Highway to hell

29 A.D.

We arrived at the Albuquerque bus station at 2.30 on Wednesday afternoon...we left it at 11.30 p.m. I used the time productively to write half of the script for a sitcom pilot that me and a friend devised back in Blighty. Tim played guess-the-logo on his phone. During our time in what, to be fair, is one of the nicer bus stations (only because Amtrak also uses it), we came across the following people:

• A cowboy-clad Mexican grandfather who sat right next to me and had several conversations on his phone...with it on speakerphone.
• A sinister-looking jailbird-type with tattoos across his face and a metal leg.
• A meek young man who insisted on sitting on the floor and reading from two bibles.
• An elderly lady who called herself “Amazing Grace” and who used to be an audio typist before she developed [some condition that I missed] and was very impressed with the way I furiously tapped away on my laptop.
• A suspected crystal-meth head who came into the toilet singing loudly as I was taking my turn, who flushed the stand up toilet without taking his turn, then went to wash his hands, still singing as I left the toilets. Later on he approached us while playing cards and correctly guessed that the game was rummy.
• An elderly native American lady who asked Tim to guard the door while she went to the toilet. She got him to walk into the Men’s with her with the view to him guarding the door, but because the one cubicle she wanted did not have a lock on the door (even though all the others did), she decided not to go. Yes, this really is a true story.

The woman behind the counter who’d given us the bad news about the earlier bus being overbooked assured us wholeheartedly that we would be able to board the 11 o`clock one, but rather scarily we only just managed to get on. As it pulled away, I was not sorry to be saying goodbye to Albuquerque – a damn difficult place to get out of!

Previously while in the queue we’d spent nearly an hour talking in broken English to an elderly Chinese guy called Kwan about how much travelling he’d done. He was very friendly, but quite hard to understand at times, and I wasn’t sure how much of our words he actually understood in return. We’ve become wary about getting stuck with enthusiastic conversationalists when it’s a night bus and we need to sleep – they sit next to us and keep on and on and on until finally they take the hint that we’ve closed our eyes. As mentioned earlier, there were a lot of people already on the bus, so our conversation with Kwan did not continue. However, I didn’t sleep great, which is unlike me, even on the buses. I blamed it on the endless coffee refills I had in the diner.

At 4.15 a.m. (we are now on Pacific time), those of us switching to go to Vegas alighted at Flagstaff, Arizona. Tim and I were hoping to get some extra shuteye, but the place was the size of a broom cupboard, definitely the smallest terminal we’d been to. Oh well, better get our heads down anyway...but no sooner had we closed our eyes and bearhugged our bags, the clerk announced that the terminal closed at 5. It doesn’t open again until 9. So what do we do until then? He said there was a 24 hour diner down the road and, bless him, he even offered to give us a lift there if we hung around until he clocked off. Along with Tim and I was a young Italian guy called Gabriel who had couchsurfed exclusively around America. The only other person who’d got off the bus was Kwan, also heading to Las Vegas. He talked to/at me for another 20 minutes, but by this point I have to admit that my joie de vivre was at a minimum and it was all I could do to smile and nod.  

The clerk ended up giving this unlikely foursome a lift to the diner, which happened to be in the back of his truck (Kwan sat up front on account of his age). This was actually pretty cool and we whizzed along in the open air, celebrating Arizona’s relaxed laws on riding in the rear of a pick-up. This had to be the best Greyhound staff member we’d met so far!

Once at the diner, we sat at our table for four. Opposite each other, Tim and Gabriel talked football, leaving Kwan and I to continue our disjointed discussions. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great fellow, but after a crap night’s kip on the bus I found him rather hard work. Plus I swore that we were repeating conversations we’d had barely an hour ago. When his ice cream sundae arrived, I made my excuses to go for a what-carcass-moment.

[Kwan gives me a map-based tour of all the US cities he's visited (a lot!)]

An aside – I should probably define “what-carcass-moment”. There is an episode in the popular television sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf called Quarantine in which Rimmer has gone insane and unreasonably imprisoned Lister, Cat and Kryten in...errr...quarantine. This trio are all male and Kryten is concerned that them being cooped up together and unable to leave will cause serious problems. The conversation in question goes something like this:

KRYTEN: Sir, it's a scientific fact that the human male needs to spend time by himself!

LISTER: It is?

KRYTEN: Yes! The most popular pastimes have always been ones that males can enjoy alone: angling, golf, and of course the all time number one.

CAT: It's not just humans! Look what happens when two male tigers are locked up together! One of them winds up on the other guy's toothpick!

KRYTEN: Lions, tigers, scorpions, rats, even vultures when they're in captivity.

LISTER: What are you saying to me? Vultures need personal space? They need time alone if they're to put their feet up and read "What Carcass Magazine?"

Tim and I had discussed the possibility (or even the necessity) of us taking what-carcass-moments while we’re travelling. To be fair, despite a couple of tiny niggles over nothing much, we haven’t really clashed at all. This might change further down the line, but so far my what-carcass-moments have been more about getting out of cramped hostel rooms and having a walk around the block to enjoy the fine evening weather with some ipod tunes.

My what-carcass-moment this morning lasted nearly an hour. I wasn’t proud of it, but I just had to get out and do my own thing for a while. However, my hopes of seeing anything of interest in Flagstaff were dashed when I realised we were miles from downtown. So much for sightseeing in a fresh, new city! But the mountains look pretty cool in the distance, and so far the temperature has also been pretty cool.

I returned to the diner to find Gabriel and Kwan leaving, respectively, to meet his latest couchsurfing host, and to look for a bus into town. Tim told me that Kwan had generously paid the cheque for us all. Boy, did I feel guilty! Tim understood why I'd gone for my little walky-walk though – he’s a diamond, we won’t ever fall out with each other, I am sure I am not tempting fate in any way by saying that.

Now we’re back at the bus station and waiting for it to re-open. I’m not in any way certain that we’ll be able to get on that bus to Sin City this afternoon, and if that’s the case then the bright lights of Vegas will be looking dimmer than ever in the distance...