Diary of a Desperate Traveler

June 12, 08
12:44 PM
Greyhound Terminal, Binghamton

Waiting. I hate waiting. Waiting for a bus that I shouldn't have to catch. This trip, or "vacation" as someone foolishly called it, is thus far nothing more than a foray into Hell's inner circle.

I woke up at six thirty this morning, blinked at the surprisingly strong morning light, and smiled. Today was the day we catch the bus to D.C. to spend some time with Dad. While Liz and I both had some misgivings about this, we were willing to overlook them. We packed our bags with the essentials (laptops, swim suits, and hair spray) and headed to town to catch our bus.

We showed up at the seedy little terminal and hauled our luggage into the waiting room.

"Wish I had some paint," I said. The walls had been white at one point, but had turned gray with cigarette ash and the general dirt of a city.

Liz smiled. "Hey, at least there's shelves," she said. Good point. So I could, what, stack the paint that I didn't have on them?

We sat for a few minutes, joking about alligators and other adventures that were waiting for us in Florida, our ultimate destination. A woman, a large lady with a brightly colored shirt and cheap khaki shorts walked by the waiting room, whistling blithely. She paused when she caught sight of us.

"Are you waiting for the Greyhound?" She asked. We nodded. "You do know it doesn't come here, right?"

WHAT!? "Nope, didn't know that," I said as Liz flipped open her phone to call Mom to pick us up.

"Yeah, it stops on Central Ave," she said, then trundled on her merry way.

Great. Thanks lady.

"Mom? Funny story. Can you pick us up?" Liz said into the phone as we hauled our suitcases back outside. "Apparently this isn't where we're supposed to be."

Mom rode to our rescue, driving us to the "real" bus stop. The real bus stop was three benches in front of the county office building. And a sign that said "Bus Stop." Well, at least it wasn't too sketchy in the sunlight at any rate.

"If this isn't where the bus stops, I'll be pissed," I muttered, hauling my shit over to a bench and propping my feet up on it.

Liz shrugged, sitting down beside me. "It says bus stop," she said. She tugged her iPod out of her purse, offering me an ear bud. "You'll love this," she said. TLC's "Creep" started to play. I couldn't understand a word except for the chorus. "So I creep! Oooh Ah!"

I cracked up, and Liz and I sat on a bench on Central Ave jamming to "Creep."

As if on cue, a man wandered over to us.

"Excuse me," he said. "Did you two see me get out of that cab?"

We stared at him blankly. He was tall, nearly six feet, with untamed brown hair and a scraggly beard. He was missing several teeth, and I didn't realize until later that he was missing an arm as well.

"No," I said slowly, shaking my head to drive the point home. "We didn't see that."

"Oh," he said, and wandered off.

"Speaking of creepers," Liz whispered. I giggled, then dug a book out of my bag.

It was only a matter of minutes before he was back. "I'm looking for my family," he said. "Have you seen anyone leanin' out of cars, wavin' and hollerin'?"

We shook our heads no. He wandered off again.

We waited for an hour, until ten fifteen. No bus.

"Should I be worried?" I asked. It didn't matter. I already was.

"No," she said. "Buses are always late."

Ten minutes passed.

"Are they this late?" I asked.

"I...don't know," she said.

The Creeper came ambling back over. "Are you taking the Greyhound?" he asked. We nodded. He smiled and sat down on the bench next to us. "I think I'll go to Binghamton," he said. Great, I thought. Just great.

Liz looked down the street. "Is that it?" she asked. Sure enough, there was a Greyhound, sitting smugly at the stoplight.

"Oh, excellent," I said, eager to get away from The Creeper.

The bus rolled to a stop in front of us. We started to get up, moving our luggage out of the way. We needn't have bothered. The driver merely paused for a moment, then pulled away from the curb.

"Wait, what?" I said, staring dumbly at the retreating bus.

"Go after it!" Liz said, grabbing her purse and shoving her iPod and cell into it.

"Wait, me?" I asked.

"Yes, you!" she said, struggling to pull up the handle on her suitcase.

"Oh," I said, turning to follow the runaway bus. Too late, as it had already turned to corner. "Did we just miss the bus?" I asked Liz, in shock that such a thing could happen.

The Creeper jogged up to us. "Was that the bus?" he asked. "He didn't even stop did he?" I shook my head slowly, trying to make my brain remember how to work. I looked over at Liz to see how she was taking it. Her lip was trembling, and I could hear her breath coming in short, sharp sobs. Uh oh.

She flipped open her phone to call Mom. "The bus left without us," she wailed into it the minute Mom answered. "It didn't even stop. It just drove right by."

An old man and his buddy trundled over to us. Both were small, bald, had glasses, and were the approximate shape of beach balls. The only discernible difference between them was their shirt colors. One blue, one red.

