In detail... Well. I was sent home from my 'on the road' job for two reasons. 1.) I was so ill with an upper resiratory infection that the thinner air in the mountains was choking me and 2.) my second child was due. Since I'm terrified of flying, my boss decided to send me via bus to the previous site that we were working at. Williamsport, PA. I was supposed to leave from Green River, Utah on Feb 13 at 7:00am. When the bus arrived, I was told that I would be leaving at 9:00pm that evening, due to a shortage of seating on the bus. How is that even possible..? When I boarded the bus that night, I carefully placed my luggage under the bus, and was told that it would be following me to Pennsylvania the whole time. During the terrifying ride into Denver, I got very car sick. As we approached the Denver station, the driver told us that it would be an hour layover in Denver. After what had occured in Green River, I thought, "Not so bad, considering." When I got off the bus in Denver, the driver of the bus told me that my luggage (ONE bag, mind you... With ALL OF MY EARTHLY BELONGINGS in it.) would be following me... Just a bit of a confirmation for myself. After waiting in the bus station for another 12 hours (you read that correctly...), I boarded the bus that I would be on for the rest of the time I would be on this journey, and didn't see my luggage again until the 19th. My journey started on the 12th. That means that I couldn't get to the medication that was in my bag for my upper respiratory infection... Something I was supposed to take daily... Until well AFTER the prescription was supposed to be gone. The journey across the plains was relatively uneventful. It was calm and the drivers were... Tolerable. Until I got into Columbus, OH. As the bus rocketed toward Pittsburgh and hurtled well past the speed of sound, I wondered when George Takei and James Doohan were going to leap from the bathroom and tell us all it was a bad joke. I don't mean to say that we were going too fast, but with every turn, the 'g' forces seemed to stick we poor occupants against the glass like fish that don't realize it's a barrier. It seems to me, as the buses approach the mountainous regions of our great nation, the drivers of buses seem to think they've joined Kyle Busch and Danica Patrick on the track at Daytona. I fell out of the bus at the station in Pittsburgh and gave the almighty my ever loving gratitude for managing to allow a mentally deficient 'person' to help me to arrive in Pennsylvania in one piece, despite my queezy innards. It was here that I was transferred to a more minor carrier, my final stretch to Washington, PA. The minor carrier did an...'ok' job, I suppose; although, again, the driver could've pulled his foot from the carbuerator to make us feel a little safer. Finally... I'd arrived at my destination to go pick up my car and make my way home... Hamilton, OH. When I asked the csr behind the counter at my destination where I should pick up my bag? She told me it should've been on the bus that I was on. This was severely disheartening. Primarily, at that point, because I needed... NEEDED my medication. As I huffed and puffed to the other side of Washington, PA, I called Greyhound to make the attempt to find my bag. They told me that I'd have to wait 10 days to claim that my bag was lost. At 10 days, it occurs to me, my bag wouldn't be lost. It would be GONE. Are you kidding me?! 10 *king days?! Everything that I own is in that bag! Disgusted, at this point, all I could do was get to my car and drive home. Mind you, two days later than anticipated. My car broke down just north of Columbus, OH. (Not really a valid point in my discussion of Greyhound, I realize... Just trying to paint a bit of a broader picture as to my state of mind about this nation's largest carrier...) I finally got home, and, the next day, the minor carrier that helped me to finish my hell ride told me that they'd found my bag. Fantastic. My doctor would be thrilled, I'm sure. They told me they'd be sending it to the Greyhound station in Cincinnati, OH. 25 miles south of my home. And, another two days. No s*t. I managed to obtain the bag after another twenty minutes of waiting on the clerk to find my bag 'in the back'. Finally. My bag. My belongings. The pictures of my son. My toiletries. My dvds and dvd player. My clothes. My work boots. My much-needed anti-biotics and anti-inflammatory drugs. When I arrived at my friends apartment and peeled open my bag? Scratch the dvds. Scratch the drugs. Scratch all the paperwork in the outside pocket of my bag. If all the other bulls*t that I'd already been put through over the last week wasn't bad enough? Now, someone stole PICTURES OF MY *KING SON and DRUGS THAT WILL DO NO OTHER PERSON ON THIS PLANET BUT ME ANY GOOD. Never. NEVER again will I ride Greyhound. I would rather fall from 30,000 feet and have 25 seconds to KNOW that I am going to die than ever ride a Greyhound bus again. My name is Robert Ferguson, and, until they make this right by me? I am going to be the bane of Greyhound's existence.
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