$69 one way.

(Previous installments: One: Oklahoma panhandle, Two: The Red Button, Three: “He pulled over for that?”)

Before I continue with my retellings of Greyhound horror stories, I want to make one thing clear: Most of my experiences riding Greyhound have been fine. There have been delays, and noisy people, and crowded terminals and the like, but that’s just how life is.

I rode the bus from Seattle to the San Fransisco bay area one time, during winter. I was going to fly to Houston for Christmas, and then return to the bay area for MacWorld Expo. And then figure out how to get back to Seattle. (I ended up renting a car and taking lots of pictures of central Oregon along the way.) The route was I-5, as you’d expect, and we spent three hours trying to get south of Ashland, Oregon, since there’s a big honkin’ mountain range right there. It was iced over. So all traffic was being led over the pass, a few cars and trucks at a time. This is when I learned that you can’t rely on bus ETAs when you’re buying plane tickets.

But, during that three hour wait, my job was to sit in a seat and listen to CDs. What can be so bad about that?

So meanwhile… Back in Texas… I got off the Bus To Hell in Fort Worth and transfered to the one going south to Houston. (It turns out that hell isn’t Houston.) With great relief I sat down next to an empty seat, stretched my legs as well I could, and dozed off, using my windbreaker as a blanket.

I woke up in Waco. Waco’s famous for a Baptist University (Baylor) and the showdown between the US Government and the Branch Davidians. Crawford, Texas, is near Waco (they say), so you can mix our fake president in there somewhere, too. It also has some nice architecture that I’d like to go back and photograph sometime.

Another thing about Waco is that 25 or so years ago Baylor ran a summer camp on some land near there. They still might. Needless to say, I went to camp there one summer.

At Waco the bus turned south and went down state highway 6, which I remember being wholly excited about as the Road To Paradise when I was a little kid, as contrasted against my current situation. 6 goes all the way to the west side of Houston, so when mom took me to that summer camp, we just got on 6 and went north. And after that, for years, whenever someone mentioned highway 6, or when we went down it (or up it, or whatever), I’d think about summer camp.

But the point here is that I’m sitting in a bus, in a semiconscious state, going south through a hot, humid forested place, covered by a windbreaker when I’m trying to sleep, and looking out the window when I’m not.

Up near Waco, the terrain is gentle, rolling hills, with riparian woods in the valleys. The closer you get to the Gulf, however, the flatter the land. It gradually turns to wide expanses covered by pine trees and the occasional live oak. The green turns from grass color to a darker leaf color, which will turn to a golden brown later in the year before falling to the ground.

And we pull in to a convenience store parking lot. I stagger in and buy a Coke, for some reason. I think it must be habit; whenever I go into a c-store, I seem to be buying a Coke, so I get one this time, too. The driver is laughing with some passengers. After the last driver, I have learned to appreciate the value of this kind of laughter.

I’m barely able to hit the urinal, though I guess I didn’t do too bad a job.

Later, the Coke has done its job, and I’m more awake. Or at least aware. We turn off for the Prairie View stop, and pull up to the dingiest, nastiest convenience store ever seen by humans. It might be purple, it might be brown, I can’t tell. It has burglar bars all the way around it, not just around the windows. A tiny gap in the front portcullis is the entryway.

Our brave driver saunters through the gap, and is swallowed by darkness. It’s as if there’s something inside there swallowing the light. It’s a black hole of a convenience store. Even though one side has very large windows (covered with bars), I can’t see any movement inside of any kind.

The driver emerges with a package to be delivered. He’s whistling a happy tune. Perhaps my lack of sleep and stimulant Coke have made me paranoid of creepy c-stores. I know for certain, however, that I’m awake enough now to not want to buy a Coke there.

The inevitable descent into civilization begins when we turn onto US highway 290. This happens at Hempstead. How do I know this town is called Hempstead? Is it because I know all the small towns out there? No. I’ll tell you why: It’s because I saw Lawrence Marshall Chevrolet, who I happen to know will clobber big city prices. I haven’t lived in Houston for a long, long time, but I know that Lawrence Marshall, in Hempstead, will clobber big city prices. Advertising: The most evil thing in the world, but it gets the job done.

The cleared spaces between the trees gets wider and wider, and the buildings grow taller and taller. The highway gets wider and wider, the traffic gets more and more congested, and before I know it, I’m looking at downtown Houston, 23 hours and a couple of lifetimes after setting out from Denver.

