Over the holidays I did some traveling up and down the Pacific Coast using a wide variety of means. One day in particular, December 28th, really stands out though, and I wanted to record it for prosperity.
I was at my grandparents' house on the Oregon coast (thanks to rideshares from craigslist and relatives), planning to head down to the bay area for new year's eve. I had a couple of good-looking rides lined up, but at the last second I found it much more convenient to travel on a particular day.
This is anathema to the loosey-goosey style of cheap and flexible traveling I wanted to be doing. So I grabbed my laptop and charted the following itinerary, which began at 5am and used seven different transportation vendors for an afternoon arrival near San Francisco:
Nelscott, OR to Newport, OR via rental car (24 mi) Newport, OR to Corvallis, OR via Valley Retriever Bus (52 mi) Corvalis to Portland via Greyhound Bus (85 mi) Portland Greyhound to Chinatown via walking (0.5 mi) Portland Chinatown to PDX via TriMet (12 mi) PDX to SJC via Southwest Airlines (676 mi) SJC to Downtown San Jose via VTA Bus (4 mi) Downtown San Jose to Scotts Valley Transit Center via Amtrak Bus (27 mi)Remarkably, everything went off without a hitch.
Looking at the resulting map makes it clear I was not very efficient,
So maybe I should've just hitchhiked:
View Larger Map
There's something pretty unique about riding an American long-distance bus ("coach") early in the morning. Think about the other options: planes and trains remain solidly middle class, no matter how cheap they get; public transportation and craigslist rideshares cater towards low income riders, but are full of college students and environmentalist; and foreign coaches remain exotic and class-connection varies by country, although probably some are similar.
America is a huge country, especially out West, but with Greyhound you can get a one-way ticket anywhere for less than $100 if you plan ahead two weeks and don't care about spending tens of hours in uncomfort. As a result, the population that one encounters are the underclasses with a strong reason to travel (usually family or employment).
Anyway, it had been a long time since I traveled on Greyhound outside
the Northeast corridor (where chinatown busses compete heavily and
it's more like public transportation in an expanded metropolitan
sprawl), and I came away thinking anybody looking for some artistic
inspiration should take their next trip by coach. Especially if you're
writing country songs or taking photographs.
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