Cost Effective Traveling

Ben and I found a cheaper way to travel from NYC to home... the Sky Horse Chinatown bus company. We pay $30 during the week or $50 on the weekends to ride a charter bus from Chinatown in NYC to Cincinnati, Ohio. The trip takes 12 hours. We leave a "bus station" in Chinatown at 10pm and arrive at a Chinese restaurant/Perkins parking lot in Cincinnati at 10am.

Quite a deal.

The first time we took the bus, we prepared poorly for the long journey. But, the second time, we came ready. We learned from our mistakes.

We took shots of NyQuil. We wore comfy clothing. We brought neck pillows. We donned eye masks. We wore earbuds and listened to a "nap time" playlist. We munched on pre-packed apple slices.

I left no stone unturned, nothing to chance. We took the 12-hour journey very seriously.

The NyQuil made the journey smoother. It calmed my nerves. The bus drivers weren't necessarily bad drivers, just speedy. The swerving and the feeling of veering off cliffs often startled me awake. At times, I mistook us for extras in the movie Speed or The Fast and the Furious. Except, Keanu and Vin Diesel did not appear to slow down our bus.

Our bus made four stops during the 12-hour journey. The first stop happened at about 2am at a truck stop somewhere in Pennsylvania. We switched drivers there and took our only bathroom break.

The second stop happened at an abandoned hotel in West Virginia. The driver opened the bus door, yelled "West Virginia," booted riders, slammed the door shut, and then peeled out of the parking lot with (I imagine) a wicked grin on his face.

The third stop was on a side street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. We ran into a little problem on the way into Columbus because a marathon blocked most streets. The marathon made our driver very unhappy. He yelled a few choice words and drove down several streets to park elsewhere. People with suitcases ran from every direction and chased the bus, afraid of missing their one way to Cincinnati.

The fourth stop happened in Dayton, Ohio. We pulled into a strip mall parking lot where the driver yelled "Dayton." He again booted riders, slammed the door, and peeled out of the parking lot at a rather high speed.

We left skid marks all the way from New York to Cincinnati.

At each stop, the passengers looked uneasily at each other. The driver spoke with a thick accent, so the city names sounded a little different from how a native New Yorker or Buckeye might pronounce them. People constantly checked their cell phones and googled our locations to confirm our whereabouts.

As we left Dayton and drove onto the entrance ramp to the interstate, a guy seated in the middle of the bus yelled "STOP! I need off!" Ben and I looked at each other. Poor guy. Obviously, there was no going back.

Or was there?

The driver swerved to the right ON THE ENTRANCE RAMP and slammed on the brakes. He opened the door without a word. The guy jumped out of the bus, ran across a ditch, climbed over a fence, and then walked toward town.

I. Did. Not. Make. That. Up.

We arrived in Cincinnati an hour ahead of schedule... efficient or, perhaps, very scary. We relaxed at a Perkins restaurant and gave thanks for surviving the trip until our parents arrived to drive us home.

It's safe to say that if we survived the Chinatown bus trip twice, then we will survive anything.