And oddly enough, Greyhound lost my luggage.

Photogeek info:

Olympus’ version of the RAW file is called ORF, presumably for Olympus Raw Format. ORF is a capture of the data that’s taken directly from the CCD, before any processing is done. It’s a way to bypass all the error correction and magic data massage that happens between the photons and the JPEG file.

Happily, GraphicConverter can read this format. Sadly, GraphicConverter can’t do the kind of sophisticated stuff you wanted to do, which is why you told the camera to spit out ORF files in the first place.

Happily, dcraw can convert ORF (and other RAW types) to PPM format, which is a file format designed for computers. That is, it’s an uncompressed, computationally non-intensive format; my 7 meg ORF files ballooned to 14 megs PPM files when dcraw did its magic.

Why do I want a 14 meg PPM file? So I can import the image into GIMP, of course.

Like all good things, dcraw is free, as long as you know what ‘#define NO_JPEG’ means, and how to type it into the source code. (Or know where to download a binary.)

Accompanied a friend to a fotolog meetup.

The other day I went to St. Edwards State Park and got these. They look much better scaled down, since the highlights blow out the ‘film.’ I’m going to have to figure out how to take this kind of pic without melting the CCD, because I really like going on walks at St. Edwards.

(I’m going to update this entry with new links from time to time. Get used to it. )

A bunch of really really useful information for users of Olympus C-5050/5060 cameras.

Andrzej Wrotniak is my kind of nerdy geek.

Another good C-5050 site: http://www.molon.de/5050.html.

The Road To Hell isn’t paved with good intentions. It’s asphalt just like all the other ones.

(Previous installments: One: Oklahoma panhandle, Two: The Red Button)

In truth, beside the red button incident, there was only one episode that could be considered hellish. It happened before the red button got stuck, in Wichita Falls, TX.

There’s a bus station in Wichita Falls, and it’s little more than a shed with a door in the side big enough to cart baggage out on those big-wheeled carts that look like relics from the 18th century. The time is somewhere around 2:30 or 3 AM, and we pull in to the tiny patch of asphalt with surrounding gravel cover. The scene outside is one of those perfect still nights, hot and humid, tungsten orange light giving perfect illumination for whatever happens after everyone else has gone to bed. There’s something I love about that light, but that’s another ‘blog entry.

Our bus, as I mentioned, is packed with people. There are only two or three open seats. All the overhead bins are full of those ubiquitous roll-on carry-on bags, jammed tight in a pattern that is the envy of Tetris players and Incan masons everywhere.

Looking out the window, I see a dozen people standing in the door of the station, looking expectantly at the bus. The driver disembarks, checks people’s tickets. He goes inside for what seems like a very long time, and emerges looking more pissed than ever, if that’s possible. Emerges from the building: A young man and a woman with a baby. He’s carrying a life-size cardboard cutout of Spider Man, folded in half. He’s glaring at the driver.

Every last one of those dozen people get on the bus, including Spidey and his wife. He’s searching for a place to jam the cardboard cartoon character into the overhead bins, and finally manages. All these new passengers are in a delicate position: Who will they ask to double- and triple-up? The driver comes on the PA and urges people to help out with the overcrowding. The baby starts crying. Etc. My Mexican friend must have given the newcomers an evil eye, because we retain our luxurious one-man-one-seat arrangement.

The newcomers eventually find seats, somehow, and once the baby quiets down, Spidey starts talking. He explains to a guy across the aisle (but loud enough to reveal that his audience is everyone on the bus) that they missed the 11pm bus because it was overcrowded, too. He goes on and tells the whole story of his travels to this poor sap who’s just trying to get some sleep, and everyone gets to overhear. It’s interesting enough that no one quiets him down, and it’s over soon enough.

His story is told in a melodious Tennessee accent, which I immediately recognize. Then, sure enough, he mentions that he’s from Memphis. He brought his whole family on the bus to attend an animé convention in Los Angeles. They (and we) are undergoing this torture because he’s a fanboy. No doubt his luggage is full of Sailor Moon paraphenalia, which he purchased in lieu of air fare.

Spidey quiets down eventually. Things smooth out… Folks breathe a sigh and go back into their little psychic cocoons, trying to think about how to go back to sleep. A sense of peace falls over the bus, a curtain, a haze of calm.

