So I went to Montana: Part Two

Got up in reasonable time today, so I spent the morning cleaning and unearthing stuff, although I never did get around to giving Molly a bath. Not that I'm looking forward to attempting to bathe a fully clawed adult cat.

Among other things I unearthed the cover for the litterbox and moved the litterbox to an area that was more convenient and less of a visual or olfactory offense. The kittens haven't taken to the move just yet. Relatedly, kitten poop is distressingly pungent and very annoying to get out of carpet, and even more annoying to get off power cords and ethernet cables. >[

Anyway. Continuing the incredibly mundane adventures of Cryptix after the cut.


They are the bus

Despite my concerns, I got to the station well before boarding time -- about 6:30 -- and got on the bus. Having been promised outlets by the Greyhound website, I started to look for one, in what increasingly proved to be in vain. Only after the bus was fully seated and had set off were my fears confirmed: the outlets are only under 'most' (read: a few) of the seats, and I had chosen one without.

Normally this would not have bothered me, as I didn't expect there to be outlets at all until I checked the website. The thing was, though, that the website promised outlets. It also promised wi-fi, but warned about that being unreliable and not guaranteed, so why not warn passengers about the outlets?

Worse yet, this first trip only went so far as Fargo, where I was to transfer to another bus that would take me the rest of the way to Billings... the long leg of the trip, and those buses had no outlets to speak of.

It's a small point, I suppose, and I survived alright on the bus into Fargo by watching Great Mouse Detective. The driver put in a movie that I didn't pay much attention to, except to note that it had Denzel Washington and the dad from Inventing the Abbotts and was about football. I didn't care for it, but there was a speaker nearby and one of the screens was just at the edge of my vision, so I couldn't help but notice it. It did briefly become relevant to my interests during a locker scene where one dude grabbed and kissed one of the other dudes, but then that scene ended and I stopped caring again. (The movie was Remember the Titans, for the record.) I loaded up iTunes instead.

I hung out on the bus at the rest stop, partly because of some wariness about leaving the bus, and partly because I just didn't feel like putting my shoes back on.

Around 10:30 I lost power and spent about an hour being bored, during which time I found that Greyhound seats, despite being roomier than coach airline seats, are more difficult to sleep on. Around 11:30 we hit Moorhead and dispatched some folk, though, including the girl across the aisle from me who had a seat with an outlet, so I hopped across and resumed listening to music, attempting to ignore the new movie, 'Pursuit of Happyness'. Which is very annoying to write. There was an amusing moment with Will Smith musing about 'How did Jefferson know to make it [i]the pursuit of[/i]' and I'm just like 'Dude, life sucking is not your invention.'

It was only about twenty minutes from Moorhead to Fargo. I had some minor anxiety getting off the bus, since I didn't get my checked bag properly tagged and wasn't sure it would be re-routed properly. I was going to ask the driver about it just after I'd gotten off, but in a stroke of luck my bag got passed up just as I walked up, and the driver tagged it for me. I hung around for a few minutes anyhow to see if I could do something useful to that end, but I think it just annoyed the driver, so I headed inside. A nice man let me take a chair next to an outlet, so I had plenty of power while I killed two hours.

I checked three of the available networks before finding one that could handle Youtube, which went on to play political ads before giving me my gaming derps with Tehsmarty. While I was waiting for said ad I caught one on the TV for an upcoming TBS show 'King of the Nerds'. I remember being frightened and probably a little insulted.

Worked out a message to my FFnet buddy while I was there, too. I rambled a lot. Surprise, surprise.

The bus to Billings was late, supposed to set out at 1:15 but the driver only started gathering tickets at 1:24. He was very short when someone behind me commented on it -- 'I don't want to hear it', or something along those lines.

Some prepared folk had pillows and even blankets with them; I hadn't thought that far ahead, since I usually don't have trouble sleeping in odd places. I worked out an improvised pillow out of my wool vest and crumpled scarf, set up some music, and managed to sleep through most of the rest of the trip. There was some issue with my hip cramping if I lay on it for too long, so I had to shift around every so often, and the sleep was less than restful.

Around noon on Thursday, not far out from Billings, I watched the landscape pass by the windows. The rain from the night before had formed into a low-lying fog, and the land rose up on either side of the road into hills that faded into the fog.

And now I again have food and a movie, so I shall again take my leave.

Next time, dear readers: MORE BUSES. HOMG.