What had been a smooth trip became a bit of a nightmare when we reached Nashville. We arrived right on time, 9PM CT, but the next bus to Richmond, scheduled to leave at 10:05, wasn't showing up on the Arrivals/Departures board.
"Is Bus 1520 late?" we all wanted to know. "When is it arriving?" Information from Greyhound staff was either flatly wrong or non-existent.
I never found anything less "Classic." On Google Maps it looked like the nearest fast food place was a bit of a hike. And by now I was getting nervous because the 1520 bus to Richmond still hadn't appeared on the Arrivals/Departure board. I dared not leave the station for fear of missing my connection. Resigned to a "Classic Cheeseburger," as I approached the counter I heard another guy ask the Fry Cook "Not for 15 minutes?" Me: "What?" Fry Cook: "No more orders for 15 minutes." "Oh." So I ended up eating a Schnuck's cheese Danish I'd brought with me from St. Louis for dinner. Which was pretty awful.
As our delay stretched to 45 minutes, several other buses had arrived more or less on time, picked their passengers up, and were long gone. It began to dawn on me that the only people now left in this bus station were unhappy folks waiting on at least two delayed buses, and getting no info from Greyhound. All the happy people had boarded their buses and were getting on down the road.
Seriously, you could feel the rising tide of anger in that station as time ticked by.
At one point some Greyhound guy said bus 1520 was in the station, but that turned out to be not exactly true at all. After that, Greyhound staff clammed up and offered no information, no updates.
Achmed and Theodore, two friends I made in the Nashville station who were also waiting on the
connection
to Richmond. We swapped tidbits of information we got from Greyhound.
Achmed had a long journey ahead of him. He needed to get to Richmond, then DC, then on
to
New
York.
These arrival/Departure screens showed absolutely no information on our missing bus for three hours.
By 11:00 PM, I was at risk of becoming AG: Angry Guy.
With Bus 1520 to Richmond nearly an hour late, and no reliable information from Greyhound at the Nashville station, I was about ready to give my final negative review halfway through my trip. So, I did what any 21st-Century American would do in this situation:
I tried whining on Twitter.
I know it works if you want Uber/Lyft's attention. I also sent them a Twitter Direct Message. (See the last chapter, "DC Bound," for Greyhound's lame reply 9 hours later.)
About 12:30 AM, a bus driver came in the station and hollered "Bus 1520 now boarding!" We never got an explanation for the delay. I was just happy that we finally left Nashville at about 1 AM, and headed to Richmond. We were nearly 3 hours behind schedule. We had some time to make up if we were going to catch that connection.
This bus was only about a third full, so I finally had some room to stretch out a bit. Which was good, because this was going to be a long leg, 15 hours to Richmond, making nine stops on the way.
Most of my fellow passengers were asleep by now, and I did my best to join them.