Adventures in travelling
Wednesday, 8/25/10, my mom got me up at 5:15 am to be able to catch a 6:30 am bus to Boston. I thought that mom & I could spend a little time together prior to my trip to Philadelphia, and her trip to the Amish country. However, my sister, Maria, calls mom from Post 440, (the place where mom's trip was starting), asking her to switch off cars, so mom takes off in a hurry, and I'm left alone at her place.
I finish up, and shut off mom's lights before heading to the Watertown Car Barn to go to Boston. It is still pouring rain out, (luckily I packed an umbrella), so it was a very wet walk from mom's apartment building to the Car Barn. I managed to get on the 504 to Downtown Boston O.K., and I was able to get to South Station just before 7:00 am, (my bus was supposed to leave at 7:45 am), which gave me enough time to have breakfast at McDonald's.
I get into the line for MegaBus by 7:15 am, whereby I find out that there will be 2 buses leaving within 15 minutes of one another. My bus is the 7:45 am to Philadelphia, and there will be an 8:00 am bus to New York City. Now the bus for New York City was already at the station, and sitting in a waiting area, but the Philadelphia bus was nowhere to be found. At 7:35 am one of the bus coordinators tells us that the Philadelphia bus entered the South Station area, and promptly took off without bothering to stop to load passengers.
Needless to say, the bus coordinators were not happy about this, they were already upset with MegaBus over the tight scheduling, but to strand passengers was unacceptable. The Philadelphia bus comes back at just about 7:45 am, (we were supposed to be boarding by 7:30 am), and we finally load our luggage into the bus, and get on board. We no sooner board the bus, and we are told that the bus has mechanical problems, and that another bus is supposed to arrive withing 30 minutes. We now have to deboard & claim our luggage, etc. It is decided that the New York City bus will now be our bus, and the backup bus will take care of the passengers going to New York City. We start the boarding process over again, and finally get on our way at 8:15 am.
All goes reasonably well until we arrive at Thomas Edison Plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike. At this point there is supposed to be a driver switchoff. It doesn't take long to determine that the new driver is very inexperienced. She begins to pull out of the rest area, very slowly, and now this bus starts having mechanical problems. Since the bus is now at the side of the road instead of at the rest stop we can not get out of the bus, and have to wait for yet another bus to arrive.
The other bus arrives 1/2 hour later, and there are 5 people from MegaBus on board. The drive pulls away from the highway guardrail, so we can board the new bus. The 5 people from MegaBus move our luggage from one bus to the other, and we are finally on our way. We arrived in Philadelphia at 3:30 pm, (we were supposed to arrive at 1:35 pm), so by now I'm starving, (yes, I did pack snack food, but I expected to by in Philly by lunchtime), and I just wanted to get to my friend's house.
After taking the Market-Frankford line from 30th Street Station to the end of the line, and getting on a 4:30 pm bus I arrive at his house between 4:45 pm - 5:00 pm. My friend is still getting the room ready for me, and he has long since had supper, (he works the day shift on the transit system, and finishes work by 2:30 pm.) Even though I wanted food it had been so long since I had had a meal that I didn't want to overdo it, so I had a ham & cheese sandwich on rye with roasted garlic mustard.
After dinner I went straight to bed, and slept most of the night, because it had been a long day.