Fistfight on the Greyhound

I began my Greyhound trip at 9 a.m. on January 2nd. It was -20, which made life a little interesting, considering that the door was held shut with a bungee cord. Things were going along just fine after a quick seat change (one guy just kept staring at me with scary intensity). I honestly thought that the trip might be fairly normal. Silly me.


I lucked out on the next bus change, as I got a seat all to myself pretty close to the bus driver. I spent the day reading and playing Sudoku. I finally drifted off to sleep at 12:30 a.m., but burst into consciousness as a scuffle broke out in the back of the bus.


The bus driver raced to pull the bus off onto the side of the slippery highway. We were literally in the middle of nowhere, and the fight showed no signs of abating. She came to the back of the bus, ordering the men to stop fighting. A minute later, they finally stopped punching each other. She made the instigator sit in the seat ahead of me, and forcefully told the men that if they fought again, she would call the police.

Turns out that the guy sleep talks (in a mixture of English, Spanish, and gibberish). I spent the night listening to a series of violent exchanges with himself. He also yelled in his sleep. It wasn't exactly a restful night!

Early the next morning, we stopped at a little rest area in Montana. Coming out of the most foul restroom I have ever witnessed, I was graced with the vision of yet another fight, which unfortunately blocked the entrance to the bus. When they finally moved a little, I climbed back aboard to wait for the cops to show up.

They took statements, and we all had to fill out incident reports, which took another hour. No one wanted to press charges, so the instigator was taken away to the hospital for some mental help.

At our next major break, one of the men who tried to break up the fight finally got looked at by the EMTs. He was taken out on a stretcher.

Who says riding the Greyhound is dull?

Never Google Greyhound

A small bit of advice for Greyhound travelers: Don't google Greyhound bus experiences before you go.

Out of the many search results, ninety percent of them were negative. They detailed drunk passengers, crazy people creating chaos on the bus (including a guy with a pistol in a paper bag), uncomfortable riding conditions, and overcrowded buses. Not exactly the type of stories to reassure you when you're contemplating a 35 hour bus ride.

I figure it will all be all right, though. After all, can it really beat traveling by bus in Central America? Probably not. The odds of getting proposed to or felt up are much, much smaller (much more so on the former than on the latter).

Wish me luck!

Games to Play on a Chicken Bus

I'm now in the process of shifting my Guatemala posts over to this blog. Here are but a few of the fun ideas for games to play on a chicken bus, the omnipresent ancient school buses jam-packed with people and assorted livestock.
1) Buy two newspapers. Race to find the most horrifying story. Double points for catastrophic accidents that recently occurred on your route.
2) Try to cram more foreigners in a seat than deemed humanly possible. First one to get a dropped jaw from blase Guatemalans wins.
3) Convince your seatmate you only speak Chinese. Try to hold a conversation.
4) Persuade the ayudante to let you ride on the roof, as a cure for bus sickness.
5) Speak only in a Texan accent.
6) Pretend to be hard of hearing when your married seatmate hits on you. Break out your fake wedding ring and picture of your "son."