a while to board…two full buses going nonstop to New Orleans, one bus going to all the intermediate stops between Atlanta and New Orleans, one bus going just to Atlanta, and one bus going to Atlanta and Birmingham. I was on that last bus…the one that thankfully wasn’t full…so I again scored two seats to myself. Everyone was on and all the bags were loaded up by 2:30, and we were on our way.
I spent most of the ride back listening to music at a ridiculously loud level since the bus driver felt the need to play R&B music at a ridiculously loud level over the bus’ speaker system. After the driver took a wrong turn getting to the station, which involved him having to back the bus down an absurdly steep hill which was still covered in snow and ice, we finally made it there at 3:30pm, thus concluding a 24-hour trip to Charlotte and back. Like many of my trips, there were a few curveballs thrown my way, but I’ve learned that you just need to go with the flow, and there’s no use to get annoyed at things that are out of your control.
The end.
My plan, though certifiably crazy, was fairly straightforward…take Greyhound from Atlanta to New York City, a 20-hour ride on the same bus (ie, no connections needed) and only making six stops along the way followed by a four hour layover in NYC, followed by a 12-hour ride from NYC to Fayetteville, NC, followed by the final 8-hour ride home. I planned the 4-hour layover to take account the expected weather conditions along the way. Also, taking into account that two of the stops between ATL and NYC had a planned layover of over an hour, I figured even if the ride itself was running over three hours late, I would still make my connecting trip back to Fayetteville with plenty of time to spare. So, with my bag packed, I was ready to go.
My bus was scheduled to depart ATL at 1:45pm. I had to get there an hour early to print my tickets and to buy the “priority boarding” for $5, which is definitely the thing to do if you’re going Greyhound, as it lets you board first, before the huge mass of humanity boards, thus ensuring you of a good seat. I left my house at about 12:30 as it’s only a ten minute walk to the station. Entering the station I found, as usual, a sea of people. Atlanta is one of the larger stations for Greyhound, and they have buses running through there 24/7, so it’s always busy. After waiting in line at the counter for about: 20, the nice agent gave me my tickets, and gladly took the $5 for the priority boarding. I went off and had a seat in the special priority seating area, and put on the ye old headphones. So far, so good. They usually board buses anywhere from 15-30 minutes before departure time, and all the buses heading out before mine…to such various cities as Chicago, Dallas, Cleveland, Mobile, and Savannah…all stuck to that rule. So at around 1:15, I was expecting to hear the boarding call for my bus, which had a huge line of passengers waiting to board at door #3. But none came. 1:30 came and went without an announcement, as did 1:45 and 2:00. At about 2:15, an announcement was made that the bus to NYC had not arrived at the station yet, but when it did, they would load up and go. No big deal. At least I got to avoid the line of people and board first…whenever that would be. 2:30…no bus. 2:45…no bus/ 3:00…still no bus. I was starting to get a tad concerned. I figured that if we left by 4, chances were, my connection would still be ok, since I still had, including the long layover times at a couple of the stations, several hours to play with. But if by 4 the bus didn’t show, I’d just reschedule this for a different day.
As fate would have it, the bus showed up at 3:15pm, and everyone was boarded and seated by 3:30pm…mostly full, but luckily, the seat next to me was empty. That’s always a bonus. The driver for some reason though took her sweet time to get going, and we didn’t physically leave the station until 3:45pm. I still had time to work with, phew. Sure, the snow was falling, but not really all that hard, and it was not sticking to the roads. But by the time we got on I-85, and I saw the sea of brake lights ahead of me covering all seven lanes, a terrible realization struck me: the snow can’t help the already notorious Friday afternoon rush hour.
It took us about twenty minutes to go three miles. And it didn’t improve. It took us about an hour and a half to travel fifteen miles. I had hoped that as soon as we got out of the “metro area”, things would improve…but, they didn’t. The snow couldn’t have helped. Also, we had the slowest bus driver in the world. I mean, she didn’t even drive in the H.O.V lane, where cars were going at least a little faster. No, she had to drive in the far right lane, so every single time traffic would merge, it would delay us even more. Perhaps she was being cautious, but in my opinion, it was overly cautious…we were getting blown past by cars, other buses, big rigs…and it’s not like they were doing 80…maybe 50…but compared to our 25-30, it might as well have been 80.
By about 8:00pm, still a good hour and a half from our first stop of Greenville, SC, and running, all in all, about four hours behind schedule, I was starting to formulate alternative plans in my mind. With the roads in S.C looking pretty bad, and the speed limit maxing out at about 30, I figured we’d only lose more time…and my chances of making the connection in NY…which I had to make if I wanted to be back in time for work…were looking slim and none.
We arrived in Greenville at 9:25pm…exactly five hours late. The schedule showed we'd be there for twenty minutes. So, I hopped off and bought a Coke and a candy bar from one of the vending machines in the back of the station. Some homeless guy asked me for money, and I gave him a dollar. I got back on the bus at 9:35, hoping that we’d be on our way and maybe, just maybe, make up some time between there and Charlotte, since the snow by that time had stopped, and the roads were looking much better. But our twenty minute stop quickly turned into forty five, and we were finally underway by 10:10pm. The schedule showed forty five minutes to our next stop in Spartanburg, and one hour and fifteen minutes from there to Charlotte. So if we were lucky, we’d get to CLT by midnight, still over four hours late, and still too late for me to risk it. So once we got going out of Greenville, I put my iPhone to good use and went on the Amtrak website to look into buying a ticket on the Crescent from CLT back to ATL. The train was due in CLT from NYC at about 2:45am, so I would in theory have plenty of time to work with once I got to CLT.
