The wheels on the bus...part 2.

I am sitting on the cold concrete floor, back against a long brick wall waiting for the call to get on a bus that will take me to San Jose, my final destination. A guy in his mid-twenties sits down next to me. He has about a dozen visible tattoos and a pierced septum. We’re both staring off into space.

A man walks up and asks, “Can you watch my bag for a minute?”

I nod and wonder if I just look trustworthy or too tired to steal anything. Shortly after a second man asks the same thing, and I nod again. Then another and another.

The next thing I know, the two if us sitting against the wall are surrounded by a semi-circle of luggage that we have been recruited to watch. I turn to my wall-mate and ask, “Do you have any idea of whose bag belongs to who?”

“Nope.”, he says and chuckles. After a minute he says, “Man, I hope the next bus comes soon, I am exhausted.”

“Me too”, I say, “there was a dude on the bus that freaked me out that I couldn’t sleep.”

“Wait, did he have one really jacked up eye?”

“YES!”, I yell.

“Ok, that’s it. For the rest of this trip we are sitting across from each other. Deal?”, he puts out his hand which I grab and shake. Shortly after the bus pulls in and we all board. I sit across from my bus partner and Hobo-Man comes down the aisle and glares at us. We stare him down, he flinches first and walks back toward the front of the bus and finds a seat up there. We look at each other and grin and nod- together we have conquered our monster of the bus.

We sleep most of the ride back, but both wake up and chat the last 45 minutes of the trip. He makes jewelry out of chainmail and he’s out to visit the Renaissance Faires in California to sell his wares. When we finally arrive, the first person waiting by the bus is a girl with about a dozen tattoos. I turn around to see them in a minute-long embrace, when he opens his eyes I give him a short wave. Still entwined in his hug, he give a short wave back and then closes his eyes while lifting the girl off her feet and spinning her.

I’ve always felt that I would run into my ally again someday. If we traded names, it was lost and forgotten in the fog of sleep deprivation. In fact, some of the details may be a bit off since I was in a half-dream state. (However, I remember him telling me a story of someone that came into his martial arts school and challenged people even though he only got his training from watching cheesy kung-fu movies. How he would jump around like a monkey.)

Sir, if you read this, drop me a note, I’d love to hear the story of what happened after that fork in the road when we parted ways. I hope your time in California was successful and free of spooky hobos.

The wheels on the bus...part 1.

(Note:I am back from Africa and boy do I have some stories. It also gave me a chance to reflect and jot down a bunch of ideas for stories I had forgotten about. While I type up the most memorable item of our visit, here's a two-part story of my first and only Greyhound ride.)

I am coming home for the first time since I have moved away from my family in California to set up camp in Colorado. Since funds are tight, I take the cheapest mode of travel I could find – the bus.

The plan is to leave after work on a Friday and arrive in San Jose sometime Saturday afternoon. I have several books to read, my Walkman for music and some accumulated fatigue that will ensure that I will sleep through most of the ride.

The first hours are uneventful. People get on, the bus stops, people get off, different people get on, rinse and repeat. At about Midnight we stop somewhere across the border of Nevada. I know it’s Nevada because I look out the window and see bright neon signs that let me know that they have plenty of slot machines. People pile out to use the restroom and grab a sandwich in one of those plastic triangle containers. I see one person put a few dollars into a slot machine and I wonder if he thinks he is going to win his fortune in the middle of the night while in the middle of nowhere.

I am one of the first ones back on the bus, I pull out my book, flip ahead and see that the chapter ends in about 5 pages. My plan is to finish the chapter and then nod off to sleep. I sink into my story as the haze of sleep presses heavier and heavier on my eyes.

Then I feel something odd. Something wrong, I tense up immediately. I freeze and listen. No strange noises from the bus, nothing around me. I slowly turn my head to the left toward the aisle.

He’s staring right at me from about 8 feet away sitting in the row across the aisle. A scrawny older man with a week’s beard growth and a knit cap is staring with a vicious intensity right into my eyes. My first thought was ‘Is this guy an extra hobo from the movie Journey of Natty Gann?’ I shake the cobwebs out of my head and ask, “Yes?”

“Somebody got into my bag.”, he snarls.

“Excuse me?”, I ask.

He leans a little closer and says “SOMEbody got into my bag. And when I find out who, I am going to kill him.” I see his face in better light and see that his right eye is injured, like someone beat on it with a pretty solid object. It’s swollen and colored with dark purple and red and yellow-ish green.

I have no idea how to react. On its own, my mouth says, “Well, it wasn’t me.” One thing is for sure. I am not falling asleep. I turn back to my book and can feel him glaring at me for another 15 minutes. After about an hour I look over and he has his eyes shut and appears to be sleeping, but I remained glued to my book.

At sunrise, we have to change busses. We all pile out of the bus taking all of our gear and wait in the cold empty bus station. I sit down on the concrete floor with my back against the wall and see Hobo-Man making his way toward the closest restaurant. I assume he actually was sleeping since he appears to be full of energy – moving erratically, talking to himself, eyes darting every which way occasionally looking into mine. I pray that he’s not on the same bus all the way to San Jose so I can have the chance to get a few hours sleep.