You Can't Go Home Again (Or Can You?): Part Three

For the last two days, it's been my trip back home over the Independence Day weekend. Where I had left off yesterday, the trip was about over, and it was the morning of the day I was to leave. My father had to leave rather early, and so he woke me to say goodbye at an indecent hour. After that, I went back to bed, only to get up at a reasonable time hours later. A World Cup match was on, and I watched that as long as I could along with some breakfast. I had meant to toast a bagel, but the toaster was inexplicably missing. I set my 'everything' bagel aside, and waited to inquire about the appliance's whereabouts when I could. A couple of the men who had worked on the back yard (one of whom had been at the party the day before) came around for a visit, which was pleasant.

I got a bit fuzzy about exactly when I needed to be at the bus station, which is what happens when you forget and start guessing instead of making the minor effort to check the ticket. Thus I started saying the bus was scheduled for "2-something" instead of 2:50. A ride had been arranged on the above erroneous time, and so it was that I would be very startled. Having finally tracked down the toaster, I had employed it to heat my bagel, which I then heavily buttered. This delectable treat was still too hot when my ride came to the door. It's fortunate that she was inclined to come in and linger a bit to talk. For that reason, I had time to scramble around eating my bagel and assembling my possessions in a whirlwind. So it is with me leaving the house about all the time.

After a harried, hair-raising drive to the station, a drive to which now brings you into contact with a light-rail train and its tracks, I got to the station. Because of the timing issue, I found myself there far too early. There was no good reason to be there then. I had my ticket and was checking no luggage, so I had little reason to get in a line (not that there were any lines in the early afternoon). I was supposed to get checked out by security, but he was not very aggressive in discharging his duties, so I just sidled through grateful that I hadn't needed to put up with that particular frustration. Nice try, company employees ostensibly trying to ensure my safety.

The bus left only partially filled- another point in favor of taking day buses rather than the night buses I have mainly sworn by. The back of the bus was almost exclusively mine, and I was able to read most of the way before it got dark (Like most buses I get on, the overhead light was broken- the trip from LA was the apparent exception). I finished one book, and moved onto another during that time. We stopped in Blythe halfway through the drive, and I was eagerly anticipating a visit to the Chinese restaurant which I always patronize when I do have a day bus. Imagine the shock to my system when I walked up and discovered that said restaurant had gone out of business. I walked over to a less palatable national fast food chain with great sadness.

The drive was an uneventful one, overall. The only thing that happened was an oddly long stop in San Bernardino that I didn't remember seeing scheduled. It wasn't that serious, I'm sure. At the time I was preoccupied with texting anyway. We pulled into LA about on time in spite of having fallen half an hour behind (which led the driver to cut that stop short). I had checked on the earliest Metro bus I could catch to complete the trip home, and knew I had twenty minutes to kill at the station. I spent them charging my depleted phone battery. Had I not done that, I would not have made the acquaintance of an initially classy, urbane young woman who began to sound crazy after I overheard some of a phone call she made after introducing herself to me and asking if it would be all right for her to plug her own phone into the remaining plug. She had missed a connecting bus, and would be stuck at the station all night. I worried about her some, but decided she sounded like a survivor.

The two buses and train taking me back to my apartment went smoothly. My backpack, I ought to have said, was even more heavy and cumbersome than it had been on the trip out to Arizona, as I was bringing extra things back. It was a bit tricky the whole way to manage it, more so from this point on. It all went just fine, though, and after leaving around 3 in the afternoon and arriving in downtown LA at about 10 in the evening, I finally plopped down in bed about midnight. It was a wonderful relief.

Tomorrow: something else!