I was on the road again this week, and this time it wasn’t on my bike. 
While I have had some great rides already this spring, including several with the lads and lasses of the Northfield Bicycle Club, I’m talkin’ about ridin’ the Dog. As in Greyhound, the venerable inter-city transport of the American working class. I attended to some business by busing it down to Louisville, Kentucky rather than flying.
I rode buses a lot when I was in college (mostly the then-MTC in the Twin Cities, where I attended the University of Minnesota, and occasionally inter-city buses). I last rode Greyhound when returning from a bicycle trip to Mexico with my brother Scott in the spring of 1980. Leaving Northfield on April 1, 1980 (no fooling), we had grandiose plans to bike from Northfield through the heart of the country, cross into Mexico at Matamoros, tool down to the Yucatan peninsular, cross to the Pacific coast, wend our way back up to California, and eventually return to Minnesota. After three weeks (including a spring break Gulf Coast long weekend detour to Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island) of riding, including the last three days into a hot south head wind, we bused down to Villahermosa, biked a bit more, and decided we valued our lives more than further road biking experience in Mexico. We bused back through Mexico, caught a Greyhound at the border, and ended our trip in Northfield after three grueling days on the bus. That slaked my thirst for bus travel for the next 28 years…
Anyway, getting back to this week’s adventure. I’m back in the rain-barrel-making business, and arranged to pick up a rental truckload of barrels from my supplier (an undisclosed distillery in Kentucky) to make my next batch of rain barrels. Flying down to Louisville would have been the sane thing to do to begin the trip, but I am rarely mistaken for a sane person, so I decided I’d save a few bucks, save some carbon dioxide emissions and spend 16 hours observing humanity instead by riding the bus. Coach bus is the most efficient mode of inter-city travel according to analyses I’ve seen. 
A recent study commissioned by the American Bus Association (I know, follow the money, but this seems to be an objective analysis) yielded the following results shown graphically at right.
Anne, my long-suffering wife, took me to the St. Paul Greyhound depot near the Capitol on University Avenue Tuesday evening after we had a wonderful Japanese dinner at Tanpopo Noodle Shop. I boarded the bus at 10:00 pm with the usual crowd of interesting bus folk: teenagers with low-riding baggy pants, mothers with squalling kids, bedraggled oldsters, etc. I fit right in with the motley crowd.
The 55-passenger bus was packed, so I had a seat mate, a large one as is often the case on Greyhound. After exchanging a few pleasantries, I was hoping to read for a while, then sleep the rest of the way to Chicago (where I would transfer to another bus for Louisville after a two-hour layover). I read for a couple of hours, and was just beginning to drift off, when my seat mate decided I needed to know about the woes in his life: the sadness of his finding out that his Minneapolis lady friend with whom he was having a telephone (yes telephone, not internet) romance was more interested than the money he regularly sent to her from his home in Rockford, IL than in seeing him in the flesh, the pain of being 33 and single, etc. No bus trip would be complete without something like this happening, so I was glad it was out of the way early on.
From Chicago on I was mostly partner-free, so I could stretch my legs, read, and watch spring unfold before me. By the time we reached Louisville around 4 pm, cherry trees, crab apples, magnolias and daffodils were in bloom, and it was a beautiful 70-degree afternoon. I hefted my backpack, and started the seven-mile hike to the Penske truck rental location where I would pick up my 26-foot diesel-powered steed. After making my way to the edge of downtown Louisville, the neighborhood got pretty sketchy. Deteriorating shotgun shacks gave way to mile after mile of mostly abandoned industrial sites. The last two miles or so were along a fairly busy urban arterial street, where I counted no less than 10 strip clubs. Most of them had signs welcoming visitors for the upcoming Kentucky Derby. (I just checked, and the posh Churchill Downs is just a couple of miles away…the typical tale of two cities.)
The next morning the good folks at 
(undisclosed–proprietary information! Call me if you’re curious!!) Distillery loaded up my 70 used oak bourbon barrels, the ostensible reason for this adventure, and I was homeward bound. A short 17 hours later (including a 45-minute stop in Grinnell, Iowa to see my daughter Maia for a late-night snack on the Grinnell College campus, numerous torrential rain downpours, and several truck stop cappuccinos) I was back in bed in Northfield by 4:15 am Thursday. I think I’ll be content to wait more than another 28 years for my next Greyhound adventure.
This was a beautiful batch of bourbon barrels in excellent condition! 
I’ll be delivering a number of completed rain barrels this coming Monday to eager customers in the Twin Cities area, and still have plenty of remaining barrels to satisfy Northfield-area customers or anyone able to pick up their barrel here in Northfield. (Delivery is possible in the Twin Cities area as well, for a fee.) My supplier unfortunately jacked up the price on me, so I have to raise my prices a bit for the finished rain barrels. Check out “Rain barrels made from recycled oak bourbon barrels” for more details if you want to add a beautiful, functional rain barrel to your home or business.