Coming Home and Thoughts From a Greyhound Adventure

I embarked in Bakersfield for the dreaded ride home, compliments of good ol' Greyhound Bus. The first leg of the trip was a 2 hour ride to the downtown Los Angeles terminal to transfer to the bus that would take me to Phoenix. During the ride, I had a pair of seats to myself and thought about the previous week, in between chapters of a book I'm reading, by Patricia Cornwell.

The first few days, it seemed like all Cameron and I did was argue. That made for a rough "vacation", at least the beginning of it. We came to some sort of understanding the last couple of days, and those were the ones that lingered as I traveled down Interstate 5 in the dark.

I anticipated this trip, since the first week we had left Bakersfield. Leaving my "little girl" behind and my family that had never been more than a couple of hours away, was really difficult for me. I had been missing them the entire time. At least that was what I thought drove my occasional tears and feelings of loss. I think what I'm really afraid of is change. When you see someone on a regular basis, the little changes that take place become part of daily life. But when time passes and these changes happen without your knowledge, they become huge. I don't want anyone to change, I want to be able to know that they will always be there, just as I left them.

Of course, that's not possible, and not fair to those I leave behind. This trip was more of a reassurance that even though I'm several states away, I can always go home. The hard part is understanding and accepting that it will never again be like it was last week, just as last year was not like the year before. And next time I visit, it will be different. I can no more hang on to the notion of the world remaining static, than I can water in my hands. Is this more of that "growing up" stuff?

The connection to the east-bound bus was daunting. Arriving at the station, I disembarked and headed to the appropriate door to await my next ride. Well, I easily found the door, but the hard part was finding the end of the line. It seemed like at least 3 bus loads of passengers were waiting with their baggage and I wondered whether they would have multiple buses or if I would be stuck in the station until the next available one pulled in, about 3 hours.

While waiting, I had an interesting conversation with the gentleman in front of me. He was quite talkative, and with little prompting, shared his exploits from the past 4 days with me.

He's a tractor-trailer delivery man. (I hadn't caught the actual job title he uses.) If a company needs one delivered to point B from point A, they call the company he works for and he goes and picks it up and drives it to its destination. Intriguing line of work. Well, it turns out that the massive storm in the Northwest caused some considerable snow and ice problems on the roads in the Portland area. Since the budget didn't allow for this sort of natural disaster, the Oregon roads department wasn't going to clear any roads or even lay down sand/salt. This made for interesting road conditions, such as 6-8 inches of ice with large "potholes" in it. Describing his harrowing travels along these roads, with a tractor/trailer, made me glad to not be driving around.

He, also, informed me that he recently found out that the divorce he thought he had 21 years ago, was never finalized. Of course, that would be a shock, but apparently his "ex-wife" had remarried. She apparently never filed the final declaration, but enjoyed taking most of their assets. I would not want to be in his shoes.

It's getting late, but I have more tales to tell. I'll add part B tomorrow.