[Editor's note: This is the third part of a serialized story about the journey from Connecticut to Minnesota to get the bus for the Juan Way tour. Read parts one and two.]
They hit their first major roadblock when their bus pulled into Pittsburgh around 9:30 a.m. on March 7. The Pittsburgh Intermodal Station had temporarily closed, so the Greyhound bus instead stopped at a claustrophobic little building on the outskirts of town. Bus stations are rarely comfortable places, but this place was worst than most. It was directly under the highway, pressed up against a large brick wall on one side. On the other side, across the black Ohio River, they could see the silhouettes of abandoned factories, shadows of faded industry. As if to make their surroundings even more depressing, the makeshift station was right near a prison.
John, Ali, Max, and Jae were all eager to get out of Pittsburgh as soon as possible. But no sooner had they stepped into the station the local television station warned of a massive snowstorm that had blanketed the Midwest. Greyhound employees told the assembled passengers in the station that there would be no buses headed west for three to four days. They were stranded Pittsburgh.
As the night wore on, the station became even more crowded as more people came off buses from the east and found themselves at a dead end. Max, realizing that there was virtually no chance of him getting to Minnesota and back before midterm exams, reluctantly took the next bus headed back toward New York. Ali, John, and Jae, meanwhile, hunkered down for a very long stay.
Ali was particularly mortified by what he saw during his stay in Pittsburgh. Most of the people stranded in that station were extremely poor and couldn’t afford hotel rooms. Bus station employees provided cots, but they didn’t have enough for everyone. Eventually, they provided free cups of water as well, but no food. Ali, John, and Jae helped set up the cots, but practically everyone in the station came to the unanimous conclusion that women and children should have access to the cots first, and the adult men could sleep on the floor if none were left over.
For two nights, Ali, John, and Jae slept on the floor of the station. To pass the time, Ali began writing stream-of-consciousness observations in the Moleskine notebook he had brought with him. At one point, he wrote:
lonesome faces. you can tell they too have the pittsburgh
city blues. lou’s not here to sing us no tunes
but then again, pigs feet are very hard to come by round
these parts. us vegetarians don’t have a chance
It was his first experiment with poetry. When he later returned to UCONN, he changed his major from political science to English so he could study poetry.
On the third day, March 9, the three ragged travelers wandered Pittsburgh in search of something, anything, to pass the time. Jae and Ali bought some Captain Morgan, poured it into a half-empty bottle of Arizona iced tea, and took surreptitious swigs of it in a local diner. John, never much of a drinker, came along but declined a drink.
They didn’t go back to the temporary Greyhound station that night. Ali and Jae, sick of sleeping on cold tile, convinced John that they should split the cost of a room at the Holiday Inn Express. For the first, and only, time on that trip, John and Ali spent the night in a place with beds and showers.
Continue reading the story here.
