At the end of the longest line
That's where I will always be
If you need to find me
Just go to the end of the longest line

- NOFX

L.A.'s Greyhound bus depot looks like a refugee camp,
it sounds like an elevator,
and there are hundreds of people carting around fruit.
Babies are crying, and I took Spanish in high school,
so I can almost pick out what's being said to them,
but I can't,
because someone thinks it's cute to blast smooth jazz,
at 4:15am.

The day before, I'm in Kingman,
and their Greyhound bus depot is smaller, even,
than the McDonald's in front of it.
I tell the lady that I have a prepaid ticket,
and she checks and asks me where I'm going.
To visit my girlfriend, I tell her, and she says,
What does SK stand for? and I sigh and say
Saskatchewan.
As she prints my 3,000 mile round trip,
she tells the men waiting that I just bought Greyhound.
She asks me why I don't fly,
and I say that I'm terrified of airplanes,
and then the Greyhound bus ticket clerk tells me that she feels bad for me,
to be on a bus for that long.

I sit in the near-back of the bus,
swaddled inside a heavy surplus army coat.
Behind me, there's a redheaded guy that looks like Seth Rogen,
his girlfriend,
and this kid who's listening to DragonForce.

Ten minutes after our departure,
a fat Mexican guy waddles back,
swaying with the bus,
to use the toilet.
He has cauliflower ear, which I can't stop looking at.
Seth Rogen tells him that someone is taking forever,
and the man says he'll get a pair of scissors,
and cut it short,
but he eventually leaves, I guess,
to wait it out,
and when he's gone,
Seth opens the door to check,
but there's no one there,
so he just goes piss instead.

I fall asleep somewhere between Kingman and Bullhead,
though I wake up in Laughlin,
when everyone is asking if it's Vegas,
I then go back to sleep,
until it really is Vegas,
and by then,
the couple behind me gets really excited to be in Vegas,
and they keep talking about the lights,
and how they feel bad for anyone riding on past Vegas,
though, really, I couldn't give a shit about Vegas.
They are going to play the slots.
I notice that Seth's shirt says,
A Mushroom a Day Keeps the Koopas Away.
The Dragonforce kid says he bets on sports.
His ginger friend says that he'd like the math,
but he thinks that sports are rigged.

At the Vegas baggage claim,
an employee teases me for wearing my coat in June.
There are two young men standing a few feet away,
one holding a copy of On the Road,
and I feel silly because I have a copy of On the Road in my backpack,
but then I see a girl with a Canadian flag patch on her bag,
and I feel a bit jauntier,
because probably a lot of young men carry On the Road when they travel.
And so, content, I sleep in the Vegas depot,
huddled over my luggage like a duck,
guarding a suitcase of baby ducks.

In L.A., a woman is being refused service for waiting at the wrong gate.
She's as confused as the rest of us,
because the L.A. depot doesn't really have any lines,
just suggestions on which door to camp out at.
She says,
You were just doing that shit to get me pissed off on you,
and then she says,
Get your shit together, okay? Get your shit together.
Now she's accusing us of alienating her,
and, she says, she's going to have the cops called on us now.

I start to think messier than normal,
because I'm skipping my Adderall to help me sleep,
so off and on,
I'm thinking what's probably just dumb shit anyway,
that Line 10 is heading south to Salinas and San Jose,
and my own Line 11 is shooting through Stockton and Sacramento,
then Salem, Portland, Olympia and Seattle, to Canada,
so that really,
the longer I stick out this line,
the less Spanish everything will get,
and all the more French.

At some point, our bus is delayed,
and a local news reporter interviews a few people.
I watch this and try to make sense of it.

The ride out of L.A. is a day after the ride out of Kingman,
and the bus is not crowded or dirty,
and I am sitting alone.
I sleep a lot here too, and when I finally can't,
I realize I've spit up on my overcoat,
not vomit but snotty drool.
I wipe it clean,
and it dries, I think,
because you can't see that it was ever there.

Sacramento has a nicer bus depot than L.A.,
though I'd hardly brag about it, if I were Sacramento.
Still, there is actually a lady who organizes the lines,
telling everyone where they ought to be,
and I'm surprised that hasn't caught on.

Now, the more north you get,
and I believe this to be true,
you run into more passengers with mental hang-ups,
whether these individuals be slightly unhinged,
or harmlessly deranged,
or even outright fucking batshit.

One guy keeps talking, like to himself,
just a torrential outpouring of words and words.
Sometimes, he looks at me, as if I were the recipient of his monologue,
something which reads like,
Man did I lose my ticket fuck god fucking did I lose it oh fuck no here it is good yes I thought I lost it shouldn't have these pants love these pants! lost ticket could go get new pants fucking Adidas store downtown fuck get fucking new shiny ones, fucking pants!
only much crazier and hard to follow.
I try to nod my head when he's speaking to me.
He asks me if I am hungry.
I shake my head.
He asks me again if I am hungry.
I say,
Nah. I just ate a cookie,
and he says,
Hey man I'm just asking you an honest question I was just asking if you were hungry didn't mean to get into your business or anything so sorry, fuck!
He then walks off, still talking,
and then he stands in front of another guy.
I smile when I see that guy is nodding too.