"Were you s'posed to get on that bus, missy?" Red Shirt asked me. I tuned out Liz, who was growing increasingly hysterical behind me.

"He didn't even stop," Blue Shirt observed. I nodded. I had noticed.

"Is there a number you can call?" Red Shirt asked. I dug out my ticket and started looking.

"Dad?" I heard Liz say. That conversation wouldn't end well. Her voice was loud, as it often gets when she's upset. Tears were slowly leaking out from under her sunglasses. "The bus left without us." She paused. "We were in the right place, Dad!" she yelled, and Red and Blue Shirts took a step back. The Creeper just stood there creepily.

I tuned her out again as a policeman started across the lawn toward us. "Uh oh," I said.

Red Shirt shook his head. "Don' worry. He's talking to him." He pointed a gnarled hand at Creeper.

"Hey," the cop said. He was talking to Creeper. Go figure. "Are you bothering these people?" he asked. "Because I had enough complaints about you yesterday."

Creeper muttered some excuse, and the cop was distracted by Blue Shirt waving him over. The little man explained what had happened, leaving me to just nod along.

"Is there a number you can call?" the cop asked. I handed him my ticket. Liz was flat out yelling now, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. She snapped her phone shut.

"Give me your pen," she said. I handed it over. "Mom found a number," she said as she picked up her ringing phone. Mom, presumably. She was still hiccuping and sobbing as she spoke to her.

The policeman grabbed his radio, handing me my ticket back. He called all the troopers in the area, telling them to be on the lookout for a Greyhound that had left without his passengers.

"Be advised, we have witnesses," he said, winking at me.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I excused myself to answer it. Dad.

"Hi, Sarah?" he said, his voice worried. Of course, Sarah. Who else would answer her phone?

"Yeah," I answered.

"What's happening? I was talking to Liz, but I think she lost signal. Or she hung up on me."

I glanced at Liz's face, an interesting shade of red, tears glistening on her cheeks, all the way to her chin. her eyes were furious behind her glasses, and she was saying "fuck" every three words.

"Yeah. She lost signal," I soothed him. I told him what was happening, then hung up, assuring him that we would call when we knew more.

The cop went inside, telling us to stay put until he could figure something out. Like we had a choice? The two old men trundled off, wishing us luck. I had no idea where Creeper had gotten to. Probably had crawled back under his rock.

Liz and I sat on our luggage, and I worked at getting her calmed down. One man asked if she was alright. I shrugged and said, "It's Thursday."

Ten minutes passed, and the cop came back out, waving me over and beaming proudly. "I got it figured out," he said. "They'll hold your bus in Binghamton, and you can take the next bus that goes there, so you can catch your bus to D.C."

Brilliance. I thanked him profusely. And all went as planned. We caught the next bus, having to sit apart because of the modern American's fear of sitting with a stranger.

Liz showed me a text she had sent to her boyfriend. It read: "I have decided that this is not a trip to Florida. It is a trip to the inner circle of Hell. I've already missed a bus, yelled fuck at my father in front of a cop, and had a tantrum. And it's not even noon. xxxxx."

I laughed. So true.

We reached Binghamton with no more excitement, though Liz did have someone tell her that we were beautiful. Unfortunately when we got there, there was no other bus waiting for us. We grabbed our luggage out of the bus's belly and went inside the terminal.

"That bus left," the man at the ticket desk said. "He said that he picked up passengers in town, at the bus stop."

"No he didn't," Liz said.

"He said he stopped and boarded passengers," he said. "You can take the 2:20 bus to D.C. though." The lying bastard bus driver...

And so I'm waiting. Only two more hours to go until the NEW bus arrives.

Dear Dan Gibson...

...Please marry me.

"Get Ready to Loathe No Age by the End of the Week: Maybe Pete Wentz Did Bring the Music Video Back"
Another Friday, another installment of FNMTV starring our pal Pete Wentz. This week, there are mysteriously only three new videos (T.I., No Age, and Day 26) to go with two live performances (Rihanna and Maroon 5 featuring Rihanna). I wondered what effect the program had on the number of videos played on MTV, and there's good and bad news. The good (?) news: MTV is certainly devoting a larger amount of its airtime to music videos. The bad news: I hope you like Boys Like Girls. ...
(Read more here.)

Did I not just say like all of those things last week??

(Picture from Sony BMG or something. Side note: If I were famous, I'd want to have joint birthday parties with Lil Mama!)

Kicks keep getting harder to find

Oh, me. Some days I wonder if I’m really mature enough to be graduating and going off to college next year. But then I remember what college kids are really like and I’m okay.

Today I was tossing around a tennis ball with my sister’s new puppy, Annabelle. (This isn’t her in the picture, but it’s the same breed.) The ball’s gotten kind of muddy and gross, so I tried to figure out how to wash it without:
a) Killing the washing machine
or
b) Letting the dog get a mouthful of soap. Yum.

