Wedding Season: Part II - Transportaion

The Problem with living in Washington D. C. [ok FINE, living in Maryland but going to school and working in D. C.] is that you forget that there are places where you cannot get around without a car. So, maybe I have just blocked out the first 18 years of my life, but my life without a Drivers License is pretty great. I don't have to worry about gas prices, insurance rates, or parking in Silver Spring. All this makes my life cheaper and easier. And usually travel is no problem. Planes and Trains get me where I need to go.

Usually.

Except when I am trying to get to my home town. My little town has an air port. Unfortunately, NO airlines actually go there. So the average ticket price from Washington to Tennessee (like 400 miles people) is somewhere around $1,500. Like hell that was going to happen. So with few other options I bought a ticket on Greyhound.

Now I HATE Greyhound. With a passion. They are kinda gross, the D. C. station is gross. And i had a really bad experience on a bus once. Apparently when I was very young my mother and I traveled on a Greyhound to visit her parents and everything was fine; I looked at my picture dictionary, charmed the other passengers, didn't cry, and generally had a wonderful time. Fast forward 18 years or so to a trip to my home town for Thanksgiving. The trip was 11 hours [again 400 miles, people, that should be 7 hours - Tops] through the night. The people behind me started by telling Catholic jokes, which was fine, but when they moved on to a discussion of if they did what they were about to do the woman would be cheating on her husband, well that was when I threw on head phones, turned up my volume and began wishing I was dead.

So when my father called the Day before I was supposed to leave and offered to drive up to D. C. to get me I grabbed the opportunity. This was a much welcomed relief from the horror that is Greyhound. And I was very thankful. So thankful that I agreed to go to a Contra Dance [think ANY dance from ANY Jane Austen adaptation but more active and not as polished] with my father. Goodness. Umm what to say about that. I did well, dancing that is, the forced psudeo-flirting was a little weirder [mainly because the average age of the other people was around 45]. But it made my dad happy, so I won't complain too much.

But the down side of that was I didn't get to my Grandmother's house till 12:20 or so when I was scheduled to be at my Cousin's [The Bride] house at 8 AM. Said house being 40 minutes away. Goody.