Small Girl, Big Suitcase Chronicles: Greyhound’s Last Straw

Navigating the world at 4 feet, 11 inches takes serious luck. Fortunately, I do believe that I am one of the world’s luckiest people after seeing the classic Lindsay Lohan 00’s MTV cinema darling, Just My Luck. One of the best romantic of all time warned me to cherish my lucky privilege and I do.

I say lucky because half of the bad things I imagine don’t happen to me the way it should. I get inconvenienced all the time in travel settings but it’s part of my nature. I am a small, queer, black, high maintenance, Virgo woman who has yet to graduate college who likes bright colors and flamboyant wigs. I come across strangers that may not get this immediately or completely. The most frequently asked question I get on the road is where I was from. The ability to decide was freeing enough for me, as home was often many places for me. It never occurred to me that some might find fear in that.

Regular travel choices become landmines quickly. If I sit next to the man who smells like alcohol, I am risking something. If I sit behind the lady with the screaming baby, I am losing something. If I can’t run fast enough to make it to the terminal with my luggage, I have to build in extra time for my legs to reach. At this point, it has become routine. I frequently travel back and forth from New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and DC. There is almost no clear, consistent and cheap way home. You can only usually get two out of the three, the most important to me being cheap. The broke college student that I am does not let me value anything less. That means, I go on some pretty wacky adventures everytime I visit different states.

There was the time there was a blizzard and me and my mom couldn’t make it fifteen minutes before turning back around and heading home. There was the time the Greyhound bus I was in had the bathroom stop working, the bus stop for repairs, the AC break, and the transmission go out on the middle of entering the Baltimore-Washington Parkway all in one night. There was the time me and my forensics team took a 10 hour Megabus from DC to Boston. There was the time I took an 11 PM train from New York to New Haven, walked from the station to the campus, had to wait outside Yale’s gates for my hosts, and walked around until sunrise. There was the time I missed my Greyhound bus and had to wait an hour and then the attendant who had let me miss the first bus asked for my number and I laughed so hard I spit out my gum before getting on the bus. Also note, my phone is never near full charge during any of these scenarios of course. (That was the day I said goodbye to Greyhound).

I do not have a driver’s license, meaning I belong to a statistic steadily increasing. I do not get to examine the act of traveling and movement as a tactical skill yet. Growing up, I had road anxiety and a distinct fear of failure that kept me from behind the wheel. Now that I am more settled,the panic is alleviated and I tend to have more flight anxiety than anything else. I became increasingly interested in environments where walking distance and bus routes and train ride were everyday phrases. And if all else failed, there was always Uber or Lyft.

For someone who not only relies on public transportation and travel, but likes it a lot, it did not make sense how much anger it caused me. I wanted better for our transportation systems. I thought I would have to be learning how to use a jetpack by now, come to think of all the cartoons I grew up walking. Now, I’m still scared to drive stickshift.

But Small Girl, Big Suitcase was who I was. I knew what snacks to bring, how much time earlier to tell my parents so we could actually get there on time, I knew how to pack in 10 minutes or 10 hours, I knew how