So I pulled up my ol’ buddy Google and typed in “how to wash tennis ball.” Is this where I went wrong, or was it somewhere earlier in the process? We shall see.

I must say, the tennis players’ forum I stumbled across was most interesting. Apparently, one can wash tennis balls in the washing machine, but the forum educated me on a much greater level. I present the most informative (and highly entertaining) responses:

• “I'd say tolerate the dirty or new balls, washing them is not a good idea IMO.”
• hummer23

• “After washing, the balls may look a bit pale, bald, and even appear to shrink a bit. But the dryer really firms up the bounce nicely….this may lead to knocking the stuffing out of your balls, exploding [upon] impact. So unless you can tolerate exploding balls, may want to just wash your really dirty balls.”
• Ronaldo

• “The structural integrity will only be compromised if the balls are left soaking wet for some time. If they get wet, just leave them out to dry in the open.”
• jonolau

• “I've seen someone brushing his balls :o It wasn't a pretty sight, all the fur was being taken off.”
• carpetgrub

(Oh, look! Our good Ronaldo returns with an even better nugget of wise experience!)

• “After washing and drying my balls, they were a bit fluffy so tried to shave the fuzz off the balls. Ended up with hard bald balls that were tough to handle.”

I'm sure that problem is far more common than you think, Ronnie. Far more common.

Things are shaping up to be pretty odd...

Okay. So. I watched Pete Wentz' new "video" show, FNMTV, which premiered last week. Much like communism, it's good in theory, cruddy in practice.

The live performances (Panic at the Sexy---I mean, Disco---and Snoop Dogg) were pretty good, but I felt misled by the "video" part. I mean, the whole hyped-up promotion said, "MTV is gonna show more videos!" And what does Pete Wentz do? He shows like 4 videos the whole damn hour. And then he shows 10-second clips of Michael Jackson and the Cure. *Yawn.* If these videos "made you who you are" or whatever, then show the whole damn thing!

Pete wasn't a bad host. He had a good connection with the crowd and he's not too hard to look at, but he's so....white. And short. Of all his guests only the Ting Tings weren't taller than him. (But they're English. Less sun means stunted growth, yes/no?) It was pretty amusing watching him try to do some ghetto-type gesturing while Flo Rida stood there smiling like, "Lookit the cute li'l white boy, subconsciously highlighting the fact that I am nearly a foot taller than he is." And why did Pete have to yell everything he said? He had a microphone!

Oh, and he had the Pussycat Dolls on there. Do not even get me started on the freakin' Pussycat Dolls. Yes, let's make all women look like skanks! And let's drool on them too! Yum-yum. At least Flo Rida had a pretty catchy new video/song and a thing about growing up in Miami...which I...didn't watch. Oops. I'm sure it was good, though. Also, the nursery rhyme about the Ting Tings was really cute.

I see that what they are trying to do is give MTV'ers more voice about the videos and crap, but I really could have done without the sorry excuse for a panel discussion. Travis McCoy acted totally strung out and really had nothing more significant to say than "the Pussycat Dolls are hot *Drooly-McDroolerson*" and the one British dude on the end was really obnoxious. I'm still trying to figure out what the purpose of the middle dude with the computer was. Pretty sad stuff.

I was awfully disappointed with the whole program. It left me wanting more, but not in the good sense of the term. More like, "...That's it??" But be careful what you wish for, because now MTV shows like, 5 videos an hour (when there aren't Made reruns--*gag*), complete with video commentary from viewers like you! Now you can dance like PCD or critique the tightness factor of Panic at the Disco's pants. More videos, and more crap too. I really wish they'd do it like VH1 does...a few hours of uninterrupted videos in the morning, no whining bloggers (*coughhypocrite!cough*), no dancing losers, no slurring commentary from sad rappers. Boo, MTV and Pete Wentz, boo.

...but I'll watch tomorrow's episode 'cause Duffy and Lil Wayne are gonna be there.

Lessons Learned

So, while here in Key West for a bit of vacation, I've learned some things about life. I want you to share these experiences with me.

1. If you don't want to be groped, don't go to a drag show. Because Inga will touch you inappropriately, be you lady or man.

2. When going out into tropical sun after living in cloudy NY your entire life, PLEASE, for the love of God, wear sunblock. Preferably SPF 70. Otherwise, you'll burn your ass and not be able to walk properly for a week.

3. The creepers come out at night. If you don't want to be creeped, stay inside.

4. Touching lizards is fun. As long as they're little.

5. Don't have sex with the dead manatees on the beach. They'll arrest you. (Note: I did, in fact, hear referance to this act from one of the locals while avoiding creepers. See lesson 3.)

So that's how it is in their family.

This is how I'd like to live life.

Yeah. There's no rhyme or reason here on this blog, just ranting and randomness.

(Image from nationalgeographic.com .)