July 30, 2004
Get Us the Fung Wah Home!
A throng of anxious Democrats surges forward: there are shouts and jostles and tickets waving overhead at the keeper of the door. A VIP after hours party? A celebrity sighting? A photo op with Alex and Vanessa?
Nope, we're just trying to get on the Chinatown bus back to New York on Friday afternoon. The good folks at the Fung Wah Co. seem to have oversold their famous ten dollar bus seats by about %100 percent, and mob is building, getting little satisfaction from the middle-aged woman with the clipboard and walkie-talkie who now and then orders us around in Chinese.
I'm one of the lucky ones, whose bought a ticket online, and got there an hour early. Of course I was unable to print up my "e-ticket," so I have to negotiate with walkie-talktress, trotting out my "confirmation number" and photo ID. Finally I scribble a ticket on a piece of scratch paper, she scribbles something on it, and I sign it, and she lets me on.
My gut feeling is that they just keep selling the online tickets as long as people are willing to buy them, and then they just hope that not everyone shows up, or that those who do show up are sufficiently demoralized by the near-riot that they regain sanity and sulk back to South Station, write off the ten dollar loss, and cough up ninety bucks for an Amtrak ticket.
But not Travis. I'm a man of the people, and by God I'll ride with the common man. At this writing, I've now been elbow to elbow with him for four hours, and we're still stuck in traffic somewhere in Connecticut. As we inch over a riverbridge I see the damn Acela Express pass us on the next bridge over. The babies next to me have begun crying. I sure with I'd got a seat next to the girl in the miniskirt with the t-shirt that says "Smart, Sexy, and Liberal." Maybe when we get to New York I'll strike up a conversation on secular humanism.
"Whadja think of Obama?" I'll say.
Posted by Travis LaFrance at July 30, 2004 05:45 PM