Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Greyhound: Ride at own risk

Trafton B.

October 18, 2009 - 8:41 PM

This being a bye week for the Oregon Football team, I expected life to be pretty mellow in Eugene this weekend, so I decided it might be time for a trip up to Portland to visit my aunt and uncle. It's really nice having a big city like Portland only a couple hours away so if you want to get away from college life you can always do that. Truth be told, I had plans of writing about some cool trip or something fun that my cousins and I did over the weekend, but the majority of the fun happened on the bus ride up. I told my roommates that I was taking the Greyhound; they were all shocked that I would dare do such a thing. But in my experience, Greyhound doesn't do some things that a bus company should be able to - getting you to your destination on time, for example - but there is one area that Greyhound will never let you down. Riding on the Greyhound is like watching any TV sitcom or a Broadway play depending on your fellow riders. In other words, you will always have a story to tell when you step off the bus.

Friday afternoon, I hopped on the bus at 4pm. After everyone got settled into their seats, the bus driver, wearing a spectacular charcoal vest and pant combo, came over the microphone to say, "I'll be right back folks, I need to go grab a sandwich before we take off because I haven't eaten since this morning! [chuckle, chuckle]" At that point I thought to myself, "this is going to be a long trip." In the end, we left at around 4:15. Not bad considering my return trip left about 35 minutes later than scheduled.

The next festivities began around Corvallis, when a quintessential Fraternity bro sat down next to a girl and harmlessly started to strike up a conversation. I found it a little odd, but nothing out of the ordinary given the circumstances. For the following hour and a half, I had a front row seat to the most shameless attempt of one man trying to hit on a girl in the history of courtship. I hear their entire life stories. Her name is Megan and she's freshman that just rushed Chi Omega. She seemed to be very excited about her new sorority sisters. He's a junior Sigma Chi and works at the UO Rec Center. They covered everything from Greek life, to taking classes under pass/no pass. It's not just the fact that the volume of the conversation kept me from napping that irritated me. It was also the fact you could tell that the girl wanted nothing to do with this guy. So, I eventually just felt bad for her, as she could do nothing more than just sit there and nod her head. I was embarrassed on behalf of men after a while.

I could also go into detail about the lady with leopard spots tattooed on her shoulders that needed a smoke break during our rests in Corvallis and Salem. And of course, how could I forget about the toothless attendant that wanted to have a sharpie battle with his assistant at Eugene station. But I think it's better to stop when you're ahead. Let's just say I was incredibly happy to find out that my friend, Jessica, was incidentally on the same bus up to Portland. So, I had one sane person to talk to.

The moral of this story: It's always nice to get out of Eugene every once in awhile. It makes coming back that much better. But check to see if there are any Amtrak trains before you resort back to the Greyhound.