commentary...

it has been nineteen years(on December 4th)since i have had a drink of alcohol,of any kind...i went up to Seattle to visit my dear departed uncle Bob,and he gave me a glass of wine to celebrate... i was fighting a cold that day... well,the wine opened up my head and overnight,i had a massive cold that lasted four days... i blame uncle Bob for it(of course,i am laughing,and smiling,when i say that)... well,in 1999,i visited a friend in Connecticut,or thought i was going to do it... well,the Greyhound bus trip almost collapsed from the very beginning... they lost my duffle bag out of Sacramento,and then in Lovelock,Nevada,they put a drunk next to me,and by the time i got to Wells,Nevada,i had a 104 degree fever,and felt lousy,so i spent four days in a hotel room,very sick... after four days,i finally got on a Greyhound bus,and made it to Salt Lake City,had to argue with Greyhound over where my duffle bag was,and had to work in a LDS warehouse for some new clothes that day(still had my original clothes on,from Sacramento),found out that i still had a 104 degree fever,so i went back to the bus station,found out again from the manager that i had the wrong ticket,so they gave me a new ticket for back east(nice people in Salt Lake),but that night,i got accused of beating up the bus manager's son,by the bus manager's son(and i almost got arrested)by the Salt Lake Police... luckily,i had witnesses to tell the cops that i had been there all night,waiting for the bus... well,i made it all the way to Sandusky,Ohio,before finding out that my duffle bag was in Boston(i had it sent back to Roseville,California,to my father),so about ten days after starting the trip,i hit Grand Central Station,through White Plains,New York,stayed five days in New Haven,visited my friend in Connecticut for about two and a half hours... the next day,i traveled up to Waterbury,Connecticut,and tried to get on a bus there,after an overnight stay... the people there,at the Greyhound bus station,wanted me to stay two more weeks... i basically told them where to put that idea,and told them off... i traveled back to New Haven,got lost the entire day on the stupid bus system,and then realized that to get out of town,i had to get to take the westernmost bus out of town,and then walk... well,i did that,walked past a theater that Star Wars I was playing at midnight,so i bought a ticket to see the movie,and after the movie,i started to walk a night time walk,to Stratford,Connecticut up the Boston Post Road(Highway 1)... i stopped just short of the bridge into Stratford,found a park to sleep in,and got awakened by a softball team who was practicing,so i shagged flies with the team,and someone asked me what i was from,and i said i was from Sacramento,California... after practice,i tried to get into a shelter in Stratford... they had a 24 hour wait,on the shelter,and then i asked to call Greyhound to find out if i could get on a bus... they adamantly refused to get me on a bus,without a two week stay,then an angel finally asked to talk to Greyhound(i was very very sick,and in tears,by that time) he asked the pertinent question to them:how much money would it take to get "this guy" on a bus??? they told him the amount,and we went over to the bus station,in Bridgeport,and i was put on a bus... about three weeks later,i got a letter of apology from Greyhound,with a $25 voucher for bus travel... i tore up the voucher,wrote a letter of reply,telling them that they were damn lucky that i did not sue the pants off them,for the miserable trip,and told them that i would never take another Greyhound bus(it took a decade for me to take another Greyhound bus)... i still have a souvenir from that trip... a softball up on my shelf... i still take it down and sometimes toss it in my hand...