Where I last left off, I had just gotten dropped off at the Pensacola Greyhound Station. My brother, Nieves and the girls stayed with me for about 30 minutes and oddly enough, left as the bus was arriving. I said my goodbyes to them and waited in line to get on the bus. While I was waiting, a deaf girl came up to me and asked if I could make a phone call for her. She needed me to call her ride and so she could be picked up. I had no problem doing that, so I called, and the girl wanted to give me money for making the call, but I shook my head. I have 600 minutes on my cell and don’t even use 100 of them a month. Letting people use my phone is just to really get it’s use out or whatever.
The bus driver opened the door for us to board the bus (which was almost packed), I found a seat and got comfortable. For the most part, we were on time. Arrived in Mobile, AL at 7:45 p.m., arrived in Baton Rouge, LA at 11:59 p.m. and Lafayette, LA at 2:05 a.m. From there, we kind of fell behind. We got to Houston, TX at 6 a.m. (5 mins late lol) and had a longer than scheduled delay.
Once we got back on the road from Houston to Dallas, with a stop in Buffalo and I think a couple of other cities, things were okay…until we left Ft. Worth for Abilene...2 hours away. We had a full bus, and an equally full undercarriage.
About 1 hour and 20 minutes from Ft. Worth, there's this town called Ranger. Myself and the 56 other people from my bus got to know that town real well the 2 HOURS WER WERE BROKEN DOWN THERE! Ranger, TX...population 75, and 56 of those were the people from the bus! Okay, so there's more than 75 people, but the town is SMALL! From the gas station we were broken down at, we could see what looked like DOWNTOWN RANGER! I didn't want to venture away from the bus for fear I wouldn't return, but there was an Oil Museum, a tower with the town's name on it, railroad tracks and some businesses – many of which looked like they hadn't been operating in YEARS! Real Children of the Corn-like town!
The driver, who had only been driving for 2 DAYS calls maintenance and while they're talking, the driver is doing everything he's told, but that's not working. The bus isn't staying started. So the driver calls Abilene for them to send a bus, and horror of all horrors! there's not bus! The closest bus available is in DALLAS and that's 3 HOURS AWAY! So a bus is sent, but there's no telling how long it'll be before it gets to us!
Thank God for the 4 or 5 former and current truck drivers on board the bus, as well as some other riders! They worked for about an hour on getting the bus working again. The problem? NO FAN BELT! Who in their right mind drives a bus off the maintenance lot with a faulty fan belt!? That's crazy! So they get the fan belt back on, we cheer, pile back on the bus and we're off.
But that's not the end of things! We get a mere 20 miles away and the bus breaks down again! The driver manages to get the bus off the highway to another gas station were everyone is shocked to find that the fan belt is GONE! like disappeared! WTF?! It dissinigrated on the highway!
Now there's nothing that can be done. the driver calls Dallas and the bus that should have been sent when we were broken down in Ranger, was JUST BEING SENT!
We're in this new town for like 3 hours and YES! new bus comes! It takes about 30-45 minutes to unload all the crap from the undercarriage of the old bus to the new bus. By this time, everyone's nerves are SHOT and there's this one lady going on and on about Lord knows what. I had enough of hearing her bitch about breaking down, and I'm sure the other passengers were sick of it too, that the next time she started I told her to shut up. I don't care that she's older than me, but I was tired of it. We all have people we're trying to get to see and complaining about things out of our control was useless and would get her ass kicked if she didn't shut up. We fought for about 10 minutes then the bus driver got on the bus and said he could hear HER outside the bus and she needed to shut up or she'd be going back to Dallas on the broken down bus. So she shut up.
Things are all set and changed and we're off to Abilene. And what do you know! the drama continues!
There were about 6 people waiting for their bus and we come and they think we're the bus. Umm wrong! So then that lady I argued with started up again about having to meet her husband or whatever and she said how the whole way to Abilene she had to hold the door because it was rattling too much...that she saved our lives by holding the door to keep it from popping open. Sure, the door didn't seal right and you could hear a whooshing sound as the bus and air collided, but the door was hardly going to “pop” open causing us to die! I kept my mouth shut and let the other passengers deal with her. They do and she gets off the bus.
2 more buses arrive full with passengers as well. We're all just sitting there waiting to leave and no one is telling us anything. a couple of the passengers get off to find out what's wrong and it seems there's no replacement drivers for ANY OF THE BUSES! We're sitting there for about an hour to an hour and a half with no driver. The one lady who got off the bus ended up buying a ticket on another bus. YES! Don't have to deal with her anymore!
Finally we get a driver and he's bi-lingual. Everything he says in English, he has to say in Spanish. OMG can you please SHUT UP?! I just wanted him to shut up so I could sleep.
Shut up he did, and sleep I did. We made the usual drop off and pick up stops at Van Horn and El Paso.
Doing all that made my brain hurt, so Thursday is going to have to come later.
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