Until we hear the rumble strips again. Passengers wake and look at each other, shrugging. I look out the window, assuming we’ve been pulled over by a cop. I don’t see the tell-tale flashing lights. The bus slows and stops, and out the window I can see an exit sign. Our driver has stopped on the shoulder, but the back half of the bus is blocking the exit from the highway.

I can see the driver coming down the aisle. He’s stomping mad at something. Again, the passengers look fearful, and breathe a sigh of relief when he passes them by. He makes it to Spidey and just stands there, glaring down on him. The driver realizes he could get fired for what he wants to do, so he’s standing there in the darkness of the aisle, locked in combat with himself. Finally, he opens his mouth: “I really, really don’t appreciate what you said.” He tries to look tough as he turns and heads to the front of the bus.

The bus lurches forward, back onto the road. Spidey’s wife says, incredulously, just loud enough for everyone to hear, “He stopped the bus for that?”

The tension in the bus is like a drum head. The driver and Spidey have left it like that. For the remainder of the trip, the next three hours or so, no one sleeps except by sheer exhaustion, no one chats, and we are all simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Eventually we arrive at Fort Worth, with only a stuck red button to give us pause in the mean time. In Fort Worth, I get to change busses, which makes me very, very happy.

From the liberal weenies, to the rightwing nutjobs, this land was made for you and me.

Are we on the eve of destruction?

I already ‘blogged this picture, but it’s up on the server so I’ll show it again.

Amarillo bus station is right out of the 50s. That same green color is everywhere. The floors are that highly-polished terazzo with what looks like aluminum forms in it. The lighting is nauseus flickering flourescent.

And there are ten million people crammed into the bus station that should only really hold 50 at most.

We stopped at Amarillo for two reasons: To clean out the bus (meaning: the lavatory), and to switch drivers. Up until this point, the driver had been a normal guy. A bit large, probably votes Republican, smokes Marlboros. He laughed with passengers at the McDonald’s stop in Oklahoma, and generally gave no reason for offense.

We pulled in to Amarillo and he vanished. Poof. Contrast him with the new driver.

Everyone got back on the bus, and a whole throng of new folks, as well. I ended up sitting next to a man of Mexican descent to pretended not to speak English (I heard him in the station, and he might as well have been reciting Shakespeare). Yeah, cool, whatever. I don’t really want to get to know you, either.

We pull out, and the new driver goes through his spiel. He has obviously memorized a recitation which is adequate to expressing everything that needs to be said as a bus is pulling out, but which also expresses a total apathy towards the needs of anything or anyone who isn’t his boss. And that includes the massed throngs on the bus. An excerpt: “On the console above your head, there are some buttons that turn on lights and redirect airflow. There is also a red button. This red button makes a beep up here at the front of the bus. Do not press this button, because it might wake me up. I can’t stess this strongly enough: Do not press the red button, because I find it highly annoying.”

Keep in mind, we’ve pulled out of the station at around 11pm. We’re going to be traveling down US highway 287, between Amarillo and civilization (which takes the form of Dallas/Fort Worth, so I’m using the term in its relative sense). We’ll arrive in Ft. Worth at around 6am. That’s 7 hours that this guy has to drive while we try to sleep. I respect his position in this matter.

So we’re driving along. La dee da. We’re no more than a half hour out of Amarillo. I’m crammed in my seat, scanning out the window for anything that looks like anything besides formless darkness. And then: BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…. The rumble strips on the highway. Dude is driving the bus on the rumble strips. Then I hear the BZZZZZZZZZ from the front of the bus. Someone is pressing the red button. Some joker in the back says, “Hah! Better press that red button!” I feel the bus correct over the rumble strip again, back into a lane.

We all breathe a collective sigh of relief. And then it happens again. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR… Total strangers are looking at each other as if we’re all family and we’re about to die together. The message comes back from the front that there’s construction and we’re on a detour. There are no rumble strip adventures after that.

Later on, however, between Wichita Falls and… well, wherever. In there somewhere the busful of passengers has finally found a sort of equilibrium, where we’re all exhausted enough to get something resembling sleep. I, however, need to pee. I climb over my Mexican friend and tiptoe to the toilet.

In the toilet, there is a red button, just like over the seats. It does the same thing as the other red buttons, but it’s just to the side of the toilet seat. I sit down on the john, because the bus is jostling around and I’m not quick-witted enough at the moment to aim properly.

