Riding Buses (to Wyoming) as a Method of Travel

(April 10, 2018)

I remember being 17 and having my own radio podcast that I shared with a crybaby writing man I no longer keep in touch with. We would conduct interviews over Skype with random strangers we met on Omegle, but usually I’d be the one to reel them in since he was normally a black screen and it’s easier for girls to actually catch someone’s interest on a website full of masturbators. 

I remember one day being so intrigued by Wyoming because it was a state that I knew nothing about and it was completely square-shaped. I wanted to meet someone from Wyoming to ask about it, but I imagined that not many people lived in Wyoming because I could never find its residents when I put Wyoming in my interests. That whole night, we probably spent two hours looking for Wyoming people, and only found one person from Montana who’s been to Wyoming, but never lived there. She told us there was a lot of nothing, but sometimes she’d go to rodeos. Ever since then, I pictured Wyoming as the “Wild West”.

When I came to Utah in November 2017, I remember overhearing that Alta was only about 4 hours from Jackson, WY, and sometimes people would make the drive to Wyoming to buy kegs of beer since kegs weren’t sold in Utah. I had no idea it was that close. I thought about just spontaneously hopping on a train to go to Wyoming multiple times, but I don’t actually think that method of travel exists. Finally, after covering multiple people’s shifts in March and having a handful of days I could have off myself, I decided to go check out Wyoming myself. 

I took The Salt Lake Express (similar to a Greyhound bus) on a really round-about route to Jackson. It took me over 12 hours to get to Jackson because of there being no other shorter route. We went from Salt Lake City to Idaho Falls where I had to stay at a gas station from 11 PM to 6 AM and I didn’t sleep, and then after two hours I was dropped off at an Albertsons in Jackson with no instruction on how to get to the center of town. Oh well. I still made it, didn’t I?

Public transportation exposes us to a variety of different people of different social status. I never saw multiple people with face tattoos all in the same day. Nor did I ever sit on a bus with so many veterans and sick people. I think I had my buff covering my face the majority of the ride. I get why most people have cars and don’t use public transportation. For that, I miss being able to drive myself anywhere, but it’s just unnecessary for my lifestyle of living in isolated places (especially since I’m living on an island next).

Luckily, when I got to Jackson I’d be meeting friends who lived in Fort Collins, CO, whom I worked with previously in Talkeetna, Alaska. John and Gabby had been dating since June and then after the season ended, they went on a trip to Hong Kong and Thailand, came back to the states to rent a house together and even bought a car together. Now they’re going to be driving across the U.S. to live in Nantucket for the summer. They lucked out a lot. Usually seasonal romance ends as soon as the season ends, but I’m glad that they were able to stick it out and it definitely helped that they both originated from the same state and both love to travel. 

Before they got in around midnight, I was trying to be a Tinder tourist. I usually reinstall Tinder whenever I go somewhere new so that I can get a general census of what the people are like in the area (at least the single ones), and to perhaps spend the day with someone rather than alone. It actually never works, so I don’t know why I still do it. Regardless, I still met up with a guy in town square at around 10 PM. Why I chose him, I don’t really know. He was kinda like all the other guys on Tinder that I saw: holding a fish, a lot of skiing photos, outdoorsy. Maybe it was his biceps. Actually, I think it was that I could actually see his face in at least one photo and I couldn’t see anyone else’s. 

What I didn’t see on his profile was that he was probably 3 inches shorter than me and that I couldn’t smell his breath. I warned him that I was going to be tall, so I don’t know why that didn’t draw any red-flags for me when he said nothing in response. Shortness wasn’t the major issue though. It was that there was simply no spark at all. Body language was so off. Smells were bad.  We both were just sitting there to be polite until I had the perfect alibi to leave. “Oh, my friends are gonna be here any minute!”