The Last Word

Issue #475
™

April 2014

A PLANES, TRAINS, AND BUSES issue!!!

Leave the driving to...well, someone else

On Saturday, March 15, I appeared in St. Louis for the national roadmeet, and I had a mighty fine time,
yep (as the old cough drop commercial might or might not say). But Greyhound nearly (keek!) ruined it.
First, the bus somehow managed
to be about 25 minutes late arriving in St.
Louis. But no bother! I’d already built a
minor delay into my schedule just in case.
What’s terrifying are the hopeless delays
that afflicted the trip home. Just think how
my meetup in St. Louis would have been
utterly shot to hell if Greyhound had
fucked up the trip there to such a degree.
Early Sunday morning—after the
flatulence-filled meet—I bipped down to
the Greyhound station in St. Louis to
catch the bus home. I got there early, just
like my bus ticket commanded me to do. I
couldn’t find a drinking fountain
anywhere at this terminal. Apparently this
was a gimmick to force parched
customers to spend $2 on bottled water. I
waited patiently in line for the bus, as
infomercials blared on the TV. It seems
like everybody has had an elderly relative
who regularly had the volume on their TV
unusually loud to compensate for hearing
loss. Well, the overhead TV sets at the St.
Louis bus station were louder—by far. All
blasting the same insufferable, repetitive
infomercials.
It was there that I first started to
be confronted with the serious delays.
There had been no weather delays, so it’s
unknown what the cause of the delays
was. In fact, the bus that was supposed to take us to Indianapolis was already idling at the platform when I got to
the station—well ahead of schedule. Greyhound rolled out another bus for the excess passengers and let it idle
too. After idling for an eternity, both buses were 2 hours late leaving. For no apparent reason.
Passengers were furious.
When we got on the bus, we found the bus was very cold. The bismuth continued to drop as the bus
zipped out of town. When we got about 20 miles outside St. Louis, the driver pulled over on Interstate 70, got out
to examine the heater, then told us we had to go back to St. Louis to get a different bus because the heat was
broken. You read that right: Greyhound tried using a bus with a broken heater without telling the driver or the
passengers it was broken—so nobody knew it was broken until the bus was miles out of town.
That squandered another 40 minutes. After we got back to the St. Louis bus terminal, we spent yet
another half-hour waiting for the replacement bus—even though it was sitting there the whole time.
By that time, I was too animated to sleep. Most of the other passengers felt the same way. They cussed up
a storm in reaction to this series of postponements. Learned a few new swear words myself, I did.
But the delays weren’t done yet! I was supposed to have a 50-minute layover in Indianapolis before
continuing to Cincinnati. Because we got to Indianapolis 3 hours late, my layover was completely eaten up—so
there should have been no additional delay there whatsoever. Lo and behold, there was another half-hour wait in
Indianapolis.
Now here’s the most inexplicable part. After
the bus to Cincinnati got moving, the driver told us
we were being rerouted through Dayton, Ohio.
Why?!?!?! The driver said the bus is rerouted
through Dayton “9 times out of 10” when there’s a
delay. You mean Greyhound has unexplained delays
like this a lot?
A chorus of groans emerged from the riders.
