the long haul.
unearthed, from some cobwebbed corner of the interweb. okay, the livejournal, ha (remember those?). I admit it’s a bit dense for a tumblr post, so I chopped it up. alas, the first:
¶ It leaves at midnight, every night.
¶ First, it rumbles into the parking lot of the Four Seasons Oriental Grocery across the street, dropping off those who had reached their destination. Most will hastily grab their luggage from the storage compartments and deposit themselves into idling SUVs, which will form a line at the nearest red light. Others linger with their possessions, cell phones planted on their ears, glancing expectantly at the empty intersection. A few will walk into the night, backpacks zipped, clutching half-empty bottles of Sprite from the rest area, now half a night away.
¶ And then it pulls in front of the station that doubles as a Chinese take-out restaurant, which, until very recently was actually a Chinese laundromat. A crowd forms around the vehicle, holding boxes, suitcases, and duffel bags for the bins underneath. They fish their tickets from their pockets and purses, grab a quick hug or a short kiss, and depart. The entire process lasts thirty minutes.
¶ Twenty dollars takes you 350 miles, double for a round-trip, Virginia Beach to New York’s Chinatown in six hours, the big city by sunrise — such is the promise of the Tiger Travel Bus.
¶ It can seem to be a strange sort of business, almost illicit even: The loitering on the parking lot lit by the fluorescent strips of the adjacent 7-Eleven, the Mandarin being murmured into walkie-talkies by spiky-haired young men in tight clothes and designer sunglasses, the bleary-eyed travelers sitting around in their cars or on their suitcases, some smoking, chatting quietly, others resting their foreheads on a companion’s shoulder. Almost a dream, as if we were all waiting for the night to envelop us and sweep us back into our beds.
¶ But sleep was never a part of the journey for me. Sleep meant that I was missing something, a fleeting and transient place between here and there, an entire world constantly in motion beyond my stiff upholstered seat.
¶ continued.
