I’m back….
…in the United States anyway… for better or worse… I apologize for the lack of updates over the past 10 days… but I’ve been traveling heavily… spending about half of the past 10 nights sleeping while on either a bus or a train…
But let’s begin chronologically…
So let’s go back to the wonderful town of Puerto Vallarta… where I was scheduled to leave early in the morning on Monday the 2nd… I woke up and got to the bus station later than expected and so ended up in getting into Guadalajara after the last bus left for my next destination… I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text message to my friends Cristian and Carlos Ernesto who I had met my first time in Guadalajara… They came and got me at the bus station. After checking out my schedule for my dwindling time in Mexico, I decided to spend the rest of my time in Guadalajara… because I enjoy it there so much and I have friends and everything… so why spend the rest of my time bussing around?
Cristian and Carlos and their families and friends made me feel right at home and I got to see real Mexico… Eat real Mexican food… and get a taste of the heart of Mexico… which was really an awesome experience…
After a few days in Guadalajara I really had to leave… and I said goodbye to my friends and boarded a 15 hour bus to the border at Nuevo Laredo… I spent one night on the Mexico side before walking across the international bridge, crossing a pseudo-finishline of my trip… though I still had many thousands of miles to go…
My second night on a bus was spent on the way from Laredo, TX to Houston… where I arrived at 3am on Sunday the 8th… then I had to wait around the sketchy-as-hell Greyhound station until after 4am when the Amtrak station opened… Then I had 2 1/2 more hours before the train came… When I finally boarded the train, I had approximately 39 hours of travel time before reaching Orlando, FL.
About halfway through the trip we had a 6 hour layover in New Orleans.. which I used to walk down to Bourbon St. to drink beer in the streets and relive my glory days (aka last June) with Polly… all the feather boa and pastey-plastered craziness that was our time in New Orleans…
Sufficiently buzzed, I made my way back to the train and passed out for the night… waking up for the full day of train-sitting fun.
A note about trains: They take FOREVER… but if you’re not in a rush they’re kinda fun…
Arriving in Orlando, I rented a car and shot the 4 hours down to Naples where I had my first real bed and real (non lumpy-styrofoamesque) pillows… Definitely close to heaven…
Kate informed me yesterday that she booked her flight for the wrong day so I need to be in Savannah tomorrow night… I checked the auto driveaway website and it turns out that I’m going to be able to drive someone’s car up north… all gas paid… I’ll either be in a Taurus to Raleigh, NC with a $50 bus bonus to get me the rest of the way to NY, or in a Jeep to Connecticut… I’ll find out tomorrow… Either way is fine with me though…
Phew… so that’s my last 10 days in a nutshell… Tomorrow I’ll be on the road again… behind the wheel… WOOHOO!
Not sure how I feel about returning to “normalcy"… I think I’d rather still be in Guadalajara… but I’m kinda ambivalent about it all at the moment… but I’m not home yet… That’ll be the true test…