Greyhound... advice please :)

Greyhound?

oh boy. Purchase some Ondansetron, a cancer related anti puke medicine in dissolvable pill form. A few days riding with 60 of your best funkiest friends and nights will bring out whatever flaws inside of you.

Baggage? I carried exactly one suit case. Everything went into that suit case which also formed a foundation of trucking sleeper clothing for 8 days. Ive had that suit case since 10, and I still have it to day. I think sometimes that thing has more miles than I do. It got lost once in the greyhound system and was recovered and redirected in Seattle back to Maryland.

Prepare yourself to understand what it means to be dehydrated. Bring some fluids. Sip not drink and guzzle.

Ride that bus two seats in front of the rear axle. Or one seat row directly behind the forward steer axle. In between these two rows specifically in the center while discarding forward of the steer and aft of the drives you will have a ride quality second to none. You want also to ride on the left side. That way when the driver executes a turn he does not abuse the left side too much.

Have your last will and medical directives filled out. No im not kidding. 4 am rolls around 300 miles still go to before sunrise and you are going to learn how much moxie your driver has. If he has the stones to roll on without getting tired or worse fight white line fever you got it made.

I cannot ever ride a greyhound anymore. I doze off counting the RPM's power band in the engine and mentally compare the status of the power on the drives, transmission and the occasional running to the side where the wash board is. Sometimes I get to where I almost get into dreamland to stay, something happens and driver backs off the hammer to apply a decent amount of air brake. so much for trying to sleep again for another 100 miles.

Over and over and over. Never ending. There has been a time or two I detected a professional trucker inside that driver's seat and the engine purrs in the 1500 rpm sweet spot I fall into Z land very quickly. The ones I hate are the gear jammers. Forcing the transmission to accept a certain gear even if the backlash travels through the frame from end ot end only to fall out of that gear and drop another. Sheesh.

Do not go into washington DC, silver spring if you can help it. Parasites aboundeth.

 

Wasn't it Greyhound that had a passenger literally decapitated by another passenger a year or two ago?

 

HEH.

Getting soft are we? (///TEASING....smile)

Frankly I would leave it in the suit case. What you can do is get a big fluff jacket (In 90 degree weather no less, let em laugh and point) throw that under your bones when you finally get around to nesting.

If you are lucky you might find a large soft seatmate to nest on. I spent a few hundred miles once with two teenagers catching a night's sleep on me and my parka which for them was way better than the cloth seat.

 

Sleeping bag and pillow can really compress down if you roll them right, strapped on to your backpack shouldn't be an issue for carry-on. Or pay UPS 30$ to ground ship a package to your orientation location(I did that a few years ago, just for tools and some other random things I didn't want to try to take on a plane)

 

Don't forget to bring earbuds to block out all the creaming and crying kids.....

 

Don't take it on board cuz if it can't fit in the overhead compartment and trying to keep it in your lap for the trip will suck ###...if you're tall your legs will start to hurt, packed in like a match box...and bring a sweater or a blanket on there with u, it gets cold in there...I had to take a greyhound from Texas to North Carolina last year ....oh man what an experience, took me 3 days lol

 

Headphones are a must !!!

 

Guess I was luck to get paid mileage to orientation. I wouldn't ride greyhound for 5 miles.