I'm in Seattle now and I just had the longest and worst bus ride of my life! It started in Rapid City, South Dakota and my bus was an hour late arriving. But we managed to make up nearly all of the time by Billings, Montana so so far it wasn't bad. It was midnight at that point.

Then at Billings they called my bus, which was slightly late, but said there were two buses, because there were so many people, and they called out the destinations for the first bus, which were all stops in Montana and ending in Spokane, Washington for people connecting there. They closed the door and then announced that they had a second bus and driver - so far so good - but the driver wouldn't be allowed to drive until 5am because of regulations requiring them to take an eight hour break between drives. So I had a five hour wait in the terminal for the bus.

We got underway and I managed to nod off to sleep but was woken up by the bus slowing down on the shoulder and then the driver making an announcement about a problem with the bus. We pulled into a rest area and he took a look at it. We had some kind of oil problem but fortunately the bus could make it back to Billings, rather than us being stranded there waiting for another bus to rescue us.

Back at Billings several people were taking out their frustration on the poor woman working at the ticket counter. The restrooms were closed for cleaning - because they didn't expect any buses in - and one woman was ranting about knowing her legal rights to use the restroom. The ticket counter woman told her she couldn't go in because there were chemicals down but that didn't stop her raving. In the end she went down the street to find a restroom. Another woman - possibly the most annoying person ever - was loudly demanding to everyone and no-one in particular that we should get a breakfast voucher for the inconvenience. A breakfast voucher for what exactly?! There's no restaurant in the terminal, unless you count the vending machine. Then a minute later she loudly demanded that we should at least get a free soda, as if they'd just give thirty people each a soda. It took all my self-restraint to stop turning round and saying "if you want a f***ing soda just buy one!!". She kept loudly complaining at various points for the remainder of the journey.

Luckily there was actually a bus available and once they'd transferred our luggage from one to another, which took about twenty minutes, we boarded and set off again. That was 8:15am and I should have left at 1:10am so there was quite some delay by now. The rest of the journey continued well. Because all the Montanian passengers had gone on the first bus we could bypass several of the stops. Things kept going wrong as we arrived at a station where the driver said we could get some food and the in-terminal deli was closed.

We made a driver change at St. Regis, Montana and got the must enthusiastic driver I've had. She even added a little humour to her announcements. She took us the rest of the way. Again we arrived somewhere - Spokane, Washington - where we were promised food but the restaurant in the terminal was closed. A couple of hours later though we stopped at a gas station and could get a Subway so I did eventually get fed.

Some of the lost time was regained somewhere because we arrived into Seattle at 11:15pm. I should have arrived at 5:30pm and used the cheap local bus service to get out to my hotel near the airport. Instead I had to take a taxi which cost me $40. I gave the guy a good tip because he was a good talker. Also he told me he was from Ethiopia and he had been a real estate agent there. He's just doing taxi driving for a while before he goes to college in Seattle to get his real estate license over here. I liked his drive and motivation and rewarded it monetarily.

I'm flying out to Alaska today for a week and I don't know if I'll get internet access so don't worry if you don't see anything new on the blog for a week.