Don't be disrespecting me (biatch)

So me and Hannah are in Tacoma now. It's good to be here staying with Mike and Reba again. They are such lovely people and excellent hosts. For readers who don't know, Mike and Reba met my parents when they were out hitchhiking over 30 years ago, they have stayed in touch since. This is a long blog, so I tried to make it funny, it helped me get through it.....don't feel you have to....I understand......:(

Anyway, since my last blog I have slept very little. In my whole time in the US, I have never felt physically threatened, I have watched tramps fighting at 4am in SanFran and been shadowed by drug dealers in downtown LA, but never felt in danger of physical violence. So this is the story of how tiredness can nearly land you with an LA bus driver's boot up your ass, but in the end, how I'm always right, even when I'm wrong.

While the fishing trip I did was great, you have to realise that I had got up at 4am that morning (having gone to bed at 12:30am). I had fished from 6am until 4pm, and then walked back up hill (I mean, San Fran hills.....) to the hostel. That night/morning at 1am we went to the greyhound station, this time unaccompanied by a smelly tramp (see You can have my money...when I finally publish it). We then bussed it ALL the way from SanFran to Tacoma in one. Check it on a map, that's pretty much Loughborough to Rome by bus....(and I have done that). We were scheduled to arrive in Tacoma that day at 9pm. We had a few midnight changes, the kind where you wake up, hear a place you're going to followed by a number, grab your bag, look for that number, walk to it, wait, show a ticket and get back on another seat and sleep. No one talks, and sometimes it feels just like a dream, with a few random tramps in it. Well we were waiting at this one stop, and our soon to be driver said 'you guys don't talk much' while he checked our ticket. Well we were instantly defensive, explaining that we had been up for to long (It being a 3am change and all....). Turns out he just wanted to offer us the front seat next to him, so we wouldn't 'disturb him with our yakking'. Great! A seat together and we were last in the que! There is NOTHING worse than a 10 hour coach journey next to a fat smelly person you don't know....it's bad enough if you do know them, but at least you can lean on their shoulder and dribble without causing offense. I think I really worried this one fat woman...she told me she was running away from her husband....the next thing she knew, my head was asleep on her shoulder, accompanied by a sympathetic pool of my dribble. I hope she didn't think I was making my moves on her, not that there's much difference between my moves and me just dribbling on someone. For the perplexed among you, I have always dribbled in my sleep....I have come to accept there is nothing I can do about it....the audiotapes didn't work and the 'Dry Nights Self-Help' book suggested I wear rubber pants....I don't think the librarian understood me.

Anyway, it was at one of those ungodly hours and we had a stop in the back end of nowhere, round the corner from Assvile and just down the road from Gene-Pool Creek, the kind of place where a bus arrival makes news. Up until now, we had had the model of a greyhound driver. He was polite, punctual and proudly wore several gold (plastic imitation) badges awarded to him by GreyHound for his service. He also wore a standard issue Greyhound torch on his Bus Driver Utility Belt (Order yours now in time for Christmas) and a side parting you couldn't fault. I imagine his badges were awarded for things such as Politeness, Punctuality and superb attention to Hair Presentation. I think he was the kind of guy that would have been the star-kid at scout camp, and once into the real world, realised he couldn't live without someone giving him badges every time he wiped his ass successfully. Maybe that's unfair...anyway....the model driver left us in this inbred backwater at 6:30am as his clock was full. So there we were, a bus load of tired passengers, removed from our bus for 'cleaning', which was actually a euphemism for rummaging through our bags and replacing the toilet role in the 'toilet' which was apparently supplied for 'our convenience'.

That's what I love about America. Everything is for 'your convenience' not theirs. What bullshit!!

I know for a fact it's more convenient for them to supply a toilet because it's much more 'convenient' to have one guy plug a hose into the back of a bus every 100 miles than go around on hands and knees turd spotting. It's far easier, and 'convenient' for me to drop my mess wherever I happen to be on the bus and so much harder for them to remove it from the windscreen, or wherever it may have lodged during an emergency stop. You see, it's a brilliant lie they have created to make you think they are serving you, when it fact, you are serving them. This goes right to the top in America. It's the whole 'Have a nice day' crock of shit that started sometime after sales teams realised you could train politeness. You KNOW they don't care behind that till. They know you know they don't care. No one cares about anyone, we get that. But no, the Americans had to go and just pretend, because it spreads goodwill and kindness.....baa humbug. Damn you Walt Disney.

oooooooooooook

PART II

That was a tangent and a half. Hope I didn't dent the American dream too much there. So anyway, this model bus driver has left us (who, by the way, was raised polite and not taught it during a half-hour sales team video in between 'Health and Safety' and 'How to Wipe Your Arse'). The next driver however, was a very different breed all together.

