Greyhound? No thanks.

So, I took the Greyhound bus back home to Chicago from Indianapolis, today.

It was.... about what you'd expect. Lots of stupid people who don't know how to travel and don't care about being courteous to others.

Where do I begin?

There was the guy who was mad that I sat next to him. "You're sitting on my pants!" Uh, your pants are very baggy and they're half over on my seat. Move 'em. He got mad and went and sat somewhere else. No idea where, since the bus was just about full.

Then there was the guy in front of me who was determined to take up as much space as possible. A woman asked to sit next to him and he was rude to her. "Maybe you should look somewhere else first." She said, no, scoot over. And asked him a number of times to do so throughout the trip. He kept getting angrier about it, and kept insisting he was over as far as possible. I saw him. I got to watch his bald spot for four hours. He kept sitting at an angle. I'm sympathetic that he doesn't want to put his ass to sleep, but this ain't first class, and he WAS taking up too much room.

And he had his seat tilted back the entire time. And he had a giant pillow the entire time.

There's no way I could've had the laptop out, even the tiny laptop. He took up all my space. Then when we arrived in Chicago and were waiting to disembark, he turned into chatty Kathy and wouldn't shut up. He apologized about the seat being broken. Dude, I'm not dumb. It wasn't broken. You unlatched it so it would lean back, then you latched it back forward at the end of the trip. Then he kept asking the kid who sat next to me about his medals. (The medals were from marching band.) Oh. I like the drum lines. What do you play? (Trumpet.) Oh. Uh. I think the kid sitting next to me was probably right around 17 and it I couldn't tell if the idiot talking to him (and me) was just subtly developmentally disabled, or looking for a date.

The bus had lots of screaming kids, and lots of people carrying their lives along with them in garbage bags. It was, I have to admit, a slice of life I'm fine not experiencing next time. Classism? I suppose, but it is what it is. I just want a quiet place to sit without people talking to me or throwing stuff at each other.

The Chicago Greyhound terminal is nice, though. Large, has food, seems busy. I assume that's an important hub for them.

The Indianapolis side is quite a bit sadder. It's a terminal shared with the Amtrak, and since there's only one train going each way every day, it's not much of a destination.

I avoided taking the train back up to Chicago this time around because it leaves earlier in the morning than I'd care to rise. I may reconsider that for next time (or take the Megabus).