Hail to the bus driver!
Yesterday was my last in Durango, and at five in the evening I once more hopped onto a Greyhound to commence the eight hour journey back to Santa Fe.
I like trains. In England, no bastard ever uses trains except commuters early in the morning, so throughout the day you usually guarantee yourself a nice wide empty area to sit in and make your own.
Sometimes when you get on a bus, you have to sit next an overweight, mentally retarded teenager who at points in the trip insists on leaning on you so that it(yeah - it was hard to tell the gender) can mumble to it's family members.
Trains, at least in the UK, are fairly consistent. There's the occasional delay, but most of the time I can count on the 1032 being there to take me to Poole for comics day.
Buses, by and large, are always late. Sometimes you'll be sat in a waiting room for two hours or so, wondering if it's ever going to come. Sometimes, you'll be outside in the cold(because the waiting rooms shut fairly early) hoping you don't die of frostbite before the bus arrives.
Trains, are run by a strange, invisible driver who is only ever heard on loudspeaker, and who takes on a strange Wizard of Oz-type quality. You never see the man behind the curtain.
Bus drivers are batshit mental - like the one I had yesterday who, halfway through the trip, stopped the bus and said we weren't moving again until whoever was whistling owned up to the whistling. We sat there for 15 minutes whilst he paced up and down outside, with other passengers ferrying messages back and forth, like we were in a fight with the kids on the other side of the playground.
Take the second driver I had yesterday, who seemed to think that(despite it being one in the morning) we all wanted to hear every thought going through his mind via intercom, ranging from "Uh-oh, it's the heat - is anyone holding?" to his reaction of "Yee-hah!" when someone on the bus sneezed.
There's not many things I miss about the UK, but I do miss the trains. By God, I miss the trains.