Tuesday August 26, 2014
One thing that keeps me going and keeps my mind alert is to recall special events in my past that I really had a Great experience doing. This is one of those events.I decided to go to my brother Jim’s for Thanksgiving. I made the decision to take the bus because of the low cost. I had some very interesting things happen as I will now share with you in the Blog below.
Bus Ride to Massachusetts 2004
Sometime in late summer 2004 I made the decision to visit my brother in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. It had been a long time since I had done any traveling. I did a lot of traveling with my job at LeFebure back in the 1980s when I was in charge of the company’s banking trade show participation.
Banking Equipment
I had pretty much decided I was not going to do much traveling after I finished with LeFebure. I was living in Cedar Rapids at that time. I moved to Estherville to work with Golden Sun Feeds for about 3 years then to Perry, Iowa where I commuted to Des Moines and I went to work for Wallace’s Farmer magazine.
One of my main concerns was I would have to leave all my “stuff”. I didn’t have that much but what I did have I was not wanting to leave it. Finally after a lot of talking to myself and answering lots of questions that were on my list of reasons why not to go I made the decision to close my eyes and just go.
The bus terminal in Iowa City , where I lived, was close to the Senior Center where I went quite often. I quickly made friends with the bus terminal employee and was soon convinced he was going to do his best to guide me through the bus ordeal.
I would leave Iowa City about 1 PM and arrive in Chicago to catch my connecting bus.
What I didn’t know was the delays and extra time it took to get to Chicago. To my dismay when I got there, my connecting bus had already left. The bus terminal was so crowded it was crazy.
I finally ask enough people that I learned that I needed to go to a place that scheduled bus trips and get a new route and schedule. I called Jim and alerted him to my situation and he said, just to cool it and go with the flow. (The flow wasn’t going any where!)
I was able to keep my traveling bags and large suitcase with me and I found a place to sit and wait. I had a 6 hour wait until my connecting bus would leave. I had two choices. To go through New York City or take another route that was about 2 hours longer but just passes through smaller Cities, It took me through Cleveland, Cincinnati Ohio, Albany, New York and on to Springfield, MA.The only bus change I would have was in Springfield to Amherst, MA. The others were all stops to rest, have a snack and continue on. There were 5 or 6 other short stops where we stayed on the bus while they “let off” or “took on” passengers.
Again I called Jim from Albany to let him know where I was. He told me that someone would be at the depot in Amherst to meet me. It wasn’t much, just a business where the bus stopped.
He told me it would probably be his friend “Dave” that would meet me and drive me to where Jim lived.
I got to Springfield and transfer to a “Peterpan Bus” and had a short wait until we made the 30 minute trip to Amherst.
Just as Jim had told me, His friend Dave was there to meet me and took me on to meet Jim.
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