If I’d known before boarding the bus that we’d be
rerouted through Dayton, I would have found a more
efficient way to get home from Indianapolis—like
hopping a freight train or finding a 100-mile-long
trail of dog-doo that was fresh enough to slide
downhill on with minimal effort. But for some
reason, Greyhound kept this rerouting a secret until it
was too late.
At this point, it was clear Greyhound
couldn’t be trusted to be even remotely reasonable.
And it got even worse! When we got to Dayton, the
driver let us off without saying a word, and the bus
drove on. A computer screen inside the bus station
there said it would be another 4 hours before the bus
to Cincinnati left!
I gave up. I now had no faith whatsoever that
Greyhound would get me home at any time during the 113 th Congress. So I called a family member who lives
north of Cincinnati to pick me up in Dayton and drive me home. A young couple who had been on this ill-fated
series of bus routes at least since St. Louis was so frustrated that they did the exact same thing.
Now it was obvious how Greyhound decided to deal with the earlier delays on this trip. Instead of having
a bus ready to try to whisk us right onto the proper schedule in Indianapolis, the subsequent routes were instead
flushed down the memory hole, as Greyhound just bumped us to the next scheduled trip—which was hours after
the trip we were supposed to be on. So didn’t the Greyhound peeps in Indianapolis find it strange that the bus
from St. Louis hadn’t arrived yet when the bus to Cincinnati—that we were supposed to be on—left? Hasn’t
Greyhound ever heard of coordination? This is 2014, so you’d think a driver of a late bus would be able to call
ahead to the station. I’m not saying Greyhound had to also delay people who were just starting their trip in Indy—
but after botching the trip from St. Louis, didn’t Greyhound have a responsibility to make sure they had a bus
ready for its paying customers from that trip, even if it meant they had to bring out an extra bus? Furthermore, I
don’t think anyone on this trip had intended to go to Dayton. I don’t think we even picked up any new passengers
in Indianapolis—so anyone who was starting their trip there was on a different bus anyway.
I now refer to Greyhound as the Supertramp Express—because they make us take the long way home.
All told, I was 6 hours and 4 minutes late in getting back to Cincinnati. It would have been at least 9
hours if I hadn’t given up in Dayton—and probably a lot more, considering how unreliable Greyhound was that
day.
 If I was late getting to the St. Louis terminal after the roadmeet because of my own dawdling, I would’ve
just cut my losses and accepted being 9
hours late getting home. Like a natural man.
But nope. The delay in St. Louis was the
fault of Greyhound—entirely. In my day, we
had a thing called responsibility. Greyhound
showed none.
After this experience, I hadn’t
planned on using Greyhound ever again. But
I complained on their Facebook page about
this absurd series of delays, and Greyhound
mailed me a voucher equal to the value of
the trip home. This’ll be enough to almost
completely cover a round trip to a nearby
city. But now I know better than to use it to
try to get to an event that’s scheduled for a
fixed time, because the bus will probably be
late and force me to miss it.
I’d used Greyhound a couple times
before, and I never had any noticeable delays
until the St. Louis outing. I guess the olden
days are gone.

What to do for future trips?

The 7-cent question is: What will I do for future trips? There’s always Megabus or Amtrak, but what if I
want to go to a city served only by Greyhound, in all its monopolistic assfifery? Most likely, I’d just stay home.
But what if I absolutely, positively have to go on that trip, or else? I wouldn’t have confidence of arriving on time
unless I build a delay into my schedule of at least a few hours. I plan to devise a formula to decide how long the
delay should be based on the length of the trip. I’m thinking a 1½-to-1 ratio. That is, unless I can be reasonably
sure that Greyhound has turned over a new leaf. (That expression doesn’t mean that Greyhound’s board of
directors goes out and finds a leaf on the ground under a tree and flips it over. It means to mend one’s ways.)

More Greyhound troubles!

The story of Greyhound delaying me on the way home from the St. Louis roadmeet is now etched in
Roads Scholaring lore—forever and ever amen. But in recent weeks, other folks have had similar woes with the
Supertramp Express.
Just days after my disastrous bus trip, I read that a bus departing from Charlotte was delayed by 7 hours
for no apparent reason. A bus going across upstate New York was delayed 4 hours. The NBC affiliate in
Washington, D.C., reported that a bus traveling from New York City to Washington stranded all its passengers for
8 hours at a rest area in Delaware. (Considering the restroom on one of the buses I rode last month stunk up the
whole bus, it was probably hard to tell the difference.) A TV station in Vermont reported that a Greyhound
traveling from Boston to Montreal left riders stranded for 8 hours in the middle of the route. Then, after the bus
continued to its stop at Burlington’s main airport, there was no driver there to continue the trip from there. This
additional delay made folks 12 hours late getting to Montreal. One student missed an important exam because of
these unexplained delays.
A bus that had been scheduled for a stop in Alabama didn’t show up there, period. The next bus wasn’t
scheduled to arrive for 4 hours—and it was over an hour late. Another bus was over 4 hours late leaving Little
Rock, causing riders to get to Memphis late and miss the bus they were supposed to catch there. The next bus
wasn’t for another 5 hours.
These episodes were all within the past few weeks, but Greyhound’s proclivity for inexplicable delays has
been burgeoning for a while now. Last year, a Greyhound going from North Carolina to New York stranded
customers for one full day.
On another bus route, a customer complained that another passenger vomited throughout the trip and said
it was because he had swallowed condoms filled with cocaine. When the bus stopped, the vomiter tried fishing the
cocaine-filled condoms out of the toilet on the bus using a stick. Greyhound seemed unwilling to deal with the
unsufferable odor.
Then there’s the deliberate overbooking of routes. Airlines do it too, and it ought to be against the law. In
1978, the government almost outlawed airline overbooking, but these days, they don’t dare consider it—for
airlines or for buses. It’s driven by greed. Greyhound ought to know that overbooking will result in passengers
being bumped—and therefore delayed by hours—because how many people are going to spend all that money on
a bus ticket and then not even show up? It was recently reported that overbooking by Greyhound delayed over 40
riders by 4 hours on one route.
What about when Greyhound legitimately has to cancel a route for something that isn’t actually
Greyhound’s fault, like bad weather? Well, during the recent winter—America’s worst in decades—Greyhound
did indeed have to cancel routes. But Greyhound continued selling tickets for these routes, even though they were
canceled. Folks lost gobs of money paying for trips that Greyhound knew would never take place—and
Greyhound refused to refund it.
Plus, when Greyhound stupidly ruined luggage that belonged to a member of America’s armed forces and
lost his uniforms and the rest of his clothing, Greyhound refused to issue full compensation and instead sent out
just a voucher that could be spent on another Greyhound trip. The young man’s dad protested this by posting a
YouTube video of the voucher being urinated upon and flushed down the toilet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-jG4aS6z-c

If you don’t understand why Greyhound is wrong, ask an adult.

Megabusted

What would an ish of The Last Word be without a biting unmasking of right-wing class warfare?
Recently there was an effort to get Megabus to add a stop in Pikeville, Kentucky—the population center
of a large, impoverished area of Appalachia that has no intercity passenger transport to speak of. None. Zero. (I’ve
already checked.) Apparently, Pikeville once had Greyhound and Trailways, but that was when we still had a
world.
This campaign sat poorly with the Far Right. Instead of applauding it as a boost to the local economy, the
Republican noise machine went on the attack. In one Internet forum, a naysayer complained:

“Lets go ahead and give the low income (entitlement generation) free everything. Maybe
we could move in their own personal WORKING slave.”

They’re saying that extending service to a poor area is giving people something for free? Last I checked,
Megabus is a business, and businesses don’t give out anything for free. They’re businesses, dammit!
The “person” who posted the above rant didn’t even live anywhere near Pikeville!
Yep, life is really tough for the rich, isn’t it? According to the 1%, all capital improvements and all public
or private services should serve only rich communities. If it serves a poor area, it’s a “handout.”
Don’t crack up. Bend your brain.
When Delta ruined a vacation
Keek! Ruin!
Let me repeat that.
Keek! Ruin!
Let me repeat that again—complete with the standard gesture and funny voice—since it has such a nice
ring to it.
Keek! Ruin!
I’ve never been on a commercial flight, and given the airline industry’s sorryass track record, I don’t ever
intend on it. It’s not just because of the high incidence of crashes. It’s not just the unchecked cost (which is too
high for working-class guys like me). It’s not just because of airlines using dirty air filters on their planes that
make it a near-certainty that you’ll catch whatever contagious illnesses have befallen anyone else on the plane at
any time in the past 3 weeks. It’s not just because the No Fly List includes almost everyone who isn’t to the right
of Mike Huckabee. It’s also because of the way Delta Airlines decimated a couple’s vacation several years ago.
Delta has a near-monopoly at Cincinnati’s main airport. The federal or state government could break this
monopoly if they chose. Even the airport board could, except that this board is dominated by Tea Party followers,
and is now involved in a major scandal (like everything else dominated by the Tea Party).
In 2009, a gentleman posted on a blog about how he and his wife flew from Birmingham, Alabama, to
New York City for vacation. They took Delta—and the result was that they got to New York 13 hours late.
First, Delta moved the time of the flight ahead by several hours without even telling them. The couple still
got to the Birmingham airport in time. But that didn’t matter, because Delta didn’t even have a plane ready
anyway and had to fly one all the way down from Cincinnati. After they boarded that plane and waited on the
tarmac for hours, they and all the other passengers were then forced to get off and board a different plane because
the first plane was so rickety. The second plane also had a malfunction—which squandered more of customers’
valuable time.
At the time the couple was originally scheduled to arrive in New York, they were still stuck in
Birmingham!
Hours later, the flight was canceled altogether. So they were forced to fly on a different airline— via
Houston! Do you have any idea how far out of the way that is? Flying via Houston is backtracking hundreds of
miles—in an almost perfectly backwards direction, no less! But guess what? By that time, Delta had managed to
find a flight for the couple’s luggage and had already sent it to New York. Yes, they found a flight for luggage, but
not the passengers to go with it.
The man wrote that the first day of his hard-earned vacation was “100% ruined.” Also, the couple had
tickets to see the Rockettes in New
York that night, and they missed the
show. The man wrote a letter to Delta
demanding compensation for (among
other things) “my wasted Rockettes
tickets.” All told, Delta’s serial
mistakery cost the couple over
$1,000 extra.
You can easily picture a man
waiting at the gate or on a grounded
plane for hours on end, watching the
clock, and lamenting each scheduled
event on his trip that he missed, one
by one. “Well, there goes the
Rockettes,” we see him saying.
We’ve all had experiences like that—
caused by someone else’s
incompetence.
Somebody else responded to
the blog post saying that they also
flew Delta, and the airline was 33
hours late in bringing their luggage
—and their brand new suitcase was
“completely destroyed.”
You can find the blog post
about this Delta-induced day from hell here...

http://www.kjernigan.com/my-letter-to-delta-airlines-ruined-vacation

One more thing that the blog doesn’t expound on much: Notice that when the flight was first rescheduled,
Delta was actually combining 2 flights into one. In doing so, the earlier flight was to be delayed by 2 hours—not
counting the additional idiotic delays that culminated in outright cancellation. Another demerit against Delta.

Would you like some wine with that whine?

America’s system of passenger transport is thoroughly shattered—but you wouldn’t believe some of the
things people complain about.
Recently, I read that Amtrak—in order to cut costs—will stop offering free wine to passengers on its
trains. Amtrak gave you free wine? It’s too bad Greyhound doesn’t, because then maybe I would have been too
sloshed to care about how badly they bungled my trip home from St. Louis.
But seriously. It is a verifiable fact that I have imbibed beer, whiskey, and champagne before. There are
witnesses to these spectacular undertakings. I harbor no prudish
objections to consumption of alcohol by responsible persons who
have attained the age of majority. But shouldn’t Amtrak be spending
its resources on adding new routes instead of dishing out wine for
free? Remember, Amtrak is taxpayer-supported—and as a taxpayer,
new routes are one of the things I’d most like to see my hard-earned
dough spent on.
Some say the story about Amtrak offering complimentary
wine was plain old yellow journalism. But apparently, it was real,
because Amtrak later announced that the free libations will cease.
Amtrak will also stop giving passengers pillow chocolates and putting
flowers and vases on dining car tables. Seriously, Amtrak really did
have these things.
I’d be satisfied with these changes, because my main reason
for using a mass transit service would be to get from one place to
another—not to drink myself silly. But other folks are outraged.
They’ve threatened to stop using Amtrak because they don’t get their
wine anymore. Waaah!
Greyhound has faced similar complaints because of the lack of wi-fi on some of its buses. Do you really
think wi-fi is a big priority for me when I’m on a bus? I’d be more worried about the Supertramp Express getting
me to my destination less than a week late. I suffered with Zoomtown’s shitty service for 6 years, so I can at least
go the length of a Greyhound route without wi-fi. Or any kind of fi. Even fi out of fi.
On the other hand, Amtrak seems to be eliminating wine only to silence some politicians who wanted to
eliminate even more. When the story broke that Amtrak was losing money on free wine, the right-wing media
hijacked the narrative and said the real reason Amtrak was losing money was that it was paying employees too
much. I call horseshit on that. According to the pundits, it’s always because the 99% is being paid too much, isn’t
it? Never the 1%.
So get ready for another round of class warfare, courtesy of the congressional GOP!

Airline deregulation still a failure after all these years

You know what’s great about the fact that the Reagan regime almost completely deregulated the airline
industry? Yeah, me neither.
The Supreme Court has just ruled that airlines have the “right” to revoke frequent flyer rewards from
customers if they complain too much about the airline’s atrocious service.
A Minnesota rabbi sued Delta because Northwest Airlines—which Delta now owns (after the government
predictably rubber-stamped the airlines’ merger)—took away his frequent flyer privileges after he filed too many
complaints. The rabbi flies 75 times a year for lectures, and Northwest’s service was so bad that he complained 24
times in only 8 months. At that rate, Northwest botched almost half of his flights.
But the Supremes ruled that airlines have the power to take away your rewards that you’ve earned. Why?
Because “deregulation” prohibits lawsuits like the one filed against Delta.
I guess deregulation is one of few words in the English language that defies its own meaning. If
“deregulation” truly deregulated things, why would it make it tougher for people to sue a corporation? This is
really just another case of “deregulation for me, not for thee”—a hallmark of the Far Right. These days,
corporations are accorded more rights than people are.
If a federal law says you can’t sue an airline for stealing your flyer rewards—and the crooked Congress
won’t change the law—then the states should pass laws saying you can sue.

Phantom Pooper comes to Ypsilanti?

You or I may have a hard time getting around this fine land
because of the pratfalls of our transportation network. But the Phantom
Pooper—whoever this person may be—seems to globetrot at will!
The latest incident comes to us from Ypsilanti, Michigan
(boyhood home of Iggy Pop). Over the past 6 months, someone has been
defecating on the slides at a public playground in that city. Local officials
have now taken notice and are making efforts to stop this soilage.
A city councilman and former mayor declared, “Now that the
weather is getting warmer, we need to get a handle on it.” It’s always
amusing when a politician talks about bowel movements. “No one wants
to play in other people’s feces,” he told a Detroit newspaper.
The police chief sent out an e-mail about the stinky situation.
“We have a problem in Prospect Park with a miscreant that does not
understand the difference between a children’s playground slide and a
toilet,” the top cop said in the e-mail. “Apparently this extremely
misguided individual feels the need to defecate on the slide despite the
cold weather.”
Brings a whole new meaning to “pooing is cool.”

The right track to safety film fun!

Remember those unintentionally comical films on safety they used to show in school? They had these
films for everything. And kids just laughed at them. There was a generation gap that kept adults from presenting
safety information in a way kids could dig.
There were quite a few dealing with how to act safely around trains and railroads. Here’s an entertaining
film from 1967 titled The Right Track...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZO2NkDjDvU

In case you can’t view it, that newsreel

features several children doing a variety of
boneheaded things—in the vicinity of railroads,
and elsewhere. They were compared to a later
version of The Little Rascals, except their actions
have very real consequences. They shove a garden
hose up a gutter. They throw rocks at trains and
put a conductor’s eye out. They try using the rails
on a railroad bridge as a balance beam. They
almost saw off a tree branch they’re sitting on and
land on a dog.
Nothing funny at all about people and
dogs being seriously injured. I had dogs growing
up.
As for the part about children throwing
rocks at trains, I used to work for the Department
of the Interior, and I wouldn’t want to be hit by
rocks hurled by unruly imps. More importantly,
life experiences have instilled in me a deep respect
for people who work in occupations involving
transport. But lots of kids seemed to find great
interest in the misfortunes suffered by innocent parties in films like this, because they felt like they were being
lectured by an out-of-touch grownup—who couldn’t punish them if they disobeyed, because they were just a
voice in a movie. It didn’t help that this film probably seemed dated even when it was new. Why did they still use
a big band music bed in 1967? Why not the Doors instead?
But at least that film uses the Electric Company font.

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