COLUMN: Greyhound I'll never forget you

I'll be the first to admit that I enjoy nothing more than a day off spent at my house binge watching my favorite new show or basketball, but every once in awhile I like to get out of town for a few days.

My hometown is eight hours away, which is a trip I will do two or three times a year, and I also don't mind loading up the car for a trip to Seattle or Las Vegas. Sure the trip can be a little bit long, but it sure beats the cost of flying four people anywhere. Plus with the drive to an airport, the standing in line, the connecting flights, and waiting for baggage it seems to take about the same amount of time to just go ahead and drive.

When I was younger I never really had the money to fly or even fill up the tank for a long vacation. I instead took a not so majestic journey on a Greyhound Bus. I'm sure anyone who has ever gone a long distance by Greyhound would agree with me that it is a life changing experience, but not in the best of ways. Every time I complain about flying or a long drive I think about the bus and my attitude turns around really quick.

One of my Greyhound experiences was to and from Los Angeles and it is a time I will never forget even if I wanted to.

When I first picked up my ticket I was a bit confused to why it would take 24 hours for about a 14 hour trip to the City of Angels, but I figured a full day couldn't be that bad, and I would sleep as much as possible.

The day of my first trip I arrived at the Burger King in my hometown and the bus had just arrived for one of the many pit stops for either a break or to pick someone up. When I stepped on the bus I looked around and there were only three seats open and the dirty looks given to me for stepping on that bus were incredible. These three people wanted to keep their open seat and I was going to ruin a day or trip.

I decided to pick what I thought was the nicest person which was not the best of ideas. This person literally talked my ear off to the point I was trying to figure out how to open the window and jump out of it. I learned their life story and still remember them telling me about how they prefer to take baths to the shower. Every time I tried to sleep they would share another way to much information fact about themselves and I prayed we would get to Las Vegas soon so I could change busses and rid myself of them.

I would get to Vegas and once again it was a packed bus and I decided to sit with the meanest looking person. This was another bad idea. It turns out that the unfriendly person was not only a jerk; they smelled like they had not bathed since the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. I yearned for the days of the friendly person and once again could not sleep because it smelled like something had crawled underneath my seat three weeks ago and died. I was also scared to sleep because I thought at any moment the person might kill me.

It ended up taking 28 hours to get to Los Angeles and when I arrived I have never been so happy, that was until I stepped into the bus station in downtown. It looked like a scene from a post apocalyptic movie and I was scared to do anything and just put myself in a fetal position and wanted to cry until my sister arrived.

A week or so later it was time to take my return trip. I looked at a plane ticket, but couldn't swing it so I had to once again board the bus.

This time I had picked out a seat when a few "hippies" came aboard and one of them sat next to me. They were from New Zealand and while very entertaining, one of them gave me some Marmite on toast and I hated it so bad I threw up and felt like garbage the rest of the way to Vegas.

After waiting for a few hours in Vegas I boarded the bus and it was near empty. I was able to have my own seat. I was overjoyed until as we were about ready to leave four or five cops boarded the bus with dogs and started to do a search. They asked if they could search my bag and it was very embarrassing to have them go through my stuff to search for drugs. I was the only one they individually searched and that kind of made me mad. They of course didn't find anything, but the rest of the people avoided me like the plague to Salt Lake. That might have been the best thing to ever happen.

I was so happy to get on another bus from Salt Lake to my hometown and low and behold the bus broke down 50 miles from my destination. It was a perfect ending to a wonderful experience.

I rode the Greyhound a few times after, but it is something I hope I never have to do again.