Not many people know this, but a Greyhound bus doesn’t just become a Greyhound. At first, it’s a young green bus called Flix. Only after it has grown up and got itself a few grey lines does it deserve a Greyhound name.
Unlike other places I’ve heard of, there are no Greyhound terminals — at least not in Tampa, Sarasota, and Fort Myers. It’s just an outside bus stop, sometimes in the back of Macy’s. Maybe it’s because I took a young Flix bus, and only older Greyhound buses are allowed to visit terminals. I am yet to uncover this mystery.
So, a couple of days ago, I did the thing. I love travel. I love seeing new places. But I also love comfort, so I drive wherever I can. But the cars… well, they get old. And sometimes you need to not-drive in order to drive again.
For the first time in my life, I took an intercity bus. Of course, I am familiar with X29, X27, and BM3. For those of you outside of modern civilization and its achievements, such as irrational fear of inanimate objects, bathroom confusion, and hatred of all things you were told to hate by people you know nothing about, these are the buses that take you from a city of Brooklyn to the city of Manhattan, which are both parts of New York City. Pretty cool, right?
This time, I took a larger swing at bus travel. I booked myself a two-and-a-half-hour trip from Tampa to Fort Myers. Yeah, it’s the same time it takes to get from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, to Midtown, Manhattan. But, instead of 20 miles of stop-and-go, never-ending traffic jam, this was a 150-mile journey at 65 miles per hour.
The 2421 Greyhound route forms a huge letter C, coming from Orlando to Tampa, down through Sarasota and Fort Myers, to Naples, then turning towards the other shore to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. I don’t know anything about how bus lines work, but I guess this is as good a move as any to avoid I-95.
It only cost $45 dollars for the trip, including my very own booked seat 4D. Comparing this to a $7 express bus fare in NYC, it may sound expensive. And it is. But you also cover a larger distance, so there’s that. Also, you don’t get to watch the bicycles racing your bus in an attempt to score a hit and win an insurance payoff, so I, too, think $45 for an uneventful 2.5-hour trip is too much. But my only other alternative was a $250 Uber ride, and that would have been uber-expensive.
I took some pictures along the way, which came out a lot clearer than similar pictures I used to try taking through the windows of NYC buses. Maybe it’s this new camera in these new Samsung phones, or maybe I am just growing up as a photographer. I am not sure why there’s such a huge difference in how clean the images turn out. I need more experimental data on this one. Of course, there are no gorgeous views of the garbage mountains of New York, teenagers beating up one another in front of the school, or homeless bums taking a stroll down Fifth Ave. These are just vast nature views with occasional signs or trucks that somehow stood out to me.
Overall, I am intrigued by the possibilities of future bus travel. Yes, it is less comfortable than my own car. But the ability to take pictures (I highly recommend NOT doing that while driving; it is very dangerous), the chance to observe the native population of the places you’re passing through and the thrill and excitement of landing in a place you know nothing about and have no idea how to get out of are pretty appealing.
Eh, no. Car travel is better.
