My Summer Vacation in Jacksonville, Part V

Travel Plans

It starts with my friend from work, back in the camera store in Berkeley (Looking Glass Photo, still the best store in the world). He and his wife were going to move to Maine and open a gallery and taco shop. I got a t-shirt for El El Frijoles, and a cheap '86 Volvo station wagon.

It's been many expensive repairs later, and I knew it was time to look for something newer, something more reliable, or at least cheaper to fix. But I had plans for the summer, and figured I would wait a bit before abandoning the Volvo. I had it fixed at the end of May. I took it to Chicago and back. I took it to Jacksonville. I tried to take it to Orlando, but never made it out of town. We got a tow, we got a ride home. $150 and a 1 1/2 days later, the car was running again.

(And, for the record, Fenna was a fucking superhero getting a mechanic and tow worked out. It was fantastic.)

And once I'd finished panicking, I realized how lucky I was that it broke down when it did. I had visions of long stretches of road through Kentucky where panic wouldn't even begin to describe what would happen if my car broke down. I could try to drive it back to Iowa, but what would I gain? A slightly cheaper trip (gas is still cheaper than a bus ticket plus shipping the stuff I couldn't fit on a bus), and the ability to hang on a little longer to a car I don't want?

So I got my first real trip on a Greyhound. 1 day, 7 hours. Jacksonville to Lake City to Valdosta to Macon to Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville to Louisville to Indianapolis (where the newspaper had an Ask Billy Graham column) to Champaign to Bloomington to Peoria to Galesburg (which I'd thought was also a town in PA but isn't) to Burlington to Iowa City.

I tried to curb my excitment; I was doing something I'd never done before, but everyone has their awful Greyhound stories. I shouldn't expect too much. But everything worked out. There were a few rude drivers. There was a bus that smelled faintly of piss. But if I rested my head against the window I couldn't smell it. I got into Iowa City having slept (something that wouldn't have happened if I'd driven myself), and in almost the same time than I'd taken getting down.