Punches: Rolling With Part II

Otherwise known as "I am still a passive aggressive person who just wants things to run smoothly."

So there are three buses that go from Knoxville to Nashville. One leaves at 6:40 in the morning, one leaves at 6:05 in the evening, and one leaves at midnight. I had to go to Nashville, because I am a self-proclaimed country music fan, and I felt that my identity as such would be called into question if I bypassed Nashville. Also I wanted to.

The 6:40 a.m. bus was the one I should have taken, but I didn't want to get up that early. I didn't buy a goddamn thirty day bus pass to wake up at 5 a.m., I said to myself. So this morning I woke up late and hung around the IHOP out in the hinterlands by my under-construction Days Inn.

After a bit, the manager started telling me about his three kids. Well, really there were four, but he didn't know about the fourth (which was, technically, the first) until a couple of years ago. It sounded like a good story, but he kept being distracted by his managerial duties. Then I waited for the revolving bus. I sat on the sidewalk and fixed the drawstring on the bag holding the sleeping bag with my tweezers and felt like a freak. A small child waved at me. I think her parents told her to stop. I think I made them nervous. It was really hot.

I decided this time to take the bus in the opposite direction. I went by the not-to-scale map on the bus schedule, rather than looking at the time it would take to complete this route. It took a really, really long time.

But I got to the bus station ten minutes before the bus to Nashville left. I was leaving Knoxville. I was excited.

Then there were delays. More delays. People kept getting called out of the line and sent out to buses. I asked the Greyhound guy what was going on. He said he was just checking tickets. I got that nervous, itchy, I'm-getting-screwed feeling.

At 6:30 there were only five of us left in line. And the Greyhound guy said that the bus was full. My back hurt from my backpack and I had a hotel reservation in Nashville and I was rolling my eyes and telling him that it would have been nice to know what was going on sooner.

I'm a jerk. There was no reason on earth that I was more deserving of a seat on that bus than anybody else. In fact, given my lack of a schedule, I'm the last person that should get a seat. Just, I was ready to get out of Knoxville.

So I left the Greyhound station and walked for five minutes in each direction and didn't see any place to eat and I wanted to cry and it was all so unfair and my back hurt.

Then I ran across a Knoxville person and asked him where I could eat and he directed me to this street not five minutes from the Greyhound station chock-a-block full of bars and restaurants and such, not to mention wireless access, and so I sit here, with a glass of water and the promise of good chicken pot pie when I want it, and a guy is playing the accordion in the corner. And a guy and a girl just came in and requested a shot of the cheapest whiskey in the place. But all in a college-town-bike-everywhere kind of way. It's not bad; it's kind of nice, actually.

Maybe I shouldn't complain so much.