Tour Diary: Not Exactly On The Way

(June 23, 2012) BROOKLYN, NY — If you’ve been keeping track, you know that the dateline for yesterday’s diary was “Knoxville, TN.” And if you remember any geography, you also know that “Knoxville, TN” and “Brooklyn, NY” are not exactly neighbors. And if you know that I’m traveling everywhere by bus, then I think you can imagine what this tour diary will consist of.

I spent 18 hours (or maybe a bit more) on a bus from Knoxville to Brooklyn so I could see Kate, the woman I’ve been dating since last fall. Sometimes you just need to be with someone, you know? And it’ll be quite a while — at least until August, until I have a couple days of downtime and can make it back to New York City. So, crazy as it seems, I decided to come for a visit before heading back south.

The trip didn’t begin well. Nelda Hill (see yesterday’s diary) dropped me off at the Greyhound station in Knoxville around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, following my poetry reading. My bus was supposed to leave at 12:15 a.m., but when I got to the counter the clerk said the bus was late and he wasn’t sure when it would arrive. “We’ll get you out of here before 1:00, but I’m not sure how much before.”

That proved to be untrue. The bus didn’t even arrive until 1:00, and I think it was close to 1:30 before we were on the road. Unfortunately, most of the transfers at that time of night have very short windows, so the late departure meant almost everyone on the bus was going to miss their next bus.

We motored through the night to Wytheville, VA, where everyone who was intending to get off to go to the Carolinas was told to stay on the bus as far as Richmond, VA, where they could hook up with a bus heading south. A few people who were heading to West Virginia got off in Wytheville.

As the sun was coming up, a young guy, maybe 20 or so, walked from the back of the bus and asked the driver when we were going to get to Wytheville. “Wytheville? We were there an hour ago,” she said. This guy had the kind of high-pitched voice I associate with some Southern men. Almost like a yodel. He wasn’t happy. He’d slept through his stop and was now in the wrong state. And he had no money so he couldn’t afford to buy a ticket back the other way. He got off at the next stop and I don’t know what happened. It sounded like he was going to call his parents and was expecting to be told to walk.

Meanwhile I tried to sleep. I’d been doing fairly well at sleeping on buses on the tour, but I just couldn’t get much happening. I slept maybe four hours in 30-minute blocks over the course of the entire trip to New York.

I was supposed to connect to a New-York-bound bus in Richmond. The bus was still there when I arrived and I sprinted out to catch it, but the driver said it was full so I’d have to wait for another bus. A Greyhound worker told me (and the other New York travelers) that we could catch a bus in an hour and switch at Baltimore. Unfortunately nobody told the Baltimore driver, but she was very cool and once she’d confirmed this new plan she let us all on the bus.

I’d had a seat to myself up until Richmond, but now I was joined by Samantha and Jace, a young mom and her six-month-old son. Jace was ridiculously cute. Gerber-baby cute. And he was one of the happiest babies I’ve seen, smiling and giggling and just generally enjoying the heck out of the bus ride. He formed three serious relationships with female passengers during the course of the ride, all three of whom were completely entranced by him.

Samantha was a wonderful mom. She was obviously delighted by Jace’s existence and showered him with love and affection throughout the trip. She told me she’d left the Bronx four years ago because she could tell her life was headed in the wrong direction. She moved to Richmond, got her GED, got a job and a car, and was about to get married. She said when she looked at what had become of many of her peers back home, she was very happy she’d gotten out when she had. I was very impressed by her. And I may have misunderstood, but I think she was 20 years old. If that’s true, she’s a very together 20-year-old.

We finally had power outlets and wifi on this bus, so I posted the tour diary I’d written around midnight sitting on the floor of the bus station in Knoxville. I also wrote a letter of recommendation for a friend who’s trying to get into an Artist in Residence program, and I wrote a press release for my upcoming events in Auburn, Alabama.

We arrived in D.C., the last stop before Baltimore, where we were supposed to change to a bus for NYC. I was very hungry. I’d eaten lunch before my canoe trip the day before, but I hadn’t eaten dinner. I just didn’t have enough time between the canoe trip and the poetry reading. There’d been some snacks at the reading, so I’d had a few pieces of broccoli and a couple cherry tomatoes from the veggie platter, along with some crackers. Then I’d gone straight to the bus station where there wasn’t anything to eat but chips or the ham sandwich I’d unfortunately had the last time through. I had a bag of Sun Chips, determined not to have to eat meat again.

But the bus was so late that we never had a real rest stop and there wasn’t anything to eat until we reached D.C. Because we were so far behind schedule we had just 10 minutes in D.C., so I ducked into the station to find nothing but turkey and ham sandwiches or fried chicken. No packaged salads, no fruit, nothing. So I bought a turkey sandwich because I needed to eat something. It had been 24 hours since my last meal.

After our quick rest break we all got back on the bus. Then a Greyhound worker came on to say that a more direct bus to New York was leaving soon and had room for all of us. This bus would get us to New York by 8:20 p.m. This was also the scheduled arrival time of the bus we were going to switch to in Baltimore, but given how late we already were it seemed like a much better bet to switch in DC.

Samantha had Jace and two bags and more things under the bus. I grabbed one of her bags then got my backpack, her stroller and her car seat. As we walked to the new bus, I said, “I think we’re married now. But don’t worry, for your sake, it won’t last very long.” She laughed. We put our stuff on the new bus and took seats together again.

The driver, a nice New Yorker named Frank, said, “It’s going to look at the beginning like I’m driving to Annapolis. I’m not going the wrong way, I’m going a different way. But don’t worry, I’ve never been to Annapolis and I don’t know the way. We are going to New York. I’m from New York, too, and I want to get home.”

Samantha and Jace slept a lot of the way from DC to New York. I slept a bit, too, and also read The Dharma Bums. True to his word, Frank had us in New York by 8:20. In fact, we were there at 8:00. I helped Samantha with her stroller and car seat and bags again and then went to meet Kate.

I’m headed back down south in a couple days, with stops in Atlanta and Auburn (AL) and maybe Birmingham. And probably somewhere in North Carolina, too. Then New Orleans!

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