'Solstice Bus'

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Yes, you can Google “solstice bus” and find a number of entries. In fact I was chagrined to find those after I had thought up the name for this column.

My original plan was to offer apologies to John Steinbeck (“The Wayward Bus” – 1947), but apparently my apologetic sphere must expand.

My choice of titles for this column related to a trip I took on Megabus June 24-26 of this year. And I am sure you astronomers in the reading pool will point out I missed the Summer Solstice by a couple of days. Sorry.

In my work these days, I need to go to Niagara Falls, N.Y. for few hours each month. Despite the fact that my client pays the bills, when the airline fare quadrupled from May to June (it always does during honeymoon month), I decided to take matters into my own hands. Hence, the Megabus.

Unlike the old “ridin’ the dog” experience, Megabus only stops in major cities.

So, we pulled out of downtown Atlanta at 1 p.m. Monday, June 24 and headed to Cincinnati, where we would change buses for Buffalo that evening.

We stopped in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Lexington and Cincinnati. In Cincinnati, we were on the streets for an hour and a half waiting for the bus to Buffalo. There is no bus terminal.

I said “we” because a funny thing happened when I got on the bus in Atlanta. A large family – 10 people – got on. We said our pleasantries and I found out they were making exactly the same trip as I was.

They, too, would be turning around and coming back Tuesday night. Only they were going to a funeral. A woman in the family, a young 54-year-old woman, had died of cancer and they all decided they needed to support her family. So, they had driven in two cars four hours from south Georgia to catch the bus. We had a good time together.

In the middle of the night, 3 a.m. Tuesday, to be exact, the driver awakened us from our sleep to pull into a Love’s Truck Stop in Lodi, Ohio. This was startling.

Much earlier in my life, I had lived not six miles from this location. It was surreal to be awakened in the middle of the night and be pulled into a past life so abruptly.

At 4:30 a.m., as we neared Erie, Pennsylvania, the sun was coming up. It had just gone down about the time we had gotten to Cincinnati, hence the “Solstice Bus.”

In Buffalo, I had the car service that usually picks me up at the airport scoop me up from the bus, take me to where I needed to be and drop me off again. We left Buffalo at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, retracing our path and finding ourselves back in Atlanta at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Now, you have to understand, I am the rare person who likes to drive across Kansas – with the radio off. I use such time to think. Eight years ago, as many of you know, I drove the 48 states in seven days by myself (no big deal if you are willing to drive 1,200 miles per day).

The Megabus was similar to these experiences, only more intense, the whole trip being packed into 53 ½ hours. Great thinking time.

There is something that makes me sad, though. So many people miss out on these kinds of experiences – such as meeting the people I met (like the six matrons who got on in Chattanooga to go home to Cincinnati – they had been there working on saving the Delta Queen paddle- wheeled steamer which has been moored there since its last bankruptcy).

People miss out because they can’t think this way. It’s the rare bird that has the means to fly and chooses to take the bus, but doing so opens up an entirely different world, available only if you are willing to step outside your personal comfort zone.

The Megabus (and to be fair, Greyhound has a similar service now) is something within the reach of a vast portion of the population. It is cheap. I went to Buffalo and back for $67 each way.

Again, it opens up an entirely different world.

It also allowed me to be nostalgic and reflective, too. In 1936, my dad took a bus from Terre Haute, Indiana to Troy, Ohio, a trip that felt to him as if he went halfway around the world if you read his diary, which I have. That trip took him from poverty to the middle class.

He left his young wife and son behind temporarily while he went off to go to welding school – an opportunity of a lifetime for him – his Harvard MBA, if you please. That welding school is still turning out fine graduates.

It makes me wonder today how many people could make the trip from poverty to the middle class, if only they had the nerve to get on a bus. Or how many of means could expand their world if only they had the nerve to “stoop” to riding a bus.

Get out of your comfort zone. It is cheap in dollars, but very rich in mental rewards.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.