Back when before I had my own car and insurance I took a trip on the Greyhound bus from Portland, Oregon to Eugene Oregon, in the spring of 1975.

Before leaving the downtown Portland bus station, I managed to get a window seat near the back of the bus and sat down all by myself. I was hoping the driver was ready to pull out and allow me to end up alone with an empty seat next to me.

No such luck. Just before we were ready to go here comes this long-haired freaky dude all dirty and smelly looking and as soon as he started down the aisle I had a gut that he'd take the empty seat next to me. And he did.

Oh shit, I thought and it seemed everyone turned around in their seat just to check this guy out. I knew this was going to be a long two hours.

The trip out of Portland's downtown area from the bus station takes only a few minutes and when we were only a couple blocks away, long hair guy gets up to use the bathroom. A minute later the aroma of some funky Colombian type dope starts filling up the bus. Several riders started cracking up but the majority of the senior class citizen riders just turned to stare at me thinking he was my companion.

The bus driver immediately gets on the P.A. and announces that smoking on the bus is illegal in the state of Oregon and smoking whatever was stinking up the bus is illegal in all 50 states. Now, everybody was laughing. The long-haired guy decides to tend to grooming issues or whatever, pretending to be occupied and spending a awful long time before coming out of the bathroom. Of course, when he does, he comes back and sits by me.

It was the longest two hours on a bus and I swore I'd never ride one again.

Greyhounds are for losers, poor folk, and teenage runaways. Bus stations are pretty bad, too.

IVe been to the Portland bus station, pretty ghetto..

LOL. Last time I took a bus, it was out of Rochester, NY. At least a half dozen guys tried to sell me weed at the bus station. They were so open about it, I couldn't believe the cops weren't busting them. I was thinking that I could make a much better living as an undercover LEO than as a graduate student.

I've never been able to figure out if they put bus stations in the ghetto, or whether ghettos form wherever they put bus stations.

Jets!! The sound of Freedom!

1997 dallas to phoenix
21 hours
4 people deported
1 person with cottage cheese like ear infection dripping onto the seat
2 people wit body odor so strong i had to use a whole botte of cologne and ended up putting wet naps over my mouth and nose
1 bus worker who, after cleaning the shitter, proceeded to put his murky hands on the headrest of every seat
1 person who (while full of interesting stories) doesnt care if you can get there and back for 75$!!! (thats me)

Last month, from Los Angeles, CA to Washington, DC.  (No kidding).  Couldn't get a plane ticket on such short notice for the cash I had...so...

Got on the bus in LA.

In Denver, someone tries to take my luggage and claim it as theirs.  I caught them right in time.  They screamed and said that I took their luggage.  Police come, they run away, I get my luggage back.  Great.
Similar thing happens in Chicago.
And Maryland.

Two kids in the back cry almost the entire way, they finally get off in Philadelphia, PA.

I fell asleep, the guy next to me attempts to take my wallet from my pocket.  I expressed my choice words to him after I discovered that.

Some kid craps in the middle of the aisle.  Bus smells for the next 4 hours till the next stop.

I come back from a restroom stop to find some kid digging in my stuff.  I tell him to scram. Father said "dosen't matter what my kid does, you don't talk to him like that", threatens to beat me.  He's also half my size.  The mother stops him.  Good.

The cycle continues until I reach Washington, DC, where the station is in the bad part of town.  Guy comes up and wants to take my luggage and hail a cab for me.  I say "no thanks".  He insists, I refuse.  He screams out that I called him a...n-word.  Police sort it out.  Yay.

Needless to say I booked a ticket on the plane for return trip...and met a girl on that trip back.  How's that for a reward for putting up with all that?

1979, I had just gotten back from Okinawa & was stationed at Camp Lejuene. I had a POS 1955 Chevy, straight six. I threw a rod 20 miles from my parents house one weekend coming home. So it was Greyhound on the way back.

I had a two hour lay-over in Wytheville, VA. Makes Mayberry look like NYC. Only place in town (apparently) is the bus station. Some old geezer with half his teeth missing plops on a bench & keeps playing "Why'd you leave me, Luicille?" on the jukebox. Of course he wails the chorous every time it hits.

