Part 1:
It was July third, 2013, and my wife Makiya and I
were heading out to make our post marriage family visits. The first stop on our
journey was to visit her Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin in Virginia. The plan was we
would take a bus down, stay a couple days, go up to Baltimore to see her
Grandmother, and then take a bus back to Philadelphia that night. The next day
we would then board some trains to take us to North Jersey to visit my family,
but that part of this tale is for another time. The morning of our journey was
ordinary enough. We left our apartment in the morning to go to the Greyhound
bus terminal in China Town. Little did we know that a simple enough idea would
turn out to be the start of a journey that we would remember for the rest of
our lives.
We knew
something was different about this particular trip as soon as we stepped into
the bus terminal. Now, there is a special breed of person one meets in the
Philadelphia bus terminal. They're not quite the hooker and vampire crowd one expects
after midnight at Little Pete's diner on a weekend, but they're not quite
normal either. It's a strange meshing of cultures from around the city, all
with a certain air that has a slight stench of hopelessness about it. Some
choose to take it with dignity, others decide to take their despair and spit it
back at the world. One man in particular that we came across belonged to this
latter group. He was an elderly man, I'd say somewhere between seventy and one
hundred and seven; African American, rail thin, temper as wild as an untamed
lemur. He had the eyes of a man who has seen cities rise and fall, an
accent of unknown origin, and not a single tooth in his mouth. This led to
complications because he would try to talk to people, they would not be able to
understand him, then he would get angry, start to yell, and storm off to his
next unwary victim. We knew this was going to be interesting because when it
came time to board he was standing right behind us. We were going to be in a
metal box hurtling down the highway for several hours with this wild man potentially
within an arm’s length of us. We were not frightened per say, but we certainly
were not comfortable with the thought. Fortunately the woman who was directing
the line gave him special attention and boarding was no problem. This part of
our journey was to Baltimore and was relatively uneventful. The bus was quiet,
and with the exception of the bus leaving thirty minutes late and the wild toothless
one barring the door to the bathroom, there were no problems, but of course,
this was merely the calm before the storm.
We stopped in Baltimore
to drop off and receive passengers and because we were waiting long enough and
drinking enough water Makiya and I desperately needed to use the rest room.
This was at the time a mistake because as we walked out of the restroom the
boarding call for our connecting bus was said over the speaker and we got
outside as the bus was pulling out. I love to travel, but despise the act of
it, at least when schedules need to be kept, so as the bus was pulling out my anxiety
started getting the best of me. Makiya was able to calm me down with a swift
kick to the groin, she always knows exactly what I need and that’s one of the
reasons why I married her, and we were able to board the next bus to DC. Our
missed connection of course was a blessing in disguise because we later found
out that on our connecting bus and just before DC, the Toothless Man got his
wish and someone tripped over him trying to get to the rest room. This then
made the man lose control and gum everyone on the bus to death, not a soul
survived. It took three police men and two canine units to subdue him. By contrast
our bus to DC was quite enjoyable, even though it got us there too late to make
our connection. I was still nursing the pain in my genitals from the last kick
and I always have liked Union Station so I was able to stay surprisingly calm
when we were there. We used the restroom, and asked around to make our next
connection. We learned our next bus would not come until two hours later, but
we could just take the Metro to where we needed to go. After some direction by
a kindly homeless man who was also a wizard, we were back on our way and Makiya’s
Aunt Susie picked us up and I spent the rest of that night drinking beer with Tom and cuddling with their dogs. It was a welcomed rest.
Our time in Virginia was
wonderfully relaxing. We would have dinner every night at a good time; I of
course cooked at least once, and it was just delightfully uneventful. Like all
good epics though, it could not last and we had to set off again. We left
Friday afternoon for Baltimore to meet up with Makiya’s grandmother for dinner.
We stayed at her apartment for a short while, ate delicious crab cakes, and
then went to the White Marsh mall to make our bus. Learning our lesson from the
last run in with Greyhound, we opted for Megabus instead. Normally we have no
problems with that company, but because the stars were aligned just the right
way, we could not have any sort of restful travel that week. It started the day
before; we were on our way to get lunch when Makiya’s cousin Sam mentioned that
a violent prisoner escaped during transport in Northern Virginia. She said the
police description was of an elderly African American man, very thin, just less
than six feet tall with a distinctive voice and no teeth. He was wanted for the
murder of forty eight people on a Greyhound bus just outside of DC and considered
unarmed but very, very dangerous. This meant that security checks were going to
be occurring up and down all major Highways in the DC metro area. This of
course led to terrible congestion on the roads and traffic would be slowed to a
crawl for the remainder of the weekend.
When we first went to
the mall the thought of a bus being two hours late, even from traffic, was not fathomed.
I thought thirty minutes, maybe an hour tops, but our eight-ten bus did not
arrive until ten-twenty. We were exhausted from fending off several ninja
attacks, as is prone to happen in the Baltimore, Maryland area, as the bus
pulled up and just wanted to get home quietly, but of course this was not in
the cards for us newlyweds. I tried to ask several Megabus employees what took
the bus so long because I refused to believe that traffic alone could cause a
bus to be so late, but everyone just gave me vague answers such as “logistics”
problems or “there’s a lot of things that could make a bus late.” These responses
were not to my liking.
When our bus finally did come, I marched
straight to the front of the bus to speak with the driver because I wanted answers;
this choice was a poor one. As I approached, puffed with anger, I demanded to
speak to the driver, but as the door opened I realized my grave mistake. The
driver was a grizzly bear cyborg with tank treads from the waist down and a
mean look in his eyes. His being there of course was a means of security to
protect the passengers from the escaped prisoner. The bear was given strict
orders to attack any and all possible threats, and because I was quick to anger
and charging the front of the bus as I did, the bear obeyed his orders and
attacked.
Makiya, Aunt Susie, and Grandma Yoshiko were able to attack the
bear on the ground as Sam provided cover fire by shooting flaming arrows off
horse back. Many irritating wheeled suitcases were tragically destroyed in the
crossfire. It was a grueling battle, the
tide only turning when Yoshiko flipped onto the bear’s back and stabbed it
between the shoulder blades with a sharpened rice paddle she keeps in her purse
to stave off ninja attacks.
With the bear now disoriented I was able to get behind and short
circuit the robotics and the rest of the battle was easily won. I learned first-hand
that day the full extent of the killer instinct of the Meehling women. When the
bear was weary and ready to cooperate I explained to him our dilemma and the
trials we had to overcome to get to and from Virginia. He agreed to help us, I
fixed the circuitry in the bear’s robotics, and we rode him to Philadelphia the
rest of the way. After we pulled into Thirtieth Street Station, we thanked the
bear for his help, he gave us a refund for the Megabus tickets, and he rode
north. Makiya and I, weary from travel, walked to our apartment, fed our cat
and snuggled with her, then went to bed because we had to travel the next day
to visit my family in New Jersey. To be
continued…
