Safe Travels

It was a Wednesday afternoon, the last day in May, but the temperatures were already soaring. I sat in a rundown bus station in Tennessee, waiting for the bus that would take me on my first solo road trip. I was going to a conference in Orlando for young leaders of tomorrow.

The bus station was a mess! There was no phone charging station, no restaurant, not even vending machines. All it had was a few rows of benches, one outlet which the passengers fought over to charge their phones, and oddly enough, a kiosk for souvenirs and football merchandise. They had space for that, but not food?!

While I waited with my parents, another young woman walked through the door. She looked older than me, but only by a few years. Everything she wore was black, from her makeup down to her sneakers. She looked like she could kill you as soon as look at you. She sat on the bench behind us, accompanied by an elderly couple who I assumed were her grandparents. She kept telling them that they didn't have to stay; the bus could get delayed, and they'd get bored waiting. But they insisted. They said they wanted to make sure she got on the bus safely.

Minutes ticked by until our departure time loomed. Through the narrow window, I saw a bus pull up. Must be ours! People lined up at the gate, but the employees weren't letting anyone on the bus. Everyone exchanged confused looks and grumbles as the time dragged on, first ten minutes, then thirty, then nearly an hour. A man at the front of the line talked to the employees and learned the reason for the delay: the bus driver forgot something and had to go back home for it.

While we waited, her family chatted with mine. I learned that she was headed to Orlando too; she was going to a con in a different part of the city. My mom asked her if it was her first time traveling alone. She said no; she’d done it before, just not to Florida. Then the other woman said something that made my heart sink.

“God, I hope we don’t get stuck in Atlanta overnight! We’ll miss our transfer at this rate,” she mentioned offhandedly to her grandparents.

My imagination ran wild at the thought of spending the night in a strange city, each scenario worse than the last. I was so scared, I started to cry a little. “Let’s just go home. I don’t want to be stranded!”

My dad shook his head. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

At this point, the woman turned around and saw me crying. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” she said with a slight smile. “I’ve got your back. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“Thank you.” I sniffled, wiping my tears. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Finally things were starting to go right for the first time since I arrived in that dingy bus station!

My mom smiled, while my dad looked at her with a serious expression. “You’ll look after her, right?”

The other woman nodded, “I will, I promise.”

Well over an hour behind schedule, we finally said goodbye to our families and boarded the bus. The sun had already set by the time we got on the road. The bus puttered down the interstate, bypassing all the smaller towns along the way to make up for lost time. I wasn’t the only person on the bus who the woman in black took care of that night. Anything anyone needed, she had it. The guy across the aisle broke his earbuds? She had an extra pair. The old man a couple of rows back forgot his phone charger? She had a spare. She even brought a power bank, “Just in case the bus outlets don’t work,” she said.

“I always bring more than one of these,” she said, handing her spare charger to the guy behind us. “For situations like this, or just in case mine gets lost or breaks.”

She put on some music while I stared at my phone, religiously watching our estimated arrival time on the bus app. The time showed 11:50 PM, ten minutes before our transfer. I tapped her on the shoulder, showing her the time. She shook her head. “We’re still at least an hour from Atlanta. That time could change. You’re better off buying a one-way ticket for the next bus going to Orlando. You might be out the money if we make our transfer, but you’re guaranteed a seat on the next bus if we don’t.”

The woman in black knew what she was doing. We got to Atlanta around midnight, just minutes after our transfer was supposed to leave. “Get your bags, and get inside as fast as you can,” she warned, her eyes scanning the street for suspicious characters as we exited the bus.

We grabbed our bags and joined the crowd gathered around the gate where our transfer was supposed to leave, hoping, praying we hadn’t missed the bus. Finally, an employee made the dreaded announcement, “If you were supposed to be on the midnight bus to Orlando, that bus has already left. You’ll have to go to the front desk and rebook your ticket.”

There was a mad dash as passengers beelined for the front, pushing and jostling each other to be first in line. Everyone was screaming and swearing, but not her. She was as calm and polite as could be as she spoke to the employee. “Excuse me, sir. I already booked a ticket for the next bus to Orlando, just in case this happened. Do I need to join that line, or am I good?”

The poor guy, defeated and beat down by so many rude passengers, smiled. His smile turned into a soft chuckle. “No, you’re good. That was good thinking on your part!”

We were stuck in that Atlanta bus station for nearly seven hours. The whole time, the woman in black stayed awake and kept watch for any sign of trouble while I napped off and on. She said she wouldn’t be able to sleep in those chairs anyway. Two hours left until our transfer, we were chatting together, snacking on Slim Jims and Cheez-its when a creepy guy about our age approached us. He started hitting on me, saying he was a record producer. While he was talking, she discreetly got a security guard’s attention. He asked to see the creepy guy’s ticket and escorted him out.

Everyone was exhausted and hungry by the time we boarded the bus the next morning. We stopped at a convenience store in a small Georgia town for breakfast. As we exited the bus, the delicious smell of biscuits and gravy from the restaurant next door wafted through the air. I headed that way, but the woman in black shook her head. “It’ll take too long, and we’ll miss the bus!”

She bought enough food to feed an army: chips, crackers, candy, snack cakes, and sodas. Not only did she share with me, she offered food to everyone else sitting nearby. True to her word, she stayed with me until we arrived in Orlando that afternoon, only leaving my side when my uber arrived. Also, true to her work, nothing bad happened to me.

The woman in black was a wealth of knowledge on travel. She said she had to learn the hard way. On her first road trip, she wound up stranded without money. Instead of being kind, people laughed at her. She said she didn’t want that to happen to anyone else. I like to think something good came out of her experiences. If it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have known how to help me. Thanks to her kindness, now I have the confidence to face the road on my own. I’ve made many more trips since then, and every time I set foot on a bus, I think of her.