What was a 11-12 hour drive turned out to be a 24 hour bus ride. Never again, I'll hitchhike.

My grandfather & his brother both retired Greyhound, neither as drivers.

Tucson to Dallas - 1985-ish - couple of years after I got out of high school.  I'm listening to Motley Crue and Motorhead on my walkman and strike up a conversation with a gal from Kali who's into headbanging muzak too.  She's across the isle from me and after the first rest stop we arrange our seating so that we're sharing a seat. Talk.... provacative talk.... I have a beach towel packed in my bag.... she's "chilly".... she covers up with beach towel.... I get to play suck face with her and touch all her womanly goodies for a few hours! [:D]

We tried, but couldn't find a good place to [sex]

She was headed to the east coast, so I bid her a fond farewell in Big D.

took a short trip to minneapolis from duluth mn which usually takes about 2 hrs.  i think this one took over 3.  first off, i nearly miss the bus cause i'm reading maximum rock n' roll.  punk rock.  noone tells me the bus is almost leaving.  get on the bus and when we stop later the driver doesn't tell me how long so i go into the gas station to get some food and he leaves me and another guy there!  this black dude that was sitting near my spot supposedly yelled at the driver to go back and pick us up.  get on the bus mad at both myself and the driver.  black dude tells me how i "owe him" for the next hour and a half. damn habeeb driver left me because "he was already running late".  like that's my F'n problem.

I am from California,but am moving to Nevada to live with my cousin.
Anyhow when i joined the Marines i didnt have a car so i rode the bus home on leave and 96 hour libertys.
Well at Camp Pendleton you either get on the bus in Oceanside or San Clemente,the bus you get on has come up from San Diego and about half the populace on these buses are we#backs.
So its bad anyway well then you get on at Oceanside its a dump and then you hit hell people HELL,H E double hockey sticks,Santa Ana,Long Beach,Compton and then Smack dab right in the middle of downtown L.A. the city of angels.Now just picking people up from these towns is bad enough once you get to L.A. you have lovely 2 hour lay over.
The bus station in L.A. is a wonderful place people you meet the finest people there.

Now on the ride back even there are even finer people to meet,almost always you will have people from the finest instatutions California has to offer A.K.A Corcoron State Prison,the home of Charlie Manson,Richard"THE NIGHT STALKER"Ramierez,among others.
Now do you know how to recognize these fine upper class individuals?they wear a pair of white Pro Wing sneakers a new set of Levis and a white tee shirt.All supplied by yours trulys tax dollars.On average they will have at least five of these people on the bus at anyone time.

It also took 8 hours to go 300 hundred miles so yes Greyhound F#cking sucks.Amtrack isnt much better because even though the people on Amtrak are of better sorts it still stops in down town L fricken A and to top it all off the train i had to take does not go over the Grapevine so you had to get on a bus from L fricken A to Bakersfield CA.So yes Amtrak freakin sucks doggy dicks too.

Tate wins.

Yeah, well I didn't like sitting by you either.

Ha-ha!

But the stupid look on your face after you exited the shitter was priceless. Sorry you had to sit next to anybody and have to wallow in your pitiful shame for two hours.[}:D]

I actually have a semi-good one...

A decade or so back, I went on a regularly scheduled weekend outing with the guys to Austin from Fort Hood. During the ensuing merriment, I wound up dead drunk, broke, and with a hot college chick. One of my buddies was in a very similar situation, and we both got abandoned by our other buddies.

Extremely hung over, we somehow made it to the airport (I think we talked a very nice cop into taking us, a favor I returned to drunk GIs when I worked the streets). We went to the airport because of a vaguely remembered rumor of a bus that went to Fort Hood.

Sure enough, there really was a bus. We actually didn't have quite enough money (I think it was $10 a head) to go, but the driver took us anyway. He had a couple of box lunches that he gave us, too. We were the only ones on the bus. He even dropped us off at our barracks.

Yea that one is pretty bunk[puke]  Some guy was trying to sell me a brick of hash.

