The Bus of The Doomed

Despite several years of regular ridership of the Fung Wah bus, I have never experienced buses full of chickens or Chinese chefs preparing raw fish en route or any of the other horrors that old people associate with the Chinatown bus, except for some godawful traffic. Honestly, I feel a little jipped. Where is my bus full of chickens?!

Last weekend, too lazy to schlep to Canal St, I took Bolt Bus instead. Turns out I've been taking the wrong bus line all along. Bolt is the Bus Of The Doomed.*

Bus driver:

"We are now approaching Boston - South Station. Please make sure to gather all your personal belongings, and wake any sleeping passengers. And I mean give them a good knock on the forehead. Last week we had a gentleman on the bus who appeared to be asleep, with his laptop open in front of him, but actually he had passed away in his seat. So please wake all sleepers. Now arriving, South Station."

Umm.

*as the Doctor Who special would be titled, natch.

1:41 am on the LIRR

Announcement upon changing trains at Jamaica:

This is the train to Long Beach. Ladies and gentlemen, as part of our Clean Train Campaign, please be aware that there are restrooms located on every other car of this train. With the combination of alcoholic beverages, fatty foods, and the rhythmic motion of the train, please remove yourself to one of the restrooms if you feel the urge to yak. The next station is Locust Manor.

A Much Better Start

21:00

Oh my god. I am NEVER FLYING COACH AGAIN.

We've all walked through business class on our way to the not-so-cheap seats, and marveled at the absurdly spacious armchairs, and at the same time wondering at the suckers who would pay through the nose just for a nice chair. Well, let me tell you. I am now finishing my first hour on the other side of the curtain, and as God as my witness, I am never going back.

I am here through the grace of my cousin Jeffrey, who works for Delta and hooked me up with stand-by tickets. And stand-by, aside from being much cheaper than regular rates, also comes with a very high chance of being put in business class. Because really, who the hell is going to actually *pay* for these seats?

Ah, the seat. It has eleven different configurations, as well as a reading lamp, a real pillow and duvet, and personal viewing screens. I've only ever had a personal screen on one flight before - also a red-eye on which I was supposed to sleep, but instead watched the entire Godfather trilogy.

But best of all, I had not one but two mimosas in me before we even reached the runway. And lord almighty did I need them (cf: passport drama).

After take-off, we were also offered today's NY Times (I guess it will be yesterday's London Times upon arrival?), and hot towels, and a goody bag containing such useful bits of awesome as an eye mask, ear plugs, mouthwash, hand cream, toothbrush, lip balm, and hospital socks. I LOVE HOSPITAL SOCKS. And while I wrote that last sentence, I was delivered a plate of salted nuts (I guess people with allergies aren't allowed in business class) and a glass of red wine.

My plan: see if my private telly has got any Doctor Who. Eat and drink everything put in front of me. Get thoroughly tanked. Repeat until London.

A girl could get used to this...

22:00

Another glass of red wine down, and the future seems a good deal more cheery.

I just had a first course of Moroccan crab salad, cream of asparagus soup, and a Greek salad, while listening to an excellent recording of Beethoven's 7th on fancy noise-canceling headphones, and all is well with the world.

Next up: beef and Mussorgsky.

23:00

Dinner: Grilled fillet of beef (very good!) with bearnaise sauce, accompanied by potato gratin and broccolini with hazelnuts. The planned Mussorgsky was replaced by Madonna (same difference?), and I could hardly touch my dessert platter of fruit and cheese.

When the plates were cleared, I curled up under the duvet with my third (fourth? who knows) glass of wine and watched The Fires of Pompeii, which is much more marvelous than I remembered, and daydreamed about how cool it must be to be James Moran and get to watch your own episode on airplanes. By the end of the episode, all that wine had done its job; I was knackered. And though I would love to continue enjoying the television sampler, sleep is now necessary. Sad!

09:00 (London time)

I slept till the end of the flight. Right through breakfast, I'm afraid to say. The bloody flight was just not long enough. And how often do you get to say *that*?

10:30

On the Picadilly line, en route to central London, and I miss my flight already. It was looking yesterday like I'd miss my flight in the more conventional sense of the expression, but I daresay I prefer this sort of missing...

