Observations from a Greyhound Bus

A. The woman who looks exactly like my friend Rhonda, except older and with a whiplash-type neckbrace, was eating a comically long baguette (I swear, it was as tall as her). She also sprayed perfume in the air, when the bus started smelling bad. Thanks, crazy woman, from all of us with perfume allergies.

B. The woman on the bus who tried to sell some crafts she made to the bus depot store was wearing a gym shirt from my old high school. This fact stunned me almost as much as the comically long baguette. Did she go to the same high school as me? Or was that the best Value Village find ever?

C. Behind me were the requisite bus Loud Friendly People. There were three: Loud Friendly Blind Man (their ringleader), Loud Friendly Black Man, and Loud Friendly Cheryl (the other Loud Friendlies used her name incessantly, and so I learned it). They only met today, but after a long day and a stop-over in Maple Creek when the bus broke down and they had to get a new bus, it was like they were all family. They all had the same sense of humour -- pet names and blindness and nursery rhymes. Amusing for the first half-hour.

D. The man in front of me was the doppelganger of Saddam Hussein, after they found him in that hole and he was all bearded and crazy-eyed and they were combing his beard for lice. He drank from a large water jug and stared sadly out the window. Perhaps he was remembering when he was a dictator and didn't have to ride a Greyhound bus. Perhaps he was wishing that napping was possible on such a bus, only a few rows in front of the Loud Friendlies.

E. I was the youngest person bussing from Swift Current, by about fifty years. Apparently I was on the Grandmas-Only Tour. The Grandmas and I got along famously.

Some of you, who noticed that I drove to Eatonia, may be wondering why I took a Greyhound bus from Swift Current to Regina today. That is the subject of tomorrow's entry (hopefully tomorrow): "Swift Current is Kryptonite for Tercels." I will regale you with tales of how my car broke down not once, but twice while driving through the same city (there and back).