I went from Amity Oregon to Denver CO on a greyhound.  A friend was moving their so I drove with her to OR and I took a bus back.  I had taken my tool box with me just because I wasn't about to drive 1600 miles in a car with no tools ( BTW it we needed them when the AC compressor bearings went and chewed up the belt ) So I ended up lugging that thing back with me throughout the trip.

I got in the Bus Fri evening and got to Denver Sun morning.  Some other person who was pretty cool, we snuck some quarts on the bus and consumed those after it got dark.[}:D]  but other than that, it was very boring

In 1998 I rode from Grand Rapids, MI to Hammond, IN on a Greyhound. It took about 5 hours, and I avoided touching anything on that filthy thing. I did not use the bathroom, because I thought I would come down with the plague or other god-awful disease. Well in fact, that is exactly what happened. The day after the bus ride, I became ill with some horrid Strep infection that lasted literally for 3 weeks. It included heavy doses of Tylenol 4 with codine, which had no effect, and even a call to 911 because of breathing problems.

I'd rather walk 200 miles over broken glass or hot coals than set foot on a Greyhound bus again.

Did you have one of their pecan logs?

Denver to Austin, 24 hour bus ride, 14 hour drive.  Anyway, the trip there was bad because the bus driver stopped every hour for a smoke break, my girlfriend was sick as a dog we had a two hour layover in Amarillo, now that's a ghetto station.  Not too bad all in all for the trip there, on the way back some lady gets on with her baby, and tries pawning the poor thing off on whoever will hold her.  She gets off at one of the break stops while someone is holding her baby and fails to return in the alotted 15 minutes.  An hour later they tracked her down trying to hitch hike and made her ass get back on the bus and take care of her child until she got to her destination, plus our luggage got re routed on some other bus at at the dallas station so we had to go back to the bus station in denver a couple of hours later to get our luggage.

Heh heh.  They rank a new Wal-Mart now though.  Best thing I ever saw in Wytheville was the Flying J and the Snoopers Antique Mall.  Its amazing the things you find in there.

Well, that and 81 that runs through it.

The Whistlepig

bus ride from WV to FL as a youth- bus station at stops were filthy, some really scary people at the stops and on the bus.  Never Again.

If the airport nazi's get too bad - gettin tired of standing in my socks, holding my belt out and my pants up while my shoes are x-rayed and people I don't know put their hands on me -there is always a rental car option for me.

What about the trains?

Way back in college, I rode from Atlanta to New Orleans to visit my folks and do Mardi Gras.

When I came back, on the way to the bus station I picked up 50 lbs of fresh boiled crawfish from Captain Sid's in Bucktown, and packed them into a big Coleman cooler, which I brought on the bus with me, since it wasn't very crowded. Every time I would open it up to sneak out a cold beer and a few crawfish, the spicy aroma of crab boil and lots of red pepper would fill up the bus. The other riders would stare and glare, but no one said anything. I left a trail of sucked crawfish heads all the way up the interstate to Atlanta! [party]

Never had the pleasure of riding a Greyhound bus myself, but one of my friends rode from Tallahasse to Ft. Lauderdale, and he told me that everyone around him kept talking about how many other people's credit cards they had.

For me, I think I'd ride my bike cross-country before taking the Greyhound.

It's been a while so some details are hazy, but when I was about 16 when I took a greyhound through Los Angeles.  About all I remember about the trip (c1970) was an older guy that propositioned me outside the bus terminal.  He offered me his social security check if I would let him give me a b...job.  He continued with details as to his technique.

The thought of this guy disgusts me.  Unfortunately I was young and stupid and didn't think to call the police until he was gone.  The whole encounter lasted 2 minutes or less.  Keep this in mind if you ever consider sending your kids somewhere by bus (and this was 30 years ago!).

Ft.Knox to Carson City Nevada.Three plus days of non-stop hell smelly people etc.worst cities along the way Chicago and Salt Lake City... never again!

1988, bus from 29 palms to LA, for over two straight hours three black Marines --who clearly just barely made it though the FROC course-- non stop as loud as they could "rapped" over and over about how they were picked on (this was 80s rap, two going "phut Phut phut" and one making up words)
Then I got to the collection of the dregs of society known as the LA station...hell, I thought the palm springs station was bad until then...
Never Again.