Thanksgiving Travel Tale, Part One

We've all heard horror stories about traveling Greyhound, right? Tales of screaming kids, obnoxious cell phone chatter, blaring iPods or the snorer with an unidentifiable odor… Somehow I've been spared these unpleasantries when I go Greyhound, and today started out no different. I was late arriving at the station, but made it, thankfully, and slid into my seat exasperated**, only to realize that my neighbor was a large musical instrument case (cello, perhaps?) that belonged to the woman across the aisle from me. I had scored the perfect low-hassle seatmate for a 7:40 a.m. pre-coffee departure. Things were looking good…

About 15 minutes into the trip a man approached the driver to inquire about something. Turns out this guy was on the wrong bus and wanted off fast, so the driver pulled to the shoulder on I-95 just north of Baltimore and let him out, right there on the highway, poor guy. I wondered what the rest of his day was gonna be like, thankful it was not me. At some point I nodded off, and when I woke, we were headed over a bridge. I figured we must be close to my stop in Wilmington, DE, where I was to meet my brother for the rest of the trip north by car. A moment later I realized that we had just gone over the Delaware Memorial Bridge and were in fact, already in New Jersey! My luck appeared to be changing…was this my Greyhound horror story in the making?

I approached the driver to inquire about the Wilmington fly-by. He claimed that the bus had only one scheduled stop in NYC. I did NOT want to go to Manhattan the day before Thanksgiving so I did some quick thinking on my feet, and thankfully, got him to agree to stop at the James Fennimore Cooper rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike so I could get off. I was sure he'd just pull to the shoulder again, but to my surprise he exited all the way off the highway and stopped directly in front of the rest area. The lucky streak was back on track, and I went inside to grab a much needed cup of joe. My brother arrived an hour later to retrieve me and the rest of the trip to my parents house by car was thankfully uneventful — we left early enough to miss the traffic everyone else on the Eastern seaboard is sitting in right now :)

**In hindsight, it appears that a mix-up occured at this moment and was most likely my fault. I'll be triple-checking destination information with the driver next time I'm boarding a bus. Can you imagine the snafus I'll get myself into while navigating the trains and buses of Europe next year? I wonder if the travel gods export that luck overseas?

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