I was fine with the buses and the bus rides themselves. On more than one occasion, though, the next connecting bus going where I wanted to go wasn’t scheduled to depart for 5 hours (the incoming bus pulled in at 1 AM or something and the next connecting bus was to leave at 5 AM or something of that nature).
Five hours in the plastic chairs of a bus terminal. I can sleep in a bus seat but I can’t sleep in a plastic bus-terminal chair.
Video games (not portable GameBoys but the full-sized arcade things) lined one wall, and they don’t stay silent just because no one is feeding them quarters at 3 in the morning: “FREEE ferth a ferkle! FOOOOOOSH! werkle werkle werkle werkle werk!”
every 48 seconds.
No place else open in the neighborhood. No bookstore or coffee shop in the terminal.
That’s not true of everyone. I used to sleep in the car when we drove 2 hours each way to see my grandparents. But once we moved down there and I attended college where we used to live, I couldn’t sleep on the bus. Out of 100+ bus trips my first 3 years of college, I feel asleep at all just 2 or 3 times, and just for a few minutes. It might be different if it was 24+ hours, though, given I’ve never taken a bus trip that was more than 10 hours long.
Considered taking the train? Amtrak doesn’t go everywhere Greyhound or other buses go, of course, but if you need to go roughly along a train line, the overall experience is much better, for about the same amount of money in many cases.
I’ve had pretty decent luck in the four or five coast-to-coast trips I’ve taken on the train – schedules were kept pretty rigorously, less sleaze factor, more personal space, etc. The price, however, for one of those longer trips is about the same as a plane ticket – however, Greyhound can be pricey as well, compared to a well-chosen airfare.
Agree with the above Greyhound stories – generally you’d be wise to watch your back while keeping to yourself. You can get lucky if you happen on a bus servicing some college town in the W or Midwest. Who knows, really, though.
Hmmm, all you people seem to be from the USA. I’m from Alberta, Canada and took Greyhound quite a few times one summer where I traveled from Calgary to High Prairie for a student job. The trip each way was about 12 hours due to stop overs and a bit of a non-direct route. Driving directly would probably be 8 hours.
Overall, I found the people to be polite and minded their own business. The buses were clean and well maintained. The drivers were well-mannered and the bus terminals were usually close to the center of town. You have to keep in mind that bus terminals in small towns are usually just in a gas station or a post office.
The seats are uncomfortable to sleep in but I don’t see them as any different compared to airline seats. When will we go to the sane option and have folding beds in buses and airlines?
I didn’t experience much delay in the 10 or 12 trips I took. One time, a connecting bus from Edmonton to Calgary got full but they immediately got another driver with another bus to drive along the same route. I was told that if a bus got full, the driver would call their dispatch center to send another bus along the same route.
I think Greyhound in Canada is run as a separate entity from the Greyhound in the USA so that can probably explain why I have a much different experience. What happened America? Where did the sense of adventure and nostalgia of riding Greyhound go?
Why was it in the first place man? I read lots of Americana like American Heritage magazine and airplanes and (our now mostly non-existent trains) have always gotten all the good press. Buses never made the Top 100 Most Glamorous list.
Greyhound used to market heavily to the middle class, and their alluring ads were familiar features of National Geographic magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. Anyone old enough to remember the TV commercials featuring Fred MacMurray? It was the same thing. And Greyhound offered several successive generations of buses which were proudly announced, most famously of all, the Scenicruiser. But as the middle class increasingly owned multiple cars per family and were lured by cheaper air travel, Greyhound lost a big part of its clientele. While this was going on, the neighborhoods in which many large city bus terminals were located went from shabby to scary, which further strengthened the fear of intercity bus travel.
I think the golden age of Greyhound in America was during the early years of the Interstates, following WWII, but before the number of cars owned by American families equalled the adult headcount. Not only did Most families have only one car, the intercity rail system was on the verge of dying out. So if someone needed to travel to another city and for whatever reason couldn’t use that one car, they had to take the bus. Kid going off to college? Take the bus. Grandma coming for a visit? Take the bus. And so on. Watching movies of the time, or set in that time, really do give you the idea that the bus was everyone’s plane, train, and second car.
If you look on the back of the ticket it says each bus comes with a complimentary screaming child.
True story. While traveling cross country with a buddy of mine (late 70’s) we found ourselves on a packed bus with no air-conditioning as we approached the desert. Someone got on and said there was another bus arriving soon if anyone wanted to get off and wait. I was off immediately along with my buddy and 2 more people. The next bus pulls up empty. The couple brought a case of beer on and gave us a couple while they went to the back for some Greco-Roman wrestling. Ended up riding through the desert at night drinking beer with my feet propped up on the front bar and my arm out the window. Kept the driver awake and just enjoyed the view (there was a big T-storm in the distance, which was beautiful to watch).
Other than that wonderful leg of the trip it was nothing but screaming children that couldn’t be drown out with headphones.
Mine happened on a Trailways bus, not a Greyhound bus. February of 1979 I took a bus from San Diego to Phoenix to watch the Copper Classic races at Phoenix International Raceway. The about 28 hour ride back to San Diego started on a Sunday night. The bus was only half full which gave everyone a bit of elbow room. A few hours into the trip I struck up a conversation with a blonde gal that was about my age, she was going to San Diego with her 3 year old son to get away from an abusive boyfriend. My first wife and I had just separated so we both were basically on our own going to a place we knew little about. We talked about a lot of things, often it was about what we wanted to do with our lives.
