Editor,
The Greyhound bus itself was great except there was no reading light available, so once it was dark I couldn’t read.
But the bus depots….
Oh my God!
The first stop for me was Williams Lake around 11 a.m.
There was one employee in the building. She was cooking in the restaurant and trying to run the till at the same time. She had food cooking on the grill and seated customers waiting for it.
I had thought I would grab something to take with me since our stop was only 15 minutes. She was far too busy to deal with bus passengers, but I did mange to buy a bottle of water.
Next stop was Cache Creek where I had to change buses. Again, it was 15 minutes.
By the time I changed buses and found a bathroom, I figured I had best just stay on the bus.
Last stop was Kamloops. I thought for sure I would get some lunch there.
Being a bigger centre, I expected more and besides our stop there was for 40 minutes. It was about 3 p.m. when we arrived there.
I left my coat on the bus since it was warmer by then and my sweater was plenty warm.
There was one employee in the whole bus depot. He was selling bus tickets and his lineup went right out the door, probably because there was a bus leaving fairly soon for Vancouver.
The only food available was some homemade sandwiches beside him, almost all of them meat sandwiches and they were not in a cooler. I wondered how long they had been there.
(Especially because on my way home four days later the sandwich pile looked exactly the same!)
Regardless, I couldn’t get to him to buy one anyway with the lineup he had in from of him. I saw the coffee machine and thought, ‘oh well I’ll get a hot chocolate’.
The machine didn’t take bills. My only change was on the locked bus!
A woman near me heard my frustration, (I probably swore out loud), and volunteered $1.50 so I could get my drink.
I sat down to enjoy it and soon began a conversation with the woman beside me telling her I had not eaten all day. The woman on the other side of me heard me and offered an orange.
She said she hadn’t planned on eating it anyway. I gladly accepted and thanked her sincerely.
I had not planned to bum my way to Kelowna!
The two women I was conversing with informed me they always brought their lunches with them when travelling on the bus.
It had been a few years since I had taken a bus trip, and on the last many trips I had taken, there were opportunities to buy food at every stop. The bigger problem then, being not to eat too much.
If the bus line wants more passengers, wouldn’t it be a good idea to stop at places where their customers could buy some food?
Ginnie Dunn Webb
Quesnel