Sober Train

I spend a lot of time on the Long Island Rail Road and, as such, I am constantly running for trains and dodging random high school acquaintances who somehow always seem to remember significant details of my biography. Sample conversation:

Person I've Never Seen Before In My Life: Oh my god Liz [Surname]! How was Harvard? Do you still play the cello? I heard you went to South Africa awhile back, how was that?
Me: Hey... you.

I appear to have been inexplicably famous. Or just really, really recognizable (the hair's usually a giveaway).

Anyway, there is a benefit to my LIRR dependency - namely, the Saturday night 1:42 am train out of Penn Station. Because it is hilarious. Much funnier than the 3:07, by which point everyone's sobered up in an hour of waiting around the train station, the 1:42 provides endless amusement in the form of underage intoxicated persons sharing their wisdom with those fortunate enough to share their train car.

I present you with a rough transcription of the highlight of a recent ride home:

A young man, probably 18, is standing at the head of the car. A half dozen of his friends, representing various levels of consciousness, lie in the surrounding seats. Our hero is singing.

YOUNG MAN
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Eeeven thooough I'm a Jeeeew!

I shall spare you the remainder of his song, for it would be impossible to fairly transcribe his truly impressive feats of "making six words fit in the the space of one". Suffice to say, after several minutes, he ran out of the song, and began extemporizing instead. I wasn't ever quite able to hear the responses from his more lungpower-deficient companions - our hero, however, never failed to maintain a more than satisfactory volume.

YOUNG MAN
You didn't know I was Jewish? Oh man I am so Jewish. I don't believe any of that shit though, like the God stuff.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yeah, that's right, I'm an atheist. Total atheist. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy...theist. I like being neutral, you know? I don't just pick a side to be controversial or whatever, I look at both sides of an issue. I don't wanna say I'm a Republican or a Democrat, I'm neutral, i'm an Independent. And I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, cuz I'm fucking neutral.
My religion has a first name, it's A - T - I - E - "Est"!

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
What? Oh yeah, of course I believe in God. Whatever. I just don't care about that religion shit, because it's shit! I don't like picking sides, you know? I don't, like, think there's no god or anything, I just don't want to be part of any religion, so I'm an atheist.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yes that is what it means! What, is there another word for it?

HELPFUL GENTLEMAN DOWN THE TRAIN
Yes, "agnostic."

YOUNG MAN
That's it! Thanks man! I love you! I'm totally agnostic!

ME
::facepalm::

To thy jubilee throng

Excerpted from a letter I wrote to Quentin this evening (so, Quentin, don't read this or I'll have wasted 32 cents. everyone else, go ahead):

As you probably gathered from the date line, it is the Sunday of Harvard-Yale weekend. I shall spare you the gory details of the concert and the Game, as by the time you read this you will probably have been filled in on the Wookie, the 703rd rendition of "If You Could Only See," and the thorough if wholly uninteresting trouncing of the sons of Eli by the Glee Club.

That sentence's syntax got away from me a bit there - the intent was that you had been updated by members of the Glee Club, not that the sons of Eli had been drubbed by the same. But if you would prefer to imagine the combined forces of the Glee Club storming the gridiron with crimson in triumph flashing, then I won't hold it against you.

Suffice it to say, at this weekend's tailgate I learned that contrary to popular wisdom, you will not become magically warm if you try to combat the freezing cold by getting drunk - you will just be freezing cold, and drunk. As both involve compromising the ability to feel your feet, it should come as no surprise that combining these states makes a most admirable and praiseworthy accomplishment out of the normally mundane task of remaining perpendicular to the ground. I am pleased to report that my tailgate was a success in this regard, barring an unfortunate twenty minutes spent in Gordon Track trying to make my toes wiggle through sheer force of will.

The weekend also served as a reminder of what exactly I enjoyed about college life. Not the crowded and sweaty parties that I no longer feel remotely obligated to pretend to like; nor the social events filled with old friends who I would love to talk to for hours but who, when in a parade of obligatory five-minute catchups, inspire attacks of my usually latent social anxiety; nor, shock of shocks, the football.

Rather, I was happiest this weekend sitting in a Leverett common room with a pair of RCSers and their blockmates, watching a movie, and each of us on a laptop or knitting or otherwise going about our business in each other's company. It's that sort of background socialization - having friends in the same room to comment at occasionally without necessarily having a full blown conversation - that was a constant element of my college days, and that is almost entirely absent from my life in New York.

In short - I miss my roommates.

Follow up: Errata