My business done, I open the door, make my way back to my seat, and prepare to dream of contortionism yet again. However, there’s an announcement from the irate bus driver, in that tone of voice seems to make an effort to be polite but is actually profoundly pissed off: “Someone has pressed the red button, and it is stuck on. Could whoever pressed the red button please press it again, so it will come unstuck.”

People look up from their seats, to see what’s going on. I immediately think about the red button in the bathroom, and head for the head. I make sure it isn’t stuck, and go back to my seat. Another announcement: “It’s still stuck. Could everyone please reach up and press your red button and make sure it’s not stuck?” A sea of hands raise up to their red buttons. My neighbor pokes at our button. I watch him do it.

The bus grinds to a halt. The most pissy bus driver in the history of the occupation begins walking back through the bus with a little flashlight, looking at and pressing every red button. The passengers exchange worried glances. They actually fear this man. Occassionally the driver makes a kind of stifled, half-swallowed vocalization that sounds like a curse word.

He gets to the row where me and my friend are sitting. He pokes the red button which is directly over my head, and the beeping stops. I watch him do it.

He’s too pissed/sleepy/whatever to even look at me or my seatmate. The beeping has stopped, so we can resume. He makes his way back to the driver’s seat and away we go.

My seatmate looks at me and says, in perfect English, “What does the red button do?”

Ahead: Still More Tales Of Terror From The Road To Hell

I mentioned the bus stories that would flow from my recent travels, but I haven’t told any. Here’s one:

The way my travels went, I took the train from Seattle, WA to Sacramento, CA, and there transfered to an east-bound train headed for Denver, CO. In Denver, I caught a transit bus from the train station to a park-and-ride about ten blocks from my friends’ house. I spent some time there, and then it was time to go to Houston, TX, where I grew up and where my family is.

If there had been a train connection, I would have taken it instead. But if you look at Amtrak’s route map, there’s a huge gap in connections across the southern half of the midwest, all the way from Nebraksa to Texas. It’s like there’s a huge impassable canyon they can’t build a railroad bridge over, except the canyon is just a bunch of wheat fields. In order to go by rail from Denver to Houston, I’d have to ride either to Chicago or LA for a transfer.

Anyway. So Greyhound told me they’d convey me across this vast field of wheat for $69 (without tax), which is pretty freakin’ cheap. And I took them up on it.

The first leg was pretty reasonable. I had two seats to myself. Denver to Colorado Springs to Pueblo and then out across the plains to US 287, across the panhandles of both Oklahoma and Texas, to Amarillo. “Amarillo by midnight…” I sat across from a guy who had planned to ride his bicycle from Pueblo to a tiny town in Oklahoma, but someone stole it. He said it was going to take him a day (which I doubt). He asked me if I partied, and asked me if they party down on the Gulf coast. I guess if you live in the panhandle of Oklahoma, there’s not much to concern yourself with other than getting shitfaced.

Right around the northern Oklahoma border, we went through a huge wind farm. More than a hundred wind turbines spinning gracefully on the Oklahoma plains, and the road went right through the middle of them. The guy across the aisle told me that this land was owned by a farmer who hadn’t been able to make it work farming or ranching, so he set up the windmills. Yay sustainable energy.

He also told me about sink-holes in the area, and how one time he and some buddies climbed down one that was out in the middle of nowhere, and when they got to the bottom, they found a smashed-up car, rotting away.

He got off in his tiny town, barely more than a gas station and grocery store. He kept wondering out loud about who he’d run into first; he apparently hadn’t told anyone he was returning to this little town after spending a couple years in Pueblo.

Next installment: Amarillo (or: The Road To Hell Is US Highway 287)

Matthew’s Beach. 13 4-second exposures combined in GIMP. I even managed to get some star trails (even if they do have gaps). The stationary dot is a bad pixel in my camera. Yay.

The reason for this exercise is that I read that some other guy did it. I wanted to try the process and see what difficulties I’d run into. The worst part is not being able to see much through either the preview screen or the viewfinder. I think I managed to push the tripod off level when I was looking through the viewfinder, which is why Lake Washington is draining to the right. The other worst part was watching as GIMP struggled under the strain of a 263 megabyte document (in memory.. file size is 96M). But GIMP wasn’t really struggling; it’s just supposed to make you nervous.

The source exposures look like this: