Dash from Dennis

I have done it, the night is conquered and now I can escape. Just as the birds heralded it the sky is beginning to lighten heralding the end of the toughest four days of the trip. All that was needed was one of the last cloves to dull the hunger and a can of coke for some much needed caffeine. Thankfully it has been a warm evening and this station they have in St Louis is grand in its imperial style and cute little forecourt equipped with picnic tables which are perfect for watching the busses pull up and spill forth their contents. Always a mixed bunch from your truckers and army brats being shipped around the country to your old people whose social security won't stretch to a plane ticket - like the gent who was next to me from Nashville to Atlanta who for some reason kept his bag in the overhead tray but needed access to it all the time. This part was fine I guess but the act of sitting down seemed to be just about too much for him as he realised that the final part of that action is a fall and requires faith that the seat will still be there upon completion. This made him hesitate at the last second and invariably meant that instead of falling into his seat he ended up on me. Not helped was his size, though compared with the two four rows up from us he is positively fading away. The four people occupying this row are all generously proportioned with the two in the aisle being genuinely huge which leads to the incredible sight of them having to balance out with only one cheek (which is probably about as wide as me) on the seat closing the gap for the front of the bus to get to the toilet to about 6 inches.

The plan on leaving Atlanta was an overnight journey to New Orleans where accomodation was booked for the weekend and then up to Memphis etc. However upon reaching Mobile, Alabama expecting to transfer busses the disinterested customer service representative informed a small group of us that the Greyhound terminal had been closed due to the hurricane and that actually Mobile was in the process of being evacuated itself. Not being able to get any more help out of this person and with the clock reading about 4am I had to make the executive decision to get back on my original bus which was going all the way to Houston. At this point I think it would be relevant to take out a map of the US and a coloured pencil, actually this is what I started doing, and draw a line from Atlanta through Montgomery and Mobile, AL; out to Houston; up to Dallas wait for three hours in the dive of a terminal, surprising as the big D is Greyhound HQ (did get to quickly escape and visit the grassy knoll which means I have now been to the sites of the three most famous assassinations in US history Lincoln, JFK and MLK jr.) and then finally on up to Memphis Tennessee. And there we are Sunday morning after leaving Atlanta sometime Friday.

Texas was refreshingly hot - 95f and with a good hot wind rushing over the burning earth. None of this muggy bollocks.