Screaming baby in the back of the bus from Chicago to Denver. Screaming baby in the seat behind me from Denver to Las Vegas. I was very tempted to call my dad and have him jump in the Cessna and pick up my friend and me from Vegas. Also, I was unclear on the concept of credit cards. Mine had an $800 limit (I was young) and did not want to spend more than what was in my bank account. Basically, I treated it as a debit card (which I don’t know if they existed back then). So we had no money, and I was almost out of money in my bank account. Plus, the only place we stopped (before Vegas) that had food and accepted credit cards was a Woolworth’s. Chips and stuff.
Were I going on an adventure, I’d ride a bus again. (That is, if I was going on a bus adventure.) Getting from Point A to Point B, I’ll fly or drive.
Hell, I once drove 18 hours non-stop myself from Davenport, FL to Chicago, IL, with only stops for gas, fast food, and No-Doz. I would also put that in the “never again” column.
In my first year of uni, a big group of us rented a couple of buses and drove across Australia, from Perth to Canberra. Three days and nights of driving (the drivers took shifts and we only stopped for meals and petrol) to get there, then after two weeks of being tourists we did it all again to get back home. One of the buses broke down halfway through the return trip, and some people flew the rest of the way home rather than hanging around waiting for it to get fixed, but others (like me) decided to tough it out and drove back in the remaining bus.
Perhaps the worst part for me in that journey (although mine went LA->Chicago via Albuquerque, OK City, St. Louis) is that it started at midnight, so I’ve already been up for the whole day with all the sweat and grime of the day on me, and that I wouldn’t be able to get to a shower for another 50 hours. So I’m stewing in my own juices on the bus, with similar folk who haven’t showered since at least that morning (if not before). And I just can’t sleep on buses, even mostly empty ones, for more than an hour or so at a time. I was just physically and mentally wiped by the time I got off that Greyhound in Chicago at 2 a.m., two days later. And I never want to see or eat another Jack in the Box again.
As for the adventure part, you sure do meet a bunch of, let’s be charitable and say “interesting” people on the long-haul Greyhound journey. 50 hours of travel condenses into maybe 30 minutes of interesting moments. The rest is just zombie-like brainless boredom.
With friends? 5 or 6 hours in high school on choir trips.
By myself? 3ish hours to get from one part of MN to the other. Did it for a summer to see family off and on, bought a car and never looked back since. I have real issues with being on anyone’s timetable but my own.
About twelve hours, Selcuk to Istanbul. (Which involved putting the bus on a boat to cross from Asia to Europe. It was pretty surreal.)
Canberra to Melbourne was about the same, but I had to change buses somewhere really obscure in the middle of the night (they were sold out of direct tickets), so it might not count as “a” bus.
Freshman year of high school band trip - at least 24 hours, probably closer to 30 hours with the stops for food. 250 kids, 20 parents, at least 10 tons of band equipment, not to mention luggage. Come night time, there were kids sleeping in the aisle, under the seats, in the top rack . . . anywhere they could get comfortable. There were a lot of card games. The most high tech item available was a Walkman, and batteries went quickly.
At one point, the uniform lady went to the back of the bus (where the toilet was) with a can of Lysol. The whole bus cheered.
LA to San Francisco with a tour group with my parents when I was a kid. It lasted two or three days, I remember stopping by a Holiday Inn in Fresno so it must have been at least 2 days.
We left Tbilisi at noon and arrived at the Turkish border (200 miles away) at about 1am. By 7am we left the border and arrived in Istanbul at 2am. We drove all day and into the night across Bulgaria and arrived in Bucharest at about 7am.
5 hours short of 3 days including 4 hours getting the bus repaired in Samsun, Turkey where we stayed on the bus.
Summer after high school: western Wisconsin to Juarez, Mexico, on a mission trip. I think it was 2 solid days, travelling thoughout the night too.
College: Upper Michigan to Steamboat, CO for spring break. 16-18 hours on the bus.
College: Alice Springs to Darwin, Australia, a trip of over 1000 miles. That was on a tour group, though, and we camped at Katherine Gorge (and probably other places, too) along the way, so it doesn’t count as it was broken up a bunch.
Calgary to Thunder Bay via bus gaves me interesting stories for years to come. I have done Montreal to Thunder Bay by bus many times. I have done Winnipeg to Vancouver by train, (on board Saturday at noon, off at 9 am Monday morning) with a six year old in tow. It was actually a wonderful experience.
The very worst experience was Kelowna to Thunder Bay, on bus. 7 months pregnant. Up until that time I had no swelling of the feet. I was wearing doc martens, (shoes not lace up boots) and I was scared to take them off for fear I would never get them back on. Although it wasn’t supposed to be a ticket where we could get off for an overnight, we did in Saskatoon because I was terribly afraid I would either be psychotic or crippled if I didn’t sleep one night in a bed.
Oh, and when I was 19 I did Montreal to Florida on a spring break junket. I HATED my boyfriend by New Jersey on the way down and it wasn’t the best of trips.
I have spent 1/3 as much time as you have on a bus.