in which i learn my lesson

[ontology]

The weather is so spectacular that I've brought Yvaine outside while I work on my immense new collection of photographs and pretend that Kyra is still within speaking distance. Ah, yes: I left Alaska on Monday night and arrived in my home... well, on Wednesday morning. It was one of my more interesting journeys, and that is the way I say it to keep my mildly optimistic outlook. The flight itself was perfectly all right; I mostly fell asleep, and the only irritation was when I discovered that my earbuds had stopped working (well, and the bit where I didn't actually have any food and mostly subsisted on tiny tiny packets of peanuts and spice cookies and complimentary orange juice, which I ordered instead of water every time on account of it having actual nutrients).

Um, wait, also there was the bit at the beginning where my suitcase had somehow gained fifteen pounds over the week, which meant it was over the weight limit, and I either had to pay ninety dollars for overweight baggage, twenty-five to spilt it into two bags (they provide plastic ones), or see if I could cram enough things into my carry-ons to bring the weight down to regulation. So there Kyra and I were, on the floor, pulling, uh, mostly books and shoes out of my suitcase and fitting them into my bags like puzzle pieces (where is Hermione's bigger-on-the-inside bag when you need it?) and we actually did it and I am still kind of impressed. Of course I had been priding myself on how light and easy-access I'd gotten my main carry-on before then... 

And then Kyra and I took a really really really long time to say goodbye, and it was sad.

There was a long layover in Minneapolis that I don't actually remember much -- I wandered around, and I bought a five-dollar McDonalds breakfast and called some bus stations and my mother and slept. See, nobody was available to fetch me from the Pittsburgh airport, so I was meant to get bus tickets, except I procrastinated a lot and it was Very Bad, and then every. single. person. I talked to gave me different information. One website said there was no way to get to a bus station from the airport; another said there was a train leaving but you had to have booked a ticket beforehand; someone at the company told me that it didn't matter, I could just pay the driver or pay when I got to my destination; and when I finally arrived at the Pittsburgh airport and had fetched my suitcase and gone out to the bus waiting point, none of these options actually seemed to correspond with reality, and buses to anywhere in particular did not seem to actually exist. Long, ugly, pacing-round-the-airport-phoning-home-panicking-and-crying story short, I did something crazy and hopped an airport bus going to the nearest Greyhound station (borrowing forty cents from a kindly man with a Slavic accent; I had plenty of money but no cash!). My mood went through so many dramatic shifts in that forty-five minutes -- immature hysteria, end-of-my-rope stubborn determination, then elation at the atmosphere of the bus, all the people in it, and the city rushing by the windows, and joy at walking around Pittsburgh myself.

And then I got to the Greyhound station and the first bus leaving for my town was... at five in the morning.

At this point I was still kind of on a high from Having Crazy Plans and Pittsburgh (I love this city so! I'd hardly choose it over Boston, but it's fascinating -- trees trees trees! and industry!), so... if I panicked I didn't pay much attention? I don't know. It would have still been incredibly difficult for my family to pick me up -- my mother's car can't make that kind of distance, and Dad was on a Mobile Crisis call, and anyway it's a two hour drive, two hours out of anyone's way to fix a problem that was pretty much entirely my fault for not being prepared. After phoning my mother and talking it out, I eventually decided just to spend the night at the bus station.

Well. No terrible traumatic event occured, but I will never do that again. It is best not spoken of. Bus stations are some of the most soul-killing places on earth, and I have this irrational oversensitivity to environment -- it was so ugly, and all of the people in it seemed... aimless and depressing and fairly ghetto (Mum was worried about my safety -- uh, I kind of was too, actually, but there were security guards everywhere) and I just plunged into the most awful depression... it took me several hours after I got home to get it out of my system. Waited for hours and hours, sleeping fitfully and then not sleeping at all, and finally my bus left and Mum picked me up when I arrived in town and we went home THE END.

I spent much of Wednesday and yesterday trying to get my sleeping habits back in shape and mostly failing.