I was jamming out to the “Crazy Heart” soundtrack (oh so good and perfect for road trips) and enjoying our new breakneck pace of 60mph when all of a sudden, exactly 45 miles from Charlotte, the bus pulled to the side of the road. Uh oh. Not good. Memories of my first long trip on the long dog back in 2007, when our bus broke down in Texas, started racing through my mind. But no, we didn’t break down. The driver’s side windshield wiper did. Not the best thing in the world to happen under the current conditions. Mind you an announcement was never made, I just overheard the driver talking out loud about it and then calling dispatch to report the problem. And to my surprise, we got underway again, albeit a much slower pace. Still, my heart was filled with dread at the sight of the huge window in front of the driver being covered in liquid, with only small clear patches to look out of. Still, we pressed on. Slowly. We should have arrived Charlotte at 12:10am. We didn’t arrive until 1:45am. And right when we arrived, an announcement was made that made me happy I bought a train ticket: “Ok folks, welcome to Charlotte, everyone needs to take their personal belongings and get off the bus here. The windshield wiper broke so we’re going to have to fix it or get a new bus.” Ah, the joys of travel. Before I hitched a cab for the Amtrak station I went into the Greyhound cafeteria in the station and got some food because I was effectively starving at that point. I didn’t go for anything too crazy, just a pre-packaged, cold chicken salad croissant. It hit the spot. I also managed to almost get into a fight with some big guy with a NY accent because he thought I cut him in line, which I didn’t. It was…interesting. I’m a lover, not a fighter…although I’ll fight for love. Moving on…
The Charlotte Amtrak station was only a $7 cab ride away, thankfully. And when I entered it, I thought I stepped back in time to the 50’s. Certainly not one of Amtrak’s nicer stations and I’ve been to a lot of them. But the agent was nice who gave me my tickets and let me know that the train was an hour late. At this point, what difference does an hour make? I did find myself, though, becoming extremely tired, so I bought a 20oz. bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red, and picked up the new 2010 “Amtrak America” brochure, to kill some time. My iPhone battery was nearly dead, so I was glad to at least be able to charge it on the train, since every coach seat has a power outlet, and I didn’t find any in the station available for passengers to use. The time passed in a flash, and train #19, the southbound Crescent, en route from New York City to New Orleans, pulled into the station at 3:25am…:40 late, not an hour. Boarding took place at 3:30. The train was jam packed with people, and of course I was assigned an aisle seat, with a college aged girl in the window seat next to me. I felt sorry that she had to be woken up so that she could take her legs off of the seat I was supposed to sit it in, but she quickly went back to sleep. The train got going at 3:53am, and I settled in for a, hopefully, smooth five hour journey back to Atlanta.
I managed to sleep for about an hour, but honestly, the caffeine of the Mountain Dew I drank in CLT was preventing me from getting much of it. So I just listened to music. My seat mate got off in Greenville (talk about déjà vu…wasn’t I just there?) when we arrived there at 7:00am, so I took the window seat she once had and enjoyed being able to spread out over two seats now. We were about two hours late by that time, and they said we’d be in ATL by 10:30am. It was a very pretty ride through the snow covered landscape of South Carolina and then north Georgia. Trestles over lakes were crossed, mountains were seen, and small towns were passed through. I had thought of having breakfast in the Dining Car, but I wasn’t really hungry anymore…just thirsty. So at about 9:00am, I headed back to the Lounge car and got a nice big bottle of Apple Juice. At about 9:30am…still in the lounge car…we came to a stop. Thirty minutes later the conductor announced that a freight train had derailed ahead of us and that our train could not go past the next stop in Gainesville, which was only five minutes away. They said buses would be taking everyone to their final destinations. I just laughed and said “this figures”.
To Amtrak’s credit, they did what they could (including giving everyone on board snacks and bottled water while they waited for the buses), and most of the 231 passengers on the train, from what I observed, took things in stride. I felt bad for the ones that had to go by bus for the remaining 8 hours to New Orleans…and there were a bunch of people headed for NOLA…probably about 100. But for me and the 60 or so people going just to Atlanta, it wasn’t bad, since Gainesville is only 52 miles from Atlanta…less than an hours ride. It took the buses a while to arrive. Apparently the roads were still really bad around Atlanta, which delayed them more. But they showed up, all five of them, at 1:03pm, almost exactly three hours after we came to a stop in Gainesville. Of course it also took them a while to board…two full buses going nonstop to New Orleans, one bus going to all the intermediate stops between Atlanta and New Orleans, one bus going just to Atlanta, and one bus going to Atlanta and Birmingham. I was on that last bus…the one that thankfully wasn’t full…so I again scored two seats to myself. Everyone was on and all the bags were loaded up by 2:30, and we were on our way.
I spent most of the ride back listening to music at a ridiculously loud level since the bus driver felt the need to play R&B music at a ridiculously loud level over the bus’ speaker system. After the driver took a wrong turn getting to the station, which involved him having to back the bus down an absurdly steep hill which was still covered in snow and ice, we finally made it there at 3:30pm, thus concluding a 24-hour trip to Charlotte and back. Like many of my trips, there were a few curveballs thrown my way, but I’ve learned that you just need to go with the flow, and there’s no use to get annoyed at things that are out of your control.
The end.
