by Aria Vahdani

 

As a kid, I knew little about how pleasant growing up in the Golden State could be. Plenty of things to do, good weather for the most part, and tons of opportunities for those looking for work. When it comes to schools, California has a wide range of schools and great places to move out to after high school. Santa Barbara was one place that caught the attention of one of my colleagues and me. As seniors in High School, we decided it would be a great idea to visit the SB campus and explore the city a bit. Little did we know that we were in for an adventure.

            It was a hard decision not to drive from the Bay Area to Santa Barbara but we figured it would save us some money in the long run gas-wise if we took Greyhound. It was around 7:15 a.m. when we pulled into the parking lot of the bus station. My eyes were still adjusting to waking up to drive down so early. As we turned the corner of 21^st onto San Pablo to walk inside, the smell of burnt cigarettes and garbage filled the air as I stepped into a huge bag of trash that leaked juice, which I had somehow missed. In a way I wanted to refrain from looking down but I couldn’t help myself. The bag contains a thousand cigarette butts, old fruit, band-aids, and dirty needles. I was trying to figure out what I had done to luck out stepping in garbage first thing in the morning. I assumed that I was going to smell like the contents of the bag for a while.  It took me 10 min to finish wiping my shoes off before we actually got inside. When we finally got past security and sat down behind door number 2. I began to browse around the station until and interesting sign caught my eye. “No one under the influence of drugs and alcohol will be permitted onto the greyhound bus.” In my head I was thinking, how do they expect people to really be sober riding a 9-hour bus ride with a bunch of ex-cons and random commuters? I eventually fell asleep in the seat that I was waiting in.

            I was awakened by a groggy old man telling me I was going to miss to bus if I didn’t wake up and board. I thanked him quickly got on board. When I got on I saw that my friend I was traveling with had saved me a seat. As I began my journey to the back of the bus I did a casual scan of everybody who’s on board. Nothing unusual. As I approached my seat I noticed a woman changing her baby’s diaper. My normal reaction would just be to sit down but as soon as that happened a horrible smell filled the air and there was really nothing I could have done about it. The other thing that I noticed about her was how she was taking up a whole row of 3 seats just to change her baby. There was no reason that she had to do it in front of everybody and make the trip even worse, besides the fact that you’re riding a greyhound. Finally, the bus began to move.

            We’re about 60 miles out of Oakland when the man in front of me began to start a conversation with himself.

            “No…pull out before its too late … all of them… but if we make it by 8:30 there’s free breakfast!” was the only phrase I could understand about what he was saying. Whatever he was rambling on about, he went on for a while. At one point I remember him going into the bathroom and not seeing him go back to his seat for at least 45min. In the time that the city turned into highway the highway turned into a straightaway for miles of nothing and that turned into farms, I managed to fall back asleep. When I woke up again we had arrived in King City. It took 5 minutes to get off because the driver was having a hard time getting everybody to listen to him. Everybody was laughing at his thick Indian accent whenever he said something through the loudspeaker.

“Pleas, if you heaf to use te batroom it is in de beck. Do nut cam up to me and ausk me!”

 I think the guy behind me was having a breakdown because he was laughing so hard. We finally get off the bus and I walk into the store in the bus parking lot. I don’t notice anything odd about the store at first but then when I got close to an isle everything was written in Spanish. The labels “¡Los mejores tacos alrededor!!!” were posted up everywhere. I’m glad my elementary Spanish had managed me to get around a but I went up to the guy at the counter and asked him if they had Doritos and he handed me a bag of dried tomato with chili sauce. I held it in my hand for a second and then figured that was the closest I was going to get in the nearest 50 miles. I slept through the next stop. When I woke up again, we were on a long bumpy straightaway that looked like it would never end. It was too bad the guy next to me was so fat that he unintentionally pinned my jeans down to the seat after he had come back from the bathroom or I would look out of more than the corner of the window that I was trying to see out of. Besides the fact that he reeked of piss and some hot cheetoes he wasn’t that bad to sit next to.

“The next stop vill be Saunta Barabara!” the bus driver yelled out. I didn’t have to look up to know it was him yelling because of his accent. I remain awake for the rest of the trip because I hadn’t seen a single beach or nice looking town for 200 miles. I was beginning to think that we were going the wrong way but then I remembered the accent telling us the next stop, which had stuck in my brain.

            Finally. We had arrived at the Santa Barbara Greyhound station. I got off the bus with my friend that was riding the bus with me. As soon as we got our bags and got off the bus we headed for the Mc Donald’s. We would have started walking, but we had no idea where we were or how to get to the Mickey D’s.

            “Ok lets just ask the next person who walks by.” I suggested to my friend. For some reason the only people that were walking down the street were people who looked like they didn’t know how to get there. Finally my friend asked somebody,

            “Can you tell us how to get to the Mc Donald’s?”

“Yea I’m on my way there right now, you want a ride? You and Ayatollah lets go!” he said. Now I had no idea why he had called me Ayatollah or if I should have been offended or not but all I knew was I needed a Mc Chicken more than I cared about some racist person. So we started following this random person who claimed that he was going to Mickey D’s.

“Lets just cut and burn one on the way there and make it a mission.” My friend suggested.” I looked at him with a face off approval and we turned the corner without the guy who we were following for a ride noticing us gone. We cut into an alleyway for a quick rest stop, and came out feeling rejuvenated; and the mission began. We begin walking in the same direction we were headed when we came out of the ally. About 10 blocks later I turn to my friend and ask,

“Why are we walking so damn far for, were not going to find any Mickey D’s.” I tried to say as best as I could because I was out of breath.

“Fuck it then. Lets just walk to the closest motel and call it a night.” He suggested. We were both tired and it was getting dark so we walked about ten minutes to the closest motel. A beat down old sign with some kind of tape revealed the name “Luxury Inn.” Most of the drapes were ripped, the windows almost all dirty and what looked like small cramped rooms from the outside. I walked into the front office and I rang the bell. While I waited for the clerk to come assist me I smelled a faint hint of marijuana. I kept sniffing, like a hound looking for the tracts that a murderer left behind. I finally got fed up with waiting and decided it was time to take some sort of action. Four rings of the bell later an old woman comes out and helps me. I would have never taken her to be a stoner. We got the key, got into the room, and fell right asleep to be good for the next day.

Rays of sun ripped through the room when I woke up. I realized I didn’t know when checkout was so I told my friend to get all his stuff ready to go. By 11:00 we leave the motel and head towards the beach. We decided to just take the bus because of the walking mission we had the previous day. The “11” came down the street after a long wait at the stop. Right as we stood up to get on the bus it drove right past us. I kind of had a feeling we were going to be walking a lot that day.

“I can’t believe that shit. Lets take a cab.” My friend blurted out. Without thinking I naturally agreed to the idea he had proposed because of how tired we were. We wave down the closest cab and get inside. We began the drive to the beach when I reach in my pockets and felt around to see what I had to drop on the cab ride.

“I don’t have any cash on me can you cover the ride?” I asked my friend

“I got it its all good.” He happily replied. This was a little suspicious to me because he was one of the stingiest people I knew and I know he would have rather have his arm cut off than to have paid for a full cab ride. Two seconds later I got a text message that read

: “I don’t have any cash either were bout to bail out and run for the beach. He won’t follow us.” I quickly replied:

 “You are a dumb piece of shit but your lucky we’re on vacation and I guess we have no other choice.” So the plan was set. We were going to bail out and run down the beach until we lost him. I checked the fair meter in the front. It read $34.59. It was kind of funny that it was soon to be free. As we pulled into the beach parking lot I was trying to figure out if he was going to give a signal for us to go or if we were going to just cut right away. The very second before we had found a spot and pulled in I looked in the passenger rear view and saw my friends hand on the door.

            “GO! GO!” I heard. I hadn’t heard anything much after that except for the sound of running footsteps that came from far behind us yelling

“Get the fuck back here! You owe me 40$!” After 10 minutes he was so far behind us that I could have stopped to brush my teeth and he still would have had a hard time getting to us. The plan had actually worked.

The only problem was that we had run so fast and so far in the wrong direction that we had no idea where we were.

“Can we sit down for a minute and figure out what the hell we’re doing?” I asked.

“You want to take a cab to the motel?” My friend had asked. I never figured out why he was the way he was or why he made certain decisions that he, but I was glad because it made our trip more interesting. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for another cab.