They shuffle in.....Greyhound at night....ewwwww.

They shuffle in. Big, small, fat, skinny, clean, dirty, ugly, pretty, sane, and not so sane. They are the denizens of the night---those who ride the Greyhound buses to places far and wide, being dumped and unloaded like cattle at the station in Sacramento, California. There, they will sit, or lie down, or pace the floor, or walk around outside and smoke cigarette after cigarette, waiting for their connecting bus, or their ride, or any number of other possibilities.
At three AM, few of them are wide awake. They drop clothing,food, blankets, and after a few steps further, realize it. That is when they sluggishly halt and try to muster up the energy to back up and pick up their detritus. Sometimes, they drop more items as they try to pick up the one they originally dropped. Sometimes they just say a silent, “Screw it” and keep walking.
They all have one thing in common, though. They are all going somewhere. I am one of them. I am waiting for four hours for a bus to Los Angeles, where I will get dumped for a six hour wait, then I will board a bus headed for El Paso, Texas.
Im heading home to Tampa. I walked across this big old country, from Tybee Island, Georgia, where I left on the Ides of March, and I walked, bled, crawled, and occasionally rode short distances until I finally made it to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning hours of July 31. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, and I had a wonderful time doing it. As physicists are fond of saying, though, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and sadly that holds true for my situation: as great as the getting here was, the leaving here is a miserable and lonely existence, and it does not help that the Greyhound Bus company seems to hold their bread and butter (aka their passengers) in about as much disdain as is possible. Perhaps they know they are the only game in town for low cost cross country transportation, but it does not give them the right to mistreat people in cruel and hurtful ways. I have heard drivers be insulting to passengers, threatening to throw them off the bus for no apparent reason. I have also been treated as badly by a driver in San Francisco, who, with a wink and a nod to the baggage handler who could have placed my luggage under the bus, then turned his back to me and boarded the bus I was supposed to catch, closing the door in my face, and driving away. His actions resulted in my missing the bus, having to pay an extra fifteen bucks, and then having to wait eight hours for the next bus. There is a spot in Hell reserved for that son of a bitch, and I hope I am driving the bus on the day he is due to go there. Ill make sure he catches HIS bus. Count on it.
In the meantime, Sacramento is a sluggish and dull station….three hours to go.