Day 97: Why Does it Always Rain on Me?
Well, well, well. Washington DC. Where do I even start?...
I’ll set the scene by saying that the journey from Chicago was an epic 20 hour marathon on the Greyhound bus, which hoyed all the passengers off in random parts of the USA at two and three o’ clock in the morning for hours at a time so the bus could be ‘serviced’. The best part of it is that the driver had clearly never driven to Washington DC before and every hour we’d hear an announcement over the microphone saying ‘Sorry, folks, as you can probably tell I’ve made another wrong turn’ as we drove through wilderness with no civilisation in sight. We finally arrived in DC THREE HOURS later than planned after a passenger took it upon himself to direct the driver to the bus stop after he drove, obliviously, right past it, much to the dismay of everyone on board who had already started hurling abuse at him such as ‘What is this guy DOIN’, man?!’ So when we eventually got off the bus after a journey that ended up taking nearly 24 hours, we went to collect our luggage and be on our merry way to our accommodation. But, as I keep saying, this is my life we’re talking about and nothing is as simple as getting on a bus, getting off said bus, collecting your luggage and going to your accommodation. In fact, when we got off the bus there was no luggage in sight. We approached the man who had hauled all the bags that had made it to DC off the bus and we told him that ours must still be on there. His only response to our panicking was ‘There are no more bags on the bus’, which he shouted in our faces approximately ten times. It is at this point in the story, my friends, where my most favourite American woman thus far enters my life for the very first time. I invite you all to meet Dianne: a huge, black American woman with no soul and not really much enthusiasm to even live, only to chew gum directly in your face as you beg her for help. Dianne greeted us with an almighty sigh as we were beside ourselves with panic due to the fact that nobody had a clue about the location of our possessions and – besides us – nobody even cared. Dianne carried on chewing her gum and sighed some more as we demanded to know what her company had done with our bags. Her only response was ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about these bags’. Erm, find them, perhaps, you silly mare?!?!?! We were eventually passed over to a woman who was equally as unhelpful as she suggested that she gave us a number to call to see if anyone could help, which was particularly useless since we didn’t even have a phone between us. As in all emergencies, the only thing I could think of doing was contacting my parents back in the UK and, after a ‘don’t mess with me’ geordie threat from my dad to Greyhound, our bags were finally back on the map in Cleveland, Ohio, after they had been removed halfway through the trip. Since Cleveland, Ohio, is miles and miles away from Washington DC, we had to spend the night in our dirty clothes for the third day in a row until our bags arrived the next morning. And at that point I had pretty much accepted the fact that we were probably never going to see them again.
Soldiering on, we made our way to the hostel we had booked to stay at for our three nights in DC. I say ‘hostel’, it was more like a grand old mansion that seemed too good to be true...We were greeted by a man named Joshua whose face dropped when we told him that we’d booked a private room online. He responded to our arrival by shaking his head profusely and muttering ‘no’ repeatedly before telling us that the website had gone mental and, well basically, there was no room at the inn. As if things couldn’t get any worse for us, we had had our bags swiped from underneath our noses and now we had no bed for the night. That was the final straw that broke my patience and I lost it with this Joshua guy, demanding that he find us somewhere to stay for the night for the same price, which proved a rather difficult feat in the centre of Washington DC at such short notice. The outcome of our heated ‘no nonsense’ exchange somehow resulted in him suggesting that we stay in a $300 a night hotel in the poshest part of DC that night and in his mansion for free the next two nights, effectively working out at $100 per night that we were meant to be paying anyway. My lack of faith in humankind made me force him to put his promise in writing so he couldn’t accidentally-on-purpose forget about our little chat the next day. And off we went to Dupoint Circle, spending another $20 on a taxi and smelling – and feeling – like crap.
After a luxurious night’s sleep in an actual real bed with soft sheets and fluffy pillows, we awoke to reface the nightmare of the Greyhound bus. We made our way, once more, to the Greyhound terminal to collect our bags and – to our delight – we were once again filled with the joy-inducing, radiant smile of – yep, you guessed it – Dianne, who, this time, was slurping on a can of Sprite to compliment her chewing gum. Her eyes rose to the heavens as she saw us walk up to her and she let out another almighty sigh as we said, in our most cheerful voices, ‘Hi, it’s us again. You lost our bags yesterday so now we’re here to collect them’. As if it was an effort to talk, words slowly dribbled from her mouth that were, apparently, directions to the old Greyhound terminal where our bags had been carted off to. In the middle of this, the full bottle of Pepsi I had in my bag somehow managed to escape and explode all over the floor of the ticket office and all over the smart, business attire of the gentleman behind me. As the room burst into commotion and everyone rushed to find napkins to wipe down the poor man who was covered from head to toe in Pepsi, Dianne failed to even look up from her computer and survey the chaos. Thinking that she hadn’t realised what had just happened since she was continuing to give us directions, we reiterated ‘We’ve just spilled Pepsi all over your floor, do you have something to clean it up with?’ to which she replied ‘I heard you the first time’, her eyes still on the screen. We then asked, ‘So, do you not want us to clean it up?’ before she stared at us (or through us – not sure which) and simply said ‘No’, as if we had just asked the most ridiculous question in the world.
We did eventually get our suitcases back, no thanks to Dianne’s shoddy directions to the old bus terminal that was completely closed off apart from a dodgy, little door round the size through which we had to go. The rest of Washington DC was stress-free – believe it or not – and Joshua kept his word and gave us a swanky room with a jacuzzi bath completely on the house. We also met the coolest bus driver in the US, who beeped his horn repeatedly as he mowed through a row of taxis that had parked in his stop. He then threatened to vacate the bus and batter some guy who had shouted through the door ‘Do you have to beep?’ before he drove off, sounding the horn in his face as we went. However, our trip to DC was not complete without one last visit to the Greyhound bus terminal as we left for Philadelphia. We hoped and prayed for that familiar face behind the desk as we walked in to check our luggage and, lo and behold, she was there, gum and all. As we bid our farewells, I was secretly sad to see her go and you know what? I’m really going to miss Dianne, the little rascal. We’ve had our ups and downs but now we know where we stand with one another and, given the chance, we could have had a beautiful friendship*…
*I am currently drafting a letter of complaint to Greyhound customer services.
