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Get on the bus and be ready to party all along the highway
Oakland Tribune, Jul 15, 2007 by Bari Brenner, TRAVEL EDITOR
THE PARTY started before the party started.
When I came across a box of old photos the other day, I remembered that and smiled. There in the photos, we were eating. And there we were at a rest stop. There we were eating again. There we were tossing snowballs around. There we were eating yet again. And there was our bus in front of the hotel.
That was a fun trip.
No, it wasn't a guided group bus tour. Nor was it a scheduled Greyhound ride. It was better, much better.
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It happened a few years ago, when a family event was scheduled in Spokane, Wash. I am a member of a very large extended family, most of whom live in the Seattle area, with a few settled in Portland, Ore., and the Bay Area -- plus that one small branch way over in Spokane. When the invitations went out, at least 100 of us RSVP'd that we'd be there for the celebration.
Because I live in California, too far to drive for just a weekend, I remember thinking I'd just fly straight to Spokane.
Then a cousin had a brainstorm. It was silly, she said, for a couple dozen cars from the edge of western Washington to drive to Spokane, on the edge of eastern Washington. It would waste gas. It would be tedious.
It just didn't make a lot of sense, she maintained, for a parade of cars to traverse the state, as we were all going to be staying at the hotel where the party was and wouldn't need cars to get from hotel to party. And the hotel was right in downtown Spokane -- not that big a place, anyway -- where we could find whatever we might need during those 50 or so hours we'd be in town.
Let's charter a bus, she suggested. "Who's in?"
A busload of us, that's who.
I wasn't going to be left out. I flew to Seattle, the departure point. Sure, I could have flown straight to Spokane, but like I said, the party started before the real party started -- on the bus - - and I had figured it would.
A few cousins took charge. One contacted charter bus companies and booked a large bus. Someone did the math and collected the fare, $25 or so, from each participant. Someone loaded the luggage onto the buses (Some anxiety was expressed halfway into the trip when an aunt's luggage was thought to have been left at the parking lot from which we departed, but it turned out to have been thrown in by somebody -- and the secreted bottle of Jack Daniels had broken).
Someone brought who-knows-how-many doughnuts that were offered as we boarded that briskly cold and drizzly winter morning. Someone kept track of empty/full seats after we paused at rest stops to use facilities (and throw snowballs at each other at a mountain pass) so no one would be left behind. Someone distributed sandwiches she'd made for everyone. (We got coffee and soft drinks at rest stops). Somebody brought out boxes of pastries.
By 10 a.m., bottles of champagne were brought forth.
While all this foodstuff was being passed down the aisle, three generations sang songs, passed a microphone around and told jokes and family stories (only some of which were NOT embarrassing).
We were almost partied out before we got to Spokane and the real party. Even the bus driver -- whose room at the hotel was paid for by all of us from the per-seat fee -- had a good time.
The trip back to Seattle after the event was fun, too. Fewer edibles. But, I do believe, more jokes and stories (some whispered about the behavior at the main party, of course).
So why am I relating this tale? It is, of course, the genesis of a travel tip: If you and a group of friends and/or relatives from the same area are going to a weekend wedding, anniversary celebration, special bithday party, family reunion, baptism, bar mitzvah, quinceaera, social club or hobby convention or other such event that's more than a few driving hours away -- consider going together on a chartered bus.
I can't say I'd recommend bus togetherness for a week-long journey (hello, airport!), but for a long weekend, it can be lots of fun.
(I've put a three- or four-day window on this, remembering that Benjamin Franklin brilliantly pointed out that "Fish and houseguests smell after three days." If family chartered buses were available in his time, I think he might have included them in his adage.)
How do you charter a bus? Look in the phone book and search online -- there are many choices. It takes a little work to get it all organized, but it's worth it.
Seacology is a Berkeley-based nonprofit organization concerned about the preservation of the world's island environments and their cultures. As we are in the middle of the major vacation season and many people are visiting islands -- from Hawaii to Tahiti to the Galapagos -- for fun in the sun, the organization has issued some tips to help save the planet's oceans and islands.
"Be they Caribbean jewels, exotic dots in the South Pacific, or obscure landmasses far out at sea, islands are among the world's most fragile environments," Seacology says in a press release. "Over the past 400 years, more than 50 percent of all plant and animal extinctions -- including an astonishing 90 percent of all bird species extinctions -- have occurred on islands. Indeed, no less than 72 percent of all plant and animal extinctions recorded in the U.S. have occurred in Hawaii, whose islands taken together account for less than two-tenths of one percent of our nation's land area."
