Next time, I'm taking the train!

Talk about the slow bus back to Toronto! Usually the trip between Toronto and New York is pretty quick, with stops stateside in Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton, and then right to New York City. Well, yesterday I got on the milk run coming back, apparently. And crowded as hell, too. First, we went to Newark, New Jersey. This was unexpected – I did a double-take as we started going south on the New Jersey Turnpike. (Although, I did manage to find my Sopranos theme song on my mp3 player, just to set the mood. I was going to take a video of the trip to Newark and superimpose the theme song over it just for fun, but I settled for taking a picture.)



So we had a stop in Newark, at which point the bus filled to capacity (although I picked up a decent seatmate). Then, a bunch of back roads to Scranton, Pennsylvania, Binghamton, Ithaca, Geneva (!), Rochester, Batavia and Buffalo. Got a good tour of the Finger Lakes region, anyhow, driving all over all those rural sideroads. But by about Ithaca, I sure was dying to get home. I was so relieved when we finally got onto the NY Thruway after Geneva.

At Rochester, a really, REALLY obnoxious guy got onto the bus and sat next to me (my seatmate had taken the seat behind me, as there were spare seats at that point, but we filled up again at Rochester. First of all, he asked a bunch of personal questions, he seemed half-drunk, and was loud. So I politely answered him, then put on my mp3 player and pretended to go to sleep (which soon turned into real napping).

A couple of times, through the music and dozing, I could hear him saying something about how "all those Puerto Ricans" were "the problem with America nowadays”. I thought, I wonder who the hell he's talking to? There were two Hispanic women sitting across the aisle from us, so I wondered if he was harassing them. But as I was half asleep, and no one seemed to be saying or doing anything, I figured maybe I just heard wrong over the music.

Then the driver stopped in Batavia. (Where the hell is Batavia? Good question. It’s on the way to Buffalo, 45 minutes away, just off the Thruway. Aren’t you glad you asked?) The guy got off at Batavia (it didn’t seem to be a regular stop), and I figured maybe he was just getting off for a smoke break. But no, lucky me, he was getting off for good! And on his way, he turned around and told a couple of people sitting behind us to suck his dick. A real charmer. After he got off the bus, the people around me looked sympathetically at me, but I told them I hadn’t heard any of what he was saying. They said he had been pretty obnoxious.

Finally we made it to Buffalo, about two hours behind schedule. I was exhausted at this point and not in the mood for a border crossing, but since it was Canadian customs, I knew it wouldn’t be so bad. (The American immigration guard coming into the US was surly, as per usual for border crossings at that checkpoint, although the customs guy right afterwards was really nice and didn’t even look in my bag the way they normally do. They were too busy giving some senior citizens on our bus from the UK a hard time.)

As it turns out, the Canadian guards weren’t as friendly as usual – I guess they’re taking some charm school lessons from their American counterparts. I wasn’t intimidated by the routine since I’m a Canadian citizen and I had my passport with me. But I saw them grilling a couple of Americans in that same, stonefaced manner that always gives me butterflies when the American guards do it to me. But it wasn’t as surly as I’ve seen on the American side. Sometimes I feel like saying to the American guards, “Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m going to try to stay here. If I DIDN’T have a job, I’d rather be in Canada where I won’t starve. And can you say ‘public health care’?” But of course, I never would. Everyone knows the routine: smile politely, indulge their God complex, and then get the hell out of there.

The rest of the way home, some woman who had spent the whole trip screaming at the top of her lungs on her cell phone and to her seatmates (because her voice volume control seemed to consist of "loud, louder and loudest") moved to sit in the seat directly behind me. Then she started playing an extremely loud meledramatic soap opera type of movie on her portable DVD player for herself and her two seatmates across the aisle to watch. Finally, people asked her to turn it down, which she did only marginally, and she kept screaming with laughter and comments throughout the whole thing. I was SO GLAD to get home. And I thought, screw it, I'm not taking the subway home, I'm taking a freakin' cab. After a 13 hour Greyhound trip, I've earned it.