{"id":837,"date":"2011-07-28T18:58:51","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T22:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/?p=837"},"modified":"2012-06-22T07:51:57","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T12:51:57","slug":"bus-leg-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/07\/bus-leg-0.html","title":{"rendered":"Bus: Leg 0"},"content":{"rendered":"

What the hell was I thinking?<\/p>\n

My Bus adventure has not even started yet and I\u2019m already beginning to think this was a bad idea. Maybe the airline industry isn\u2019t so bad after all.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a town not far from home called Junction City. It\u2019s mostly military, and in the 6 months I\u2019ve been in Kansas I hadn\u2019t yet found an excuse to go there. But that\u2019s where the bus station is, so I got a friend to drive me down there and experienced it for the first time today. It had the feel of an old Route 66 Ghost Town.<\/p>\n

The bus stop was no stop at all, It was a store of some kind called \u201cJunk In the Trunk\u201d. I think it\u2019s like a secondhand store or pawn shop but in the 3 hours I\u2019ve been here I haven\u2019t actually seen anybody buy anything, so I don\u2019t really know.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What I did see is that the store was filled with crap. There is a room in the back that is stocked with DVDs\u00a0 of B Movies from years ago, the sort you throw away. There\u2019s incense burning by the bathrooms, instead of a incense stand it\u2019s in the slot of an active power strip, which in turn is balanced on what looks like a big speaker, with a drum set piled on top of it.<\/p>\n

In the clearing near the center of the store, there are 4 kids, one infant, a toddler, two small children. I can\u2019t tell whose they are. Next to the counter somebody was watching a Tyler Perry movie, and then when it ended they put on a Gross-Out Horror Flick.<\/p>\n

The shopkeep himself doesn\u2019t work for greyhound. Apparently he\u2019s an authorized retailer or something. And he simply could not care less about what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

The bus arrived, a half an hour late and then wouldn\u2019t let me on. Apparently it was full, and that was my problem somehow. They said I had to come back at 4am where I could catch another bus instead of the one I bought the ticket for.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I wasn\u2019t bumped. I wasn\u2019t comped anything for my troubles; I\u2019m not even entitled to a refund. I was simply told that I would not be allowed onto the bus I had scheduled to be on because\u2026 those are the breaks. Try again in the middle of the dang night!<\/p>\n

So now I\u2019m sitting back at the station trying to figure out what in the world I was thinking. I\u2019m a college educated professional, taking a reimbursable business trip and here I am stick in a chicken shack in Junk City USA waiting for a guy to take me back home, so he can take me back here at an ungodly hour of the morning, so that I can hope that they weren\u2019t also lying to my face about this next bus!<\/p>\n

You have to understand I was raised mostly in a very wealthy part of Southern California (as opposed to the rest of southern California which is just regular-wealthy) I have no idea what I\u2019m doing in an environment that says \u201cyup, we\u2019ll take your money but we absolutely do not care about you\u201d<\/p>\n

Still I\u2019m trying to be missional in it. I haven\u2019t raised my voice, I haven\u2019t insisted on my rights (not to them anyway just to you readers) The good news is that the adventure\u2019s begun, and it is sizing up to be more than I bargained for. If the rest of the trip is like this it will make for a rather interesting journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the hell was I thinking? My Bus adventure has not even started yet and I\u2019m already beginning to think this was a bad idea. Maybe the airline industry isn\u2019t so bad after all. There\u2019s a town not far from home called Junction City. It\u2019s mostly military, and in the 6 months I\u2019ve been in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[311],"tags":[523,524,522],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life","tag-delay","tag-frustration","tag-what-was-i-thinking"],"yoast_head":"\nBus: Leg 0 - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/07\/bus-leg-0.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bus: Leg 0 - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What the hell was I thinking? 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