Riding the dog...

... or being riden by the dog.

Ok, so I finally made it to Breck, but it didn't all go to plan ... suprise, suprise.

So my parents dropped me off at the Oakland Greyhound station on Thursday night at 10:00pm for the bus down to LA. That part went fine. I sorted out my oversize baggage with the bagggage handler, Thaddeus. He was really cool. An old black guy who was into music and was telling me about all the concerts he had been to. People like Jimi Hendrix and all sorts like that. All of a sudden all my preconceptions of Greyhound being shitty were put aside and I figured I could actually have a decent trip. It's amazing how much good people can brighten your mood. So I was scheduled for the 11:30pm bus but there was onre leaving at 10:30pm and Thaddeus got my stuff on that, thinking that was the bus I was scheduled for. I didn't want my stuff to go without me so I was keeping an eye on it and saw what happened. Since my stuff was already on the bus and there was still space ln it I hopped on the earlier bus and got down to LA at 5:30am after a night of crap sleep. That was the first and one of best lessons from this trip, keep an eye on your stuff and always keep it with you.

So I was in LA and waiting at the Greyhound station. My bus left at 11:00am so I had a few hours to kill. No one I knew in LA was free to meet up so I was on my own. And thats when things started going wrong. There was a bunch of bad weather in Utah and Colorado, high winds, blizzards and the such. So the buses couldn't run beyond Las Vegas and since tons of people trying to get out through the mountains were already clogging up the Las Vegas station they werren't letting anyone on the Vegas buses unless that was their final destination. So I was stuck in LA, indefinitely because they had no idea when the roads would open and didn't really have a clue about anything overall. So I was stuck in the LA bus station, soaking up the atmosphere.

I was getting used to the station life and was settling in, but it wasn't nice. I hadd just got into that travelling routine and mindset so I was just going with the flow. I had made sure I got my bags off the bus and were with me. The good thing was that at least I knew where they were and they weren't being sent off around the country without me but it also meant I had a maasive board bag and massive backpack to keep an eye at all times. This meant leaving the bus station was out of the question because I wasn't going to lug them around more than 10m let alone around downtown LA. Even things like taking a piss or getting food had to be carefully considered. But all went well on the bag safety front and I survived the day. Only one person tried to scam me, a guy who tried to get $7 out of me to help him make up the last bit of money to get a ticket out to a family funeral or some story like that. Its the kind of story I've heard in bus stops all over the world when I've been travelling. I'm pretty sure he was scaming me but it really pissed me off because he tried to guilt me into giving him the money by using the racism card. Then there was also the white guy who, apart from having painted his face black with what looked like shoe polish, looked generally sketchy and tried to start something by asking me "Do you have a problem?" So there was some local colour in the station, but thats to be expected when you ride the dog, and I survived, character building and all that.

So I knew I was being delayed and called Ali to see what he was up to in the evening and see if I could crash at his place while waiting for the roads to clear. He was finishing work around 6:00pm so he was going to come by the Greyhound station and pick me up. But just before this the shift had changed at Greyhound and the new people working were going to let me on the 6:00pm bus to Vegas. I thought that I should push it and basically get as close to Denver as possible then as soon as the roads opened I could be on the first bus out. So it was quite a delema, should I get on the bus and get out to Vegas, crash out there and party it up a bit or chill in LA, catch up with a few friends and potentially miss a weather window on the roads. I went with option 2 so I could catch up with friends, which turned out to be far superior on many fronts.

So Ali came to pick me up and I was going to crash at his place for the night. A bunch of other people were going round to Estevans house in Long Beach so we rolled out to that in the M5, oh what a nice machine, and I caught up with a good bunch of people in LA that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. We played some wii and fooseball before calling it a night and heading home to crash out. In the morning I kept trying to get hold of the Greyhound station to see if buses were running out to Colorado but they didn't seem to believe in answering phones and I never managed to get through to anyone. I knew there was a 10:00am bus so the only thing to do was load up and cruise out to the bus station again and actually ask them. The roads were still closed so we deicided to take off and get some breakfast and figure out what to do ...