He was driven in half an hour late by his wife in front of a bus load of heat exhausted passengers, desperate to get back on the bus where all out food and belongings were. We all rushed him as he strutted to the bus we and were promptly told to go and wait in the bus station until we were 'called to out boarding gate'....oh how glamorous can you make a coach sound....

Anyway, me being me, I wasn't really in the mood for all this power-trip petit bureaucrat guff and wanted to check that our water bottles hadn't been thrown away during the bus 'cleaning'. I explained to the driver that it was five hours until the next stop and wanted to know if we needed to buy some more water, in case ours had been thrown away. He looked at me, and I knew he hadn't listened to a word I had said. I politely explained my seat was just above the stairs, I wouldn't need to go into the bus, just peer over and check.

'NO' he bellowed......'OK' I said. The second he turned his back, I just quickly whipped up the stairs and was about to peer over when he banged the barrier hard a few times in front of me and shouted 'NO MEANS NO'.

Now that pissed me off. It takes a lot to do that. Ok, not that much when I'm tired.

There really was no need to act like that. He lost his cool and instantly all of my respect. No one has said 'NO MEANS NO' to me since I asked twice to play in the sand-pit at nursery. So I looked him straight in the eye, bear in mind he was a 6,4 Black LA bus driver, and I calmly said 'OK means OK' and turned my back. Now, I didn't know much about this guy, but I knew I had already REALLY pissed him off. He shouted at me a lot and I think I heard 'get your ass back here.....'

I walked calmly into the depot and quickly changed my clothes, so as not to be instantly recognisable. I may be passive aggressive, but I'm not an idiot.

I saw him coming and placed on my dark glasses so he couldn't read my eyes. He went down the que looking for me and eventually did find me. In front of the whole que he shouted 'you, I want a word with you'. I purposely ignored him, so he'd have to shout again, ensuring the whole que was following the debate with a mild interest. Sure enough he bounded over and got in my face. It went something like this....

BBLABD (big black LA bus diver): I didn't appreciate what you said back there

Me: I just wanted to check if I had any water.

BBLABD: I just feel you were disrespecting me man, you need to respect me blah blah, I'm a big guy...

Me:what do you mean 'you're a big guy', what does that have to do with anything?

BBLABD: What it means is I'm a big guy and if I had to, id put my foot up your ass, that's what.

ME: are you threatening me with physical violence, because that isn't very professional ( this really pissed him off, I think he actually twitched a bit)

BBLABD: No, I'm not a professional (at this point I scanned his uniform for a number/name and he shouts...) 'OH you want to know my name, well its Blabd, OK, and what are you going to do about it?'

You see, I knew I wasn't going to do anything about it. This is the game I play with bouncers and other professional big guys who are just waiting for that one excuse to beat the crap out of you. The game is, you tease them, and don't ever give them an excuse. I promise you, there is nothing more infuriating for them. As a skinny white guy, this was is my only method of revenge against these bullying lumps of muscle, just being very English and polite. The image of Tom and Jerry with Spike the dog, tied to the chain, where Tom has measured it out and drawn a line and stands there blowing raspberries.....

At this point, he remembered he had another power, other than 'putting his foot up my ass' which was to chuck me off the bus. I also conceded, not wanting to spend one more minute in Imbredsville, but he had no grounds and I didn't want to give him any. We both kind of stepped of the offensive. He admitted he had slept badly and may have been short tempered. I said:

'I may have been a little rude, but there is always a place for courtesy (greyhound advertise their drivers as being so) and I don't feel you were very courteous.'

There was no disagreeing, I had been a little rude, nothing more and he had over reacted. He said that as a bus driver in LA there were a couple of times when he thought it was going to have to come to it.

I would have hated to have had him in my playground, and I went to Boothwood. I asked him did he honestly think I'd start on him, 'do I look like a have a suicide wish?'. At this he finally laughed.

We both laughed. Him because I'd acknowledged his physical prowess and massaged his ego, and I was just happy to get back on the bus and tell the awaiting passengers about how I made our driver flip....he was already a villain owing to his lateness. I counted 30 sympathetic tuts during the recounting of my story.

He did however get his revenge. He placed a woman next to me in Hannah's place and for the next 4 hours, I was sat next to a fatty on the run from her husband. Oh man did she get a wet shoulder.