Why On Earth I Took a Greyhound to Atlanta

The day had finally come when it was time to move a close friend of mine home from her internship at the Georgia Aquarium, and this meant I needed to find a one-way method of transportation up there. It may have taken a couple glasses of bourbon to originally convince me that taking a trip from Jacksonville, FL to Atlanta, GA via Greyhound bus was a good idea, but I decided why not go for it.

I would be driving my friend’s car home after the weekend, so I just needed some cheap and effective means of getting to the Dirty South. It was either a $200 flight that I would’ve had to left work early for on Friday, a Mega-Bus trip that didn’t get me in until 4am Saturday morning, or a good ole’ Greyhound bus that left at 7am and got me in right around 1pm. Out of all the options, Greyhound seemed to be the easiest, and would later turn out to teach me quite a few lessons along the way.

As I told some friends in the office about this trip, word had quickly spread I was taking a Greyhound to Atlanta in the morning. People became legitimately concerned for my safety, and asked me why the hell I would choose to take a Greyhound. I didn’t feel like explaining the entire situation to every single person, so I shortened my response to “I was feeling adventurous, and have a ride home Sunday.”

Now, there was actually some truth behind that statement. As a consultant who travels regularly for work, the idea didn’t scare me and I knew it would definitely be an adventure. Sure, this was no business class flight (which I could’ve done using my airline miles if I wasn’t saving them for Europe), but I’m 6’5” and over 200 lbs — safety was not my biggest concern.

With that said, I still threw a knife in my jacket pocket Saturday morning, and caught a ride (from a great friend willing to drive me at 6am) to the station in downtown Jacksonville. For those of you who know the downtown of either city, you know why it’s at least a little more comforting to be packing some sort of heat. I figured it was best to leave the Glock in my Mazdy that day.

The Greyhound station in downtown Jacksonville was actually much nicer than I was expecting, and didn’t once feel even slightly uncomfortable. I was shuffled right onto the bus, and got a row to myself. At this moment, I realized just how diverse a big city can be, and how sheltered from that I was as I lived my life in a completely different world.

The first lesson learned was never judge a book by its cover. The following is a legitimate conversation that happened shortly after, between a young man with his dreaded hair in a Bob Marley-type hat and a young red-headed woman with more tattoos and piercings than most of the girls in Orange is the New Black combined:

[Girl must give up her two seats to accommodate a mother and child, and sits next to the young gentleman]

Girl: Y’all peoples ain’t been raised right, but here take my seat; Y’all so rude. [Turns to man] Except you, you’z a cute lil’ hood rat.

Guy: I ain’t no hood rat, whatchu’ talkin’ bout?

Girl: C’mon homie, we both know you ridin’; ain’t nothing to be ‘shamed of. Look at you, you hood fo’ sho’.

Guy: A’ight girl, you damn crazy.

[The man puts his headphones on, and the girl continues to try to obtain the Vitamin D and talk about how rude people are for at least another 10 minutes without response before finally shutting her lips]

The young lady was clearly wrong to judge here, because according to this young gentleman, he was indeed not a hood rat. Also, it took that girl at least a minute before she offered up her seat too, but hey it pretty sure doesn’t count if you do a good deed and then don’t brag about it to everyone afterwards.

After about two hours into the trip, the “conductor” (as she referred to herself) decided then was the perfect time to make this announcement, and informed us that she apologized for anyone who thought they had boarded the express bus (which I had), and that the actual express bus broke down and now we were on the regular Greyhound route. What did this mean? Instead of taking one straight shot from Jacksonville to Atlanta with one quick stop and arriving at 1pm, we were now going to be stopping in just about every major town between here and there, and arriving “sometime around 3:30pm.”

Whatever — at least I had my laptop with me, and decided this would be a good time to break it out and crank through some Netflix and see how my new personal finance course was doing. WRONG. I did a quick test using Ookla SpeedTest on my phone, and found out the WiFi was pushing out a solid 0.4Mbps. For those of you who that number means nothing to, it would basically make the first version of AOL Dial-Up look fast. I was not happy. What was I supposed to do now, look out the window for the next six hours?

Well, that’s exactly what I did. We were off the highway at this point heading towards our next station, and as you may know, they usually don’t place their stations next to Crate&Barrel stores. I was amazed by what I saw; it was a lifestyle I had never seen before. I didn’t grow up very wealthy, and I’ve been completely responsible for my own success and money since graduating high school — but this still was totally different.

What few solid structures were left in this area looked as if they were from the 50’s. The majority of residences were trailers surrounded by overgrown yards and children’s toys outside. But then I saw the people themselves — enjoying the beautiful Saturday morning like they had a million dollars and not a care in the world. I saw a father playing with his son in a tiny “kiddie” pool, with one of the largest grins on his face that I’ve ever seen someone have. The mother was a few feet away spraying two little girls with a garden hose, and they were having the time of their lives.

This trend continued on all the way to the station, even as the conditions got worse. I’m sure they would’ve loved to have some extra money, but wouldn’t we all? It didn’t take any money for these people to enjoy a beautiful Saturday afternoon with their family, yet the majority of us think the more money we have, the happier we’ll be.

I agree that money has allowed me to take some incredible trips and have experiences that many people never will. However, the less you’re used to having, the greater the reward will be when you’re finally able to experience new things, whether that be a new sprinkler to play in, or a trip to Italy for the first time. When you don’t have the money to buy anything you want — whenever you want — you learn to value the little things a lot more.

After some quick research, I made an executive decision to spend no more than two hours watching the first couple episodes of House of Cards on Netflix, and eat up roughly 3 GB of data my phone. We were surrounded by woods now, and as beautiful as Mother Nature looked today, I needed to make my fellow millennials proud and at least numb my brain a little bit with some binge watching. Knowing the other people on my cell plan would kill me if I watched any more, I decided to be productive and write this article instead.

The rest of the trip seemed to go by fairly quickly from this point on, and all was well — aside from smelling shit because I was three rows up from the toilet. For a while I wasn’t sure if this was the cause, or if someone was just eating Taco Bell; it was indeed not Taco Bell. So with that said, my final lesson would be that sitting at the back of the back of the bus should only be done on college road trips, and avoided any other time. Even then, all it takes is one drunk freshman puking in the bathroom to ruin that.

Looking back, I realized I could’ve actually rented a car, including gas, using my corporate rate for about $20 more than this trip was, saved a couple hours of time, and avoided all the negative aspects of this trip. But hey, then this article would have never been written, so here’s to being adventurous and inspired to be productive because of it.

Stops made before arriving in Downtown Atlanta: Lake City, Valdosta, Tifton, Columbus, La Grange, and ATL Airport

About the Author: Justin Kelsey is a business consultant by day, and a sleepless idea generator by night. When he’s not binge watching something on Netflix, he’s working on writing articles, building a new company, or filming online courses. Owning his first company at age 14, he has since been a part of many other ventures and consulting projects, alongside heavy involvement with the University of Florida. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn, or follow him on Twitter to stay updated with new posts and opinions on relevant (and not so relevant) news, not written in third-person like this.