I sit next to a guy as we pull out of Sacramento,
and he's the first guy to even ask me where I'm going,
though he doesn't seem to care.

The bus passes Redding sometime in the night,
but I can't see the rest of California,
because the sun is gone.
Somewhere in Southern Oregon, I try listening to my iPod,
but I guess the wheel kept spinning inside my pocket,
because it's dead.

When I see Portland for the first time, I think,
The Greenest City Possible.
It is as if the trees have near-succeeded in a coup d'état of the city,
and are now, at best, at an uneasy truce with humanity.
I wonder, they let us use their buildings and their streets,
but for how long?
and at what cost?

I do feel there may be too much oxygen up here.
If cities were to migrate, then reproduce,
I would guess that Portland paddled out toward its destiny
like a mature sea turtle, along the Pacific coast,
then slapped its rubbery fins against the Arizona landscape,
and deposited Flagstaff inside a small, leathery egg.
Because I am hungry, I mix metaphors and say,
Portland is most like a salad!
or perhaps the Shire.

Crossing into Washington, I see a sign that says we are near Vancouver,
so I assume Washington has a Vancouver too.

Now, Seattle is the end of the line for most people,
so I imagine it's quite exciting for them,
but I feel under whelmed, like,
So, this is it, huh? Okay. I see.
I mean,
Portland is The City that Time Forgot,
and Seattle gives us this?
The Space Needle is so small,
I thought it was perhaps a tinier, mock Space Needle,
as if to pay tribute to the real one.
I think Seattle should have its Space Needle revoked, until it builds a bigger, better one,
one that deserves to invoke the word Space.

We are crossing a large bridge into Vancouver now,
British Columbia, not Washington,
and I am on Canadian soil once more.
At customs, the Canadian Border Services Agency is training new officers,
so when our bus empties,
a gaggle (Or, I think, Perhaps a fleet, or a pride)
of Canadian newbie border patrol march right out to search the bus.
One rather imposing officer questions us one after another,
but despite his stern demeanor,
he does not search my bags or press my word when I tell him why I am crossing.
Nevertheless, one lady from our group doesn't make it,
and we are forced to leave her behind.

Knowing now that I can't be rejected at the border,
I relax, and enjoy essentially the same view as before.
Southern British Columbia, as it turns out,
looks a lot like the way Northern Washington looks,
though if dyslexia were keeping me from reading the traffic signs.

Now, I do notice on various license plates and billboards
British Columbia claiming to be The Best Place on Earth,
something I feel is a bit pompous.
I know, for example, that Disneyland claims to be the Most Magical Place on Earth,
and it is notably more magical than B.C.
I consider whether British Columbia applied for the title after P.T. Barnum died,
but no, his was the Greatest Show on Earth.

Having spent my first Canadian night driving cross country,
I begin my first Canadian morning,
and immediately take back what I said about British Columbia,
about it being, at best, just as good as Washington.
It's mid-June, and I'm horrified,
our bus is hauling ass through snow-slick roads and minimal visibility,
And as my eyes continue to rise, I look and behold—the Astro-Crag.
What the fuck?
This is not Earth terrain.
This is the asteroid from Armageddon,
only we don't have bigman Harry Stamper around this time to drill and nuke that sumbitch,
just a motley gaggle of tired Canadian youth, on the road for a few hours
and plum tuckered out.

Where was I? Oh, right,
we'd just descended the bowels of hell itself
finding ourselves beside Lucifer's frozen lake,
a little place called Golden, B.C.
where I buy a box of Pop-Tarts.
My mind reels.

In Calgary, in what the Canadians would call warmer weather,
I see, what I assume to be, the corporate headquarters of Husky Market.
I also get a chance to clean myself in Calgary, the first time in three days.
There is another young man in the station's bathroom,
and he remarks that he and I have the same good idea.
He says he was in the Canadian military,
and I am wearing an army surplus coat.
In Medicine Hat, there is a life-sized chess set!

My journey reaches its final leg as we enter Saskatchewan,
and looking around, we may be the only thing in Saskatchewan,
a weatherworn bus, two dozen Canadians and an odorous American.
I make a mental note to ask Lizzie how their wheat survives thirty days of night.

Around midnight, we approach Regina,
or as Liz says, the city that rhymes with fun.
After I collect my things, I plod toward the depot's glass door.
Lizzie is sitting with her friend Joel, and she sees me first.
And Joel's a real sport about it,
letting us curl up together, while he drives to his house,
even allowing us a bit of privacy in his van before we come inside and visit,
a generosity we don't deserve
as the only people to ever make love in Joel's back seat.