Conversations about Jacques Derrida, Dante and a former nun turned spiritual writer are not what one typically expects when a man walks in to make sure you are leaving a cheap hostel. Nevertheless, that is what happened. A hostel worker we hadn't seen the night before was very interested to learn that I had studied philosophy at university and was currently trying to read the Bible. An effort which I eventually failed at. Eventually, after much discussion, he realised we needed to be checked out and on our way.
We ended up getting a taxi ride to a book-store near our bus station. Our taxi driver was a middle-aged black man with a booming voice who you could just picture giving inspirational advice to some young sports star in a Hollywood film. He asked us where we were going, but seemed to realise at once that we were on an epic journey across the country. So after every destination he would ask "then where....then where?" He said he'd done a similar thing when he was "wide-eyed and innocent" like us. He said we were becoming "one of the elite", so we can tell our children about our experiences when they wanted to go out and explore. Then he asked us about our journey and we told him what had happened so far. He had lived in New York and found it hilarious that we had accidentally found ourselves in Harlem. "125th Street? Harlem! You know after 110 street that's spade city."
Eventually we found ourselves at yet another greyhound bus station. I started talking to a massive Samoan guy. Ed thought he was from New Orleans because he was wearing mardi gras style beads. He thought we were Italian but I have no idea why. He was a military man on his way to a base in El Paso. This was his first ever greyhound bus journey. His first bus journey would be our worst.
