Road to Jersey

This was quite the adventure for me. It took place two weeks ago when I went from Watertown NY to see my girlfriend at Monmouth University. I took a bus from Watertown to Newark. This trip was January 15, 2006 from 935am til 700pm.
The fun began when an Indian family decided to play musical chairs around me. The kids wanted Mom to sit with them, then Dad, then neither. At various times they wanted the row all to themselves. Dad eventually had enough and sat back to play some soccer game on his PSP. Well their adorable infant decided to puke all over the floor of the bus about 10 minutes into our 90 minute trip. And for such a tiny baby it was a good puke. The loud drunk puke you can hear echoing down the halls if you’ve ever been to college.
We then stop at a rest stop. I didn’t have to pee, so I sat in my seat while the rest of the bus exits to… a rest stop with no rest rooms. Not a pot to piss in for all the eye could see. The driver just wanted a smoke break and well, fuck all y’all.
Syracuse was Syracuse, nothing of note to report. I spent the ride from Syracuse to the Port Authority station in Manhattan switching between looking out the window and reading a book. When Manhattan was in view, wow. At 27 this was my first view of Manhattan. Amazing, I just wanted to wander around all day to a musical montage. But I only had 2 hours to spare before I had to be on my connecting bus. I marveled at the skyline and thought immediately when going through the Lincoln tunnel that that would be an amazing (amazing as in really fucked up, would be dramatic very bad thing) place to have a terrorist attack.
We get to the Port Authority and I am lost, beyond lost. I felt like a scared kid his first day of school. I didn’t know anyone, I had never seen any of it before. I look at the board that says arrivals and departures, much like an airport, and can’t figure it out. There’s my bus, and a time, but it doesn’t tell me where to go. I must have looked lost because a man came up to me and asked where I was going. I said Newark and he said, “follow me.” The guy was wearing a very similar coat as the Greyhound drivers wore, so I just assumed he was one too. Wrong. Halfway through our journey, the man turns to me and says, “see I know this place pretty well because I’m homeless. I make money by helping people out, such as yourself, and they give me money for a sandwich or something.” Ah shit. I had, literally, $2 on me. And half of that was in quarters. I apologize, and tell the man that this is all I have. I even open my wallet for dramatic effect to show him that I was not hiding any $20s or $50s from him. I give him the two dollars and he goes off on his merry way. I still had a little less than two hours to kill and could have stopped outside to look at Manhattan for a few. But no. At 6 foot 1 and we’ll say well over 200 pounds I was scared shitless. I stayed right by my door looking around me to make sure I wouldn’t get shot. Yeah, there was no cell phone service in there either.
In better news, the Cinnabon across from my door had this amazing looking pretzel cinnamon bun hybrid. The knot of the pretzel was a cinnamon bun. I would have bought one, but, you know.

More updates about this trip in the next couple days.
Spring 2006 semester updates after that.