8.21.05

6 hours of not riding a bus

If only I had a DV camera with me I could have won a prize at next years Cannes festival.

It started simply enough, a 1:02 bus from Southbury, CT to New York, NY. 1 hour and 50 minutes of uninterrupted work time. Just enough both to fit within the meager battery life of my tiny laptop and complete a bunch of little flash movies I owe one of my closest clients. But fate had other plans for me today.

The first bus, we'll call it bus #1, was supposed to pick us up at 1:05 as I stated above. It was of course late. And not 10 minutes late, not 20 minutes late, but 50 minutes late. But oh no it gets better.. it's also full with passengers so the driver is skipping us altogether. Only through the calm words of a Scottish lad named Colin did the bus station guy get on the phone and have another bus sent to pick us up.

By now I had become quick friends with a couple of very nice women. Penney, a 50 something cardiac rehab physiologist slash yoga instructor from Hawaii; and Adrienne, a late 20's something bookseller slash job hunting non-profit writer. Who would have thought that I'd be with these two women for the next 4 hours.

The rerouted bus, we'll call it bus #2, showed up 20 minutes later. So we eagerly hand over our tickets and hop on. This bus is loud, TV's blaring, and chock full of cranky people. And we sit and wait for the bus to get on the highway and on with the story. And then we wait some more; and a bit more. That's when the bus driver comes aboard and tells us that the bus is having mechanical difficulties and that they're sending another replacement bus to come get all of us.

But we didn't wait for this replacement bus, we'll call it bus #3. Instead I phoned up my darling saint of a mother who quickly came to my rescue with an iron horse made in Japan. But why waste a perfectly good back seat to the train station in Prudy's? So soon my mother and I, plus Penney and Adrienne were motoring our way to New York State.

Arriving at the train station about 3 minutes after the train left. The 3 of us took advantage of the time to catch up with our stories. Penney was given a trip to Hawaii as a graduation present from her parents, and just never came back. Instead she cashed in her plane ticket for what I do believe she referred to as dashing husband who rode up to her in a kayak (I just can't help but picture Tom Selleck).

Adrienne on the other hand had spent the past few years living in Ireland and going to grad school. But her love of the NY area (she grew up in Westchester) called her back like so many sirens.

And so it went for the next couple of hours, both on the train and off. Trading stories, opinions about life, love, possessions, and art. We all said goodbye at Grand Central, swapped contact information and parted ways.

In the end it was one of those strange and remarkable days that you remember for years. Perhaps I'll never see them again and maybe we'll all be life long friends, you never really know. All that I know for sure is that I wouldn't trade today's adventure for anything, because in the end it's experiences like this that make life worth living in the first place.