She at first claimed she was going to San Diego to stay with an aunt but as the bus drew closer, her story began to change. She finally admitted that she had no one to stay with and knew no one in San Diego. There was very little I could do to help, I was in the Navy and live onboard a ship, I didn’t have any transportation, and I sure couldn’t afford to support her and her son. When we arrived in San Diego late Monday night I gave her $100 and another rider offered her a place to spend the night. I caught a taxi back to the Navy sub base and hoped she would be okay.
Wednesday afternoon the ship’s chaplain came to see me and said he had received a call from a young lady needing help. I had never told the gal on the bus what ship I was stationed on so I figured it was my soon to be ex wanting money. I called home only to find out it wasn’t her. A few hours later someone found me on the ship and told me about a blonde gal with a little kid outside the base looking for me. I went to see her and she starting accusing me of abandoning her and her son, she claimed I would support them and that she needed a place to live. If she was alone I would have sent her on her way but I felt sorry for her son, he had done nothing to get in the situation his mother was in and I could not leave him on the street. I rented them a hotel room, fed them dinner and most importantly, got her parents phone number from her.
I called her parents and they knew nothing of where she was. She had disappeared a few months earlier with some guy and they were extremely worried. They were in Bend, Oregon and said they would do anything to get their daughter and grandson home. The next morning I took them to the airport and put them on a plane to Portland. Her parents reimbursed me for all I spent on her. I had given her my contact info but I never heard from her again. I sure hope she got her life straightened out, if not for her but her son.
In high school I took the greyhound a few times to see my boyfriend who was in college about 2 hours away. There were always some weird people on the bus, but I don’t think I ever felt out-and-out scared.
One time I got left–the bus stopped at a truck stop, I went in to buy gum and use the bathroom, and when I came out the thing was GONE. Luckily the bus was due to make a stop just a few miles on, in town, at the bus station. I called ahead and everyone on the bus had to wait until I got a cab a cab to come get me at the truck stop and take me to the station. The bus driver gave me some b.s. about the headcount.
In general, they have been clean, and on Canadian buses I don’t seem to see the large population of icky people that I’ve heard about on US buses. The passengers are mostly students and retirees, plus the occasional skank getting on in places like Oshawa.
Greyhound seems to have made a habit of buying up all the other bus companies in Southern Ontario, then cutting service. They seem to have acquired Voyageur (who used to always do the buses between Toronto and Ottawa), Trentway-Wagar, PMCL. One day when returning from Madoc to Toronto, I got on a scheduled Greyhound bus that had the Aéroports de Montréal logo!
I can’t go from Toronto to Bancroft for the weekend any more; there’s no up-bound bus on Saturdays now. (There’s one on Fridays, but it leaves at 11:30, the historical time; this means I have to take a day off work.)
The longest bus trip I have ever taken was from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie: 11 hours. There was one rest and food stop in Sudbury, where I has one of the two worst meals of my life, while they fueled the bus and wiped the bug-splatter off the front windows.
I felt wretched by the time I got out. As the bus pulled into the Soo, the conductor got up and started an announcement with, “We are about to enter Sault Ste. Marie. For those of you continuing to Vancouver…” :eek:
One of my best friends, another non-car-owning transit-rider like myself, did take the long journey from Toronto to Vancouver. Three days on the bus with no more than an hour stop. No showers or true rest. He said to me later, “Never again.”
My friend recently rode Greyhound for the first time. As he sat down on the bus, the man next to him began, “Back when I was bounty-hunting…” He knew it was going to be a good trip.
Some years ago I took a bus ride from New Mexico to Kentucky. I claimed I had a bad knee and had to have both seats to myself. to stretch my leg out. Next to me was a stack of magazines, documents and books I had been meaning to read. I have to say it was a very pleasant, relaxing trip, with no distractions from reading I had been wanting to do.
The last time I checked, I could get an airline ticket for about the price of a bus ticket +10% or so. In my experience, busses tend to be dirty, crowded, and badly maintained. The only advantage is that busses are very, very rarely airborne.
I’ve done LA to Chicago (50 hours) followed by Chicago-Boston (~24 hours) a week later. It is not an experience I would wish to relive. I suppose I’m glad I’ve done it once, just for the experience, but LA-Chicago was the most mind-numbingly, uncomfortable, stinky, smelly, sweaty 50 hours of my life.
Most of the people you will be riding along for the long hauls should be, um, interesting to the say the least.
Add to that the fact that travelling by air from hub city to hub city often ends up being just as affordble as a Greyhound, I would certainly not recommend doing so if you can avoid it.
While going to trade school 3 hours from home, I’d hop a Greyhound to and from school every few months. It wasn’t so bad since it was short, but I wouldn’t want to take a long trip.
The people weren’t too bad, but waiting in the stations (especially the one in Seattle) was lousy, crowded, confusing. Half the time you can’t tell what line you’re supposed to be in 'til it’s too late, and if you’ve got my luck, you’re as far back as you can be, trapped behind other lines.
Once you get on the bus it’s a bit less stressful, since you can kind of park it and hang tight for a while. I’m not sure I’d want to sleep on one, though, and I definitely kept to myself.
Mind-numbing. Uncomfortable. Stinky. Smelly. Sweaty. I find each of those words painfully appropriate in describing my experience (with extra emphasis on smelly and sweaty).
Imagine, if you can, the amount of filth you would accumulate after a lengthy incarceration with 30 other people. Each sweating. Each loading their poor bodies with nothing more than cheap, grease-bloated burgers from fast-food joints and bacteria-laden sandwiches procured from the dubious vending machines squatting in the corner of every bus-stop. Even when I had the luxury of a restroom that wasn’t shanghaied by drug-dealers, it was nigh impossible to clean myself in any meaningful fasion.