So, yes. Missing my Kyra kind of a lot. It's nice to be home, and the weather's spectacular, but the whole world is better when your best friend is around.

Comments

[sleepyidealist.livejournal.com]

The Pittsburgh Greyhound station is really quite nice in comparison to others. See, I know this because I too have spent the night in a bus station, except it was in Columbus, OH (I think? Perhaps it was Dayton.), and it was not nice at all, by which I mean old and dingy and Quite Thoroughly Used. At least in Pittsburgh it's new and somewhat shiny. Though I will grant you that it is still somewhat soul-killing, and your description of the people quite accurate, but I think that that's for the most part just the sort of people who take buses, so.

It is agreeable to hear you made it home, all the same.

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

♥ ♥ ♥

Missing you lots and lots too. Especially since I keep thinking things like "The last time I was in this store, I was with Jolene..." and stuff. (Speaking of which, remember these earrings (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/Flying_dolphin/Photo-0142-1.jpg)? You'll want to check your Claire's for them--I was just in there today and they're now on clearance for...whatever this picture says (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/Flying_dolphin/Photo-0143-1.jpg), I can't read it from the thumbnail. $3.50, maybe?) Seriously, universe...I know I said this last summer, but why didn't we, like, grow up living next door instead of online? ...Oh right, because we both move too often. But still.

And I am sorry how the whole bus thing turned out...I remember that place and you're right, it was dismal, and I wasn't even there nearly as long as you. I mean, it was kind of interesting at first, in a sort of half-guilty "So this is how the other half lives" kind of way, because...well, it was very inner-city, I thought, and I'm really used to airports, of which even the most ghetto in my experience are fairly nice, and then I get to this place where...there are lots of security guards and no food to speak of (well, the one thing was closed and the vending machines were eating money without giving anything back) and almost everyone is obviously poorer than me and I didn't even want to take out my laptop, and...it was just weird. So...yeah. I would really, really not want to spend the night there, and I'm not even as environment-triggery.

I'm glad the airport-bus thing worked, anyway, even though nothing else turned out as planned. I mean, at least you didn't have the $40 taxi fare on top of everything else?

Annnd at some point real soon here I need to stop getting up at the crack of noon or later, actually work on my thesis, and get a job. >_< Although I did just pick up Agyar from the library and also Dracula which I have never actually read, so we'll see how that goes. (And I finally finished Traveling with the Dead today, and I think it's even more made of win than the first book. Ugh, can't we get somebody to reprint these and cash in on the Twi-mania? Or are they too hard because they require some actual thought?)

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Aha, I was going to ask if you'd been to that bus station, too... and yes. Awful. Although both I and my mother were immensely relieved that it was not in a bad part of town at all -- very very nice part, actually; apparently it was the theatre district? Again, I wandered around and took awesome pictures and really wished I could just sneak off and watch a musical or something. And YES they had this horrible little cafe thing with completely rubbish food for absurd prices, and every time I'd look hungrily at a vending machine I'd realise that the dollar I might spend on a Milky Way could buy me two or three times that much net weight of Milky Way in an eight-pack at Walmart. HORRIBLE.



Even if my earbuds hadn't been wrecked I doubt I could have listened to music in there; I'd never be able to listen to anything again if it tasted like bus station.

And also I'm glad the bus thing worked out because I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF and even if some stuff was uncomfortable, I took a risk to fix a problem I caused instead of moping about the airport for hours not solving anything, and it worked out mostly okay in the end. So, you know.

YES YES YES SEE I TOLD YOU TRAVELLING WITH THE DEAD WAS EVEN MORE MADE OF WIN BECAUSE LYDIA AND THEN YSIDRO COMPLETELY SHATTERED MY ENTIRE HEART. I haven't read Dracula either, although I have checked it out from the library... twice. :/

(Will check on the earrings when I'm at the mall for work tomorrow (WORK OMG YAY MONEY). ♥!!!)

