Tastes Like Fire

 This week Greyhound announced that they would be withdrawing all of their bus service lines from Canada. Pretty crazy to think of! I can't say that I ever thought of Greyhound buses as the sort of private business that would be taken away as the result of COVID-19, but here we are. As a Toronto kid how never learned how to drive* and who went to school outside of the city, I spent a huge amount of time on Greyhounds as a yute.

*Is my huge volume of Greyhound rides a character flaw? Perfectly normal to ride it so much while you're 19/20, but should I have moved on and gotten a car at 25?

As a dedicated Greyhound rider, here are my top stories from da bus:

This is always the first one that I think of. In the spring of 2012, Andrew W.K. announced that he would be doing a full-band tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of I Get Wet. I had never gotten the full AWK live experience, having only seen him play to a backing track. (Party) Pat and I were ecstatic at the thought of seeing our party god play live and bought tickets immediately. When the date came, we got on a Greyhound in Guelph to head to Toronto and brought beers to get ready for the show. We heard a guy a few seats in front of us open a beer and laughed that we weren't the only ones drinking on the trip. When we tried to nonchalantly open ours a few minutes later, the guy turned around and said "Are you guys going to see Andrew W.K. too?"

Despite the fact that I took the bus to Toronto from Guelph constantly, I was always nervous that I had gotten on the wrong route from the University of Guelph bus loop. That never happened, but one time the driver started to take a strange route after stopping at Aberfoyle, before eventually stopping and asking over the PA if someone could look up directions for him.

I admit that I can be particular while I'm traveling and get easily annoyed. Usually I avoid this by either listening to music for the entire ride or watching a movie, but there were a few times this was unavoidable. Don't be the guy who loudly talks to a person he doesn't know about DJing for an hour, or the guy loudly going over his Keeping Up with the Kardashians re-watch, or the guy asking me phone his friend in Guelph while he is currently getting off the bus. Just try to be quiet.

I've already told the story of the time that I worked a long and strange night at Nest in Toronto, so I don't need to re-tell that again, but the ride into Toronto that started the night was one of the most memorable (and chill) parts of that night. I rushed to get to the Charles Street Terminal in Kitchener, and then started to listen to How Did This Get Made? for the first time. The first snowfall in Ontario started during the ride and as a result, traffic moved crazy slow for the entire ride. It took about three hours to get to Toronto and I tried to relax and just let the trip happen. Though I'm not one for winter, I will admit that looking out the bus window and seeing roads and hills only slightly covered in snow was relaxing.