A story hit the news this morning about a uniformed marine not being allowed to board a Greyhound bus. The news story makes it sound like he was treated cruelly and clearly discriminated by the bus driver. The story makes this impression, even though they really don’t provide any facts as to when he arrived, or even if the bus was full. There are no witnesses coming forward, either. They wan’t you to think this is what the driver was saying:

“You’re not boarding my bus militant! Ticket or no ticket, it is my right to disallow murderers to board my bus! This is an illegal war and anyone fighting it is fighting an illegal war under an illegal order!”

Now, you know I support our troops and all, but something just isn’t right here. There are two sides to every story and the side I’m being told just doesn’t add up. I think it’s highly likely that the bus was full, and this marine came up at the very last minute expecting a seat, the driver maybe was in a hurry (because they have a strict schedule) so he was a little short with the marine and not apologetic enough about a full bus, and the marine being on some kind of power trip had a hissy fit. He conveniently had his military uniform on so he played the… well let’s see it’s not the race card so it must be the… soldier card? Not every soldier is a perfect little angel, some of them are bound to be jerks just like normal Americans. Greyhound says they’re investigating it, and I’m sure they’ll find that the soldier just came too late. Those buses fill up fast, you have to be there ahead of time in line. If you’re not, ticket or no ticket, you can’t get on if they don’t have a seat for you.

Then again, from my Greyhound experience, the drivers aren’t always the nicest people in the world either. So I won’t make any conclusions until I hear the rest of the facts.

I had to go through the displeasure of riding a Greyhound bus halfway across the country a few years ago. I will never do that again, and wouldn’t even recommend it to my worst enemy either. You have to stop at every single little town along the way, and they only restaurant they stop at is McDonalds. You go to McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! So if you’re forced to ride one for a full day like I did, I’d recommend bringing your own food. Unless you like McDonalds that much, but I can’t imagine any sane person would like it that much.

The seats were obnoxiously uncomfortable. And I always seemed to end up being seated next to some creepy guy who would smell funny and mumble to himself. Ultimately, I ended up paying about $120 for the round trip ticket and that was purchased like a month in advance which is mainly why it was so cheap. The ride took about 22 hours. If i had drove myself it would have taken only about 14 hours. And driving probably would have only costed slightly more. Driving yourself has mostly positives over going Greyhound, the only negatives I can think of is it’s slightly more expensive, you have to do the driving, and you have to put a bunch of miles on your car. My advice is to either drive or try the train if you can’t afford an airplane ticket.

I’ll be making the drive from Minneapolis to Brainerd on Saturday night. That should only be about 2 1/2 hours or so. It should be fun, the only part that sucks is that I have to spend all day today cramming everything in because I will be gone this weekend. I have my Psychology midterm on Monday, so I have to study for that tonight. I have to get all my Physics stuff done ahead of time because that’s all due this weekend. And I have a packaging project, which I’m not even nearly done with yet, is due on Tuesday.

So I have a busy day ahead of me. This will probably be my last post for the week. So I’ll talk to you Monday. Have a nice weekend!