...do not attempt to contact me. there is no feasible reason for me to be awake right now. fraaaak.

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Why hello there, Noah; I hadn't realised you'd friended me! :D

...nghhhh, if Pittsburgh is a good bus station I never, ever want to find myself in a bad one. But then Ohio is pretty much Dour Central (the only good thing they've produced is Over the Rhine). Actually the DuBois bus station is probably worse than Pittsburgh, being small and very brown and musty-smelling, but it has also been blessedly people-free every time I've been there.

[take-a-sadsong.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is a very intense adventure. I'm glad you're home safe though! I don't think I've ever been to a bus station, and the only bus I've ever travelled in was one of the buses at Disney World that take you from the parks to your hotel. Unfortunately I sat towards the back once, and there's this awful heater in the back of buses (or maybe just these kinds?) and if you sit your head up against it you get burned.

Also, Katie Herzig! I love Songbird. I'm not sure why I actually like her music; it's kind of too pop for me and really girly, and yet I do rather like it. :)

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is, I love city buses and subways and all forms of public transportation just on principle, because they're so interesting. (And trolleys! I was only on one once, and I think I was eight, but it was fantastic! Also I used to sort of know someone online who had a sort of her-own-place off her parents farm that was a re-formatted tram car.) But apparently nobody takes Greyhound who also takes frequent showers and doesn't take welfare, and while that sounds very discriminatory, it is also depressing to be that surrounded by so many people who don't seem to want to do anything with their lives, if you know what I mean? :/

Hee, Katie Herzig! I just listened to Apple Tree and fell in love, and I was going to ask you if you'd heard her!

[barefoottomboy.livejournal.com]

I used to take the coach between some combination of London, Utrecht, and/or Paris as a teenager when I had to travel on my own, and it was never fun. Coach travel in Ecuador on my gap year, on the other hand, was far less unpleasant. My theory on this is that pretty near everybody in Ecuador had to travel by coach, whereas in Europe and the US, it's only those who have no access to private vehicles who have to travel by public transport. Hence the "only poor people hang out at bus stations" phenomenon, which puts even more people off using coaches.

Glad you got home okay in the end, and go you for finding solutions and surviving!

[spockodile.livejournal.com]

Ohio also produced the wife of my friend Jake, if I recall correctly. She's great.

Bus stations: NYC is the worse than the Pitt of despair. It's like a dungeon but without the romance or picturesque elements. Pittsburgh is reasonably pleasant, in fact. Amenities, seating, outlets, space, bright lighting, clocks, and organization. I believe that DC and Boston are superior, with DC being the best. Harrisburg is also better than Steel City, but only because you can hang out in the way-more-awesome train station on the second floor.

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

Actually, I had the impression that almost everyone uses the bus/coach system in Europe, or at least in England, so it's a lot less "random homeless/drunk people" and more...random anyone. In the US, yeah, generally it's just people who can't afford private transport or an airplane flight. The irritating thing is that coach travel in the UK is exactly as uncomfortable as it is in the US. I mean, I have like five entries on my travel blog dedicated solely to how much I hate coach travel (http://duskthroughnarrowstreets.today.com/?s=coach+travel).

[barefoottomboy.livejournal.com]

Within-country I'd say you're right: f'rinstance the Oxford-London coaches got used by absolutely everybody, as they were a) much cheaper than the train, b) depending on where you were headed to and from, were also more convenient than the train, c) reasonably comfortable, and d) ran 24/7.

Between the three cities I mentioned, there was definitely an element of "only poor people use this service", as they were all also linked by a high-speed train network. I particularly noticed it on the Paris-London stretch: on the train you check in at the station and head straight through; on the coach, you have to get yourself and all your belongings off the bus & go through customs twice, with the occasional passenger being taken away by the police never to return.

Not having travelled by coach in the rest of Europe, I can't speak accurately for the whole continent, but - given the extensive train network which, along with plane travel, seems to be the main non-car way people get from country to country - I imagine it's much the same.