GREYHOUND BUS OR ........HAVE I LOST MY MIND?

I don't know what I was ACTUALLY thinking when I decided to visit a friend via Greyhound/Kerrville Bus line. It SEEMED like a good idea at first...you know....."leave the driving to us" sort of thing....Initially it wasn't too bad. Going to my friend's house was a 500 mile drive....I was tired....we don't live close to an airport and they don't either.....to go by air would have meant 800 miles of extra driving just to get me to the airport....to pick me up and return me to the airport and then for my husband to retrieve me from the airport....so I felt flying wasn't a good alternative.

Driving myself.....I had worked all night and driving seemed a little dangerous. Besides, I was on a very tight time frame and so I couldn't wait a day and sleep in before I started out.

There is a bus station of sorts....if you can call a gas station with two benches a station IN OUR TOWN.

The first clue that this had been a bad idea came when I received my schedule. From my town, I was rerouted an hour and a half south. From there, I had to go north to Dallas which meant I was going to change buses twice.

The Dallas BUS STATION is a DISASTER!!!!! There is no separate information desk which means you have to stand in a long line to even ask 1 question. There are about 6 terminals ALL of which are accessed through the same door. Which means there are a multitude of people lined up and NO ONE seemed to know which line they needed to be in. There was no one to help us. People were cutting in line and there was no one to monitor the crowd. IT WAS A NIGHTMARE!!!!!

When I got to my destination, it was late and I was let out in what appeared to be outside an abandoned garage....I found out later that there is a detail business there but it sure didn't look like it. There was 1 bench and not 1 living soul anywhere in site. Luckily my friends arrived within about 10 minutes. Now....you may be thinking this was an unusal case.....NOT SO....Greygound has many bus drops like this one....it's scary!!!!!!!!!!

On the return trip, the bus was 11/2 hours late. There was no one at the bus drop so there wasn't any way of knowing ANYTHING...you just had to sit and wonder if the bus was going to EVER get there.

Once on the bus...there were only about 5 seats available. The bus was so crowded that one could hardly breathe. The aisles were narrow, the seats narrower....along the way we stopped in several deserted stops and picked up more people until there was only standing room....At one point a young woman sat on her boyfriend's lap so a really large young man could sit down. That left about 6 people standing in the narrow aisles.

I thought once we returned to Dallas the bus might not be as crowded.....WRONG.....it was just as bad......I sat there all night long...wishing I hadn't made the decision to take a bus.

My luggage got lost....apparantly in Dallas.....I had two exactly matching bags and only one made it to my next destination. How in the world could they separate two matched bags?

I made it home.....frazzled....exhausted.......and cursing Greyhound for their AWFUL organizational skills.....who in their right mind would:

1. Put pick-up stations in deserted, poorly lit places?
2. Have no agent available to help with questions or at least be knowledgeable enough to guide travelers. (There was a number on the door of the detail garage to call but a child answered the phone and the man who finally took the call told me he didn't know anything about when the bus would arrive but it was USUALLY 1 to 2 hours late!
3. Have a baggage handling system that is so poor, it has become notorius (I found this out after it was too late).
4. Be so short on employees that there wasn't SOMEONE IN CHARGE at the bus terminals?
5. Have buses so NARROW that people had to turn sideways to get up and down the aisles?

GREYHOUND/KERRVILLE BUS LINES NEEDS TO GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER.....THERE IS NO SECURITY.....NO ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS....IT WAS HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!