DC Post

It's been so long! I am so, so lame. I wrote this yesterday:

Greetings from the lovely, rainy Washington DC area…

Well, I won’t be in DC when I post this, because I’m sitting in a California Tortilla sans internet. I refuse to budge because it was just pouring outside and there’s no way I’m waiting for my Chinatown bus in the rain.

The ride down was pretty eventful, actually. I left work at 4:30 and you’d think that would be plenty of time to catch a 6:00 bus and you would be wrong. I was sprinting (me! sprinting! with a suitcase!) down East Broadway and I made it on time and threw my suitcase under the bus and had a heart attack. There were a few empty seats but all next to people who not-so-slyly had put their bags pretty far over so clearly they did not want a seatmate. As I was reaching the back I gave up all hope of finding an unoccupied pair and awkwardly collapsed next to some girl. I called Travis and then settled down into my seat. I offered the girl the trashy Cosmo I had with me; the former inhabitant of my room had a huge neat pile of old magazines that she left in the room and I found that they make excellent subway reading fodder. She continued the conversation and we ended up talking all the way to DC. The trips go a lot faster when you have a distraction, not surprisingly.

When we arrived at the rest stop, the driver didn’t specify how long the bus would wait so I took my good old time, stopping at the bathroom and then the smoothie place for a microblast, which was like a generic blizzard. Isis, the seatmate, got those tiny cinnamon buns from Cinnabon.

We sauntered out and saw our bus on the horizon… and then saw it turn on the engine and start to pull out. Oh, god, I sprinted. Again. I managed to flag them down (how embarrassing) and luckily they stopped, and I had to take the walk of shame down the aisle. What would I have done if they pulled out? What I had OCD and spent another minute washing my hands? I would have viewed only the tail lights getting smaller as they careened down the freeway. I was lucky, indeed.

So Isis and I have planned to take the bus back at the same time today. This bus company is freaking weird – they have you specify what time and day you are going to leave, and then they seemingly don’t care when you come back. All they ask is that the bus driver sign a copy of your e-ticket. I don’t know how they can make sure that it’s not full by the time you get there if they don’t have a head count in advance. Maybe it’s just first-come, first-serve…

I should probably leave soon.