Day One: Boston

Today I started my journey up from Chicago to Improv Acadia in Maine. I left Chicago at 6:25 flight to Boston, where I caught the Greyhound bus from Boston to Bangor (home of Stephen King.)

I have discovered in my past experience that Greyhound is truly the transportation of choice for teenage runaways and grizzled alcoholics for a reason. On my way up to Maine last year, I sat for the majority of my ride next to a charming gentleman chewing tobacco and using a Mountain Dew bottle as his spittoon. This year, I was equally delighted.

The bus driver, as it was, turned up twenty minutes after the set departure time. No explanation was given for this. I killed some time doing steps outside the bus station, because my mother is adamant that I should do whatever I can to increase blood flow on days I am sitting for long periods (i.e. everyday.) I joined the line at a half an hour before our scheduled time of departure, only to discover I was stuck behind my own personal hell.

Two toddlers, running rampant amongst those on the neighboring line, unleashing the rope dividers to watch them snap, mysteriously throwing lottery scratch off tickets at people, and making their best effort to release the cat their mother carried. Oh, yes, their mother had a cat in a travel bag with her. The cat, knowing what kind of home life it would be returning to, was understandably screaming. The mother, as any good mother should be, was on her phone. She did not even notice when the girl child, Ilana (I am not making this up) set the cat free and the beefy college student behind me and I had to wrestle it back into the carrier for her. The cat thanked us for returning it to its miserable fate by immediately shitting. The odor filled the terminal completely. The mother remained on the phone. The bus driver remained unaccounted for.

Eventually, the mother got off the phone and realized something was up when the boy child, Isiah, indicated "poopie." She did what any good mom would do and pushed the child out of the way so he could not poke at the cat (but could fall to the ground and scream.) She took a baby wipe and swiped out the inside of the cat carrier and stalked off to the garbage, abandoning her two children under the age of three but maintaining her conversation. The cat repaid her by crapping again.

Luck, however, was mine as when the bus driver finally showed up and we were loading the bus, the attendant asked what that smell was and what she had in the bag. When she answered simply, "My cat," he told her she would not be able to bring that on the bus due to "the odor." She stated it was not a problem on the way up, but disappeared and did not reappear when the bus finally departed 45 minutes past schedule.

I spent the rest of my bus ride shoved between another college kid wearing too much cologne who giggled at "Wang Optometry" and promptly fell asleep and a little girl playing with her flashing necklace. A welcome relief.