Las Vegas Move Part 1 "The Bus Ride"

I have been out at the farm horsing around. Seth has another horse in training with the intention to be sold. The trainer was in Texas and required a 4 day trip to get the horse there. I watched the farm while Seth was gone.

The teenage Phillies were a little better in behavor this time. I used some wisdom and let Molly bring the girls back into the barn the first two days. From a distance away, I studied every detail about what she did and discovered that I was in error about my methods. I would enter the pen and catch the young horses when what I should have done was stand on the outside of the corral and let them frisk around for awhile. When they were ready to be caught, they would come up to the gate and stand waiting for the lead rope to be attached to the halter. The second thing was the order of bringing in the colts. One would go absolutely bananas if she was left alone in the corral so she had to be taken in always second. Never first or last.

This week and last I've been helping a good friend with house preparation to be sold. He is installing a bathroom in the basement and has in mind to replace the kitchen cabinets and the vinyl flooring.

I've been working on the den some. The room is cleared and ready to have the floor covered for protection when I paint the ceiling. The room will get a total make over. Wallpaper on two of the walls with brick paneling on the other two. Some new skin covering for the doors and of course a new light fixture. I would like to vinyl title the floor, but I don't know about that yet.

Anyway finally to the Bus Ride. I rose up with inspiration and full of energy on the day to start the journey to Beaufort South Carolina. The internet bus site said to be at the bus station two hours early. Since my bus left at 6:00 AM, I figured that 4:30 AM would be soon enough and ordered up a cab to arrive to take me to the station at 4:00 AM. Upon arriving at the bus station at the desired time of 4:30 AM, I find that the station doesn't open until 5:00 AM. It was a good thing that the weather was not typical Nebraska weather and was quite pleasent for 4:30 AM in the moring.

There was a little confusion about which bus I was to board and I almost missed the departure, but made the bus and settled down for the day and a half ride to sunny Beaufort. This leg of the bus ride was not extremely crowded and most of the riders settled down for another snooze. At about 9:00am the TV screens lowered down from the overhead luggage racks and Ghost Busters followed by The Natural were the in ride movies.

Somewhere in the middle of Iowa we stopped for about an hour and a half break for lunch. Unbeknownst (my made up word- it means I didn't know) to me I was to transfer onto another bus here. Once again at the last minute I became aware of the transfer and made the connection.

This next driver was Brandy a real story teller and kept me facinated all the way to St. Louis. Not only did we hear stories about when she lived in Alaska, and shot an Elk in Montana, but we got the local history as well. She pointed out such places like the cliff that Hiawatha jumped to her death over a man with her eyes rolling. She pointed out the town park where President Lincoln and Douglas had their debate during the election. She showed us the oldest prison in Iowa. She told us about her Harley that she rode in off hours. It was awesome.

The next leg of the trip left St. Louis about 6:00pm and headed out across Illinois. I was certainly glad I didn't have to drive through the contruction zone again. We whizzed through the night darkness toward the next transfer point in Nashville. I listened to a CD given to me about how the internet works. It was a facinating program about bits and bytes flying through the internet galatic cyber bit stream. It was all about packets and overhead and ...... well lets just say that it was really cool for me. It kept me rivited all the way to Nashville. Arrival time was about 1:00am.

So there I was in Nashville in the middle of the night with about two or three hundred other tired people. This was the only place that had a security check if you would call it that. Everyone leaving on a bus must have a tag on their luggage that indicated you had been checked. When my turn came, I lifted my backpack up on the table and rolled the suitcase up to the guard. The guard unzipped both looked inside then zipped them up and said, "You got any knives, guns, bomb making material, that sort of thing?"

I said, "No."

He said, "OK you're good" and proceeded to attached the checked tag. Then to my surprise both me and the luggage went back in the packed waiting room with full access to outside the terminal. Hummmmm, just a little different than Airport security.

Time to board the bus. Being the good midwest mannered boy that I am I let others go first and get on the bus before me. About three in front of me the bus driver says, "Bus is full take the next one" and closed the gate doors to the bus. Now, I'm thinking what does that mean like take the next bus that arrives the next day or what? Well, it turns out the next bus was 2 hours away. Ugh another 2 hours the the crammed bus station at now 2:00am. We won't go into what the bathroom looked like with that many people in the station. I was certainly getting my bus savy on the next bus headed for Atlanta. I elbowed my way in line and defended my place in line with vigor. I made it on the packed to the max bus headed out of town around 3:30am with the slim hope of making the transfer in Atlanta to Savannah.

Upon arriving at the bus terminal in Atlanta, I drug my luggage up the bus terminal ramp and prepared to find the next bus to Atlanta when over the speaker came the call, "Last call for Savannah, gate 6." Scurrying over to the gate I managed to get through the door just before the door was shut and locked. Down the ramp and on the bus I trotted just in time to head out of town. My stay in Atlanta was supposed to be about 3 hours, but turned out to be only about 30 seconds. I was just glad to be back on schedule and headed for the final destination of Savannah.

The driver of this bus was alergic to everything and kept purging the bus with cold air at the hint of any type of smell good or bad. This leg of the ride was pretty uneventful or maybe I, just being tired, slept most of the way. I arrived at the Savannah station Lydia picked me up and we headed out for Beaufort South Carolina and the next part of the moving adventure.