-A 23 year old Chinese girl traveling alone to the Grand Canyon to work. I gave her a fruit roll up and saw her triple check handwritten notes that provided her with step to step directions in a broken English.
-An African-American woman who was just released from Perry (a Women's Penitentiary) after four months for smoking pot.
-A Latina, drunk beyond belief, who borrowed my phone to call an ex-love who was refusing to pick her up from the station in Flagstaff. She sobbed as the passengers around her listened, pained.
-A proud grandma who was heading to California to see a first grandchild.
As you can tell, I stayed around women as much as I could. The one time I sat next to a man it was during the home stretch. He may or may not have caressed my arm as I slept.
There is some lesson from a Greyhound journey that cannot be learned in any other way. I can't make sense of it. It was a lovely, long journey. I read two books and ate at McDonald's a whole lot. And, the destination of Tempe was really what made the trip so much fun. I loved spending time with Chris and Rebecca, whom I have missed most dearly. We watched movies, received pedicures, ate Ethiopian and Thai food, and talked a whole lot. It was difficult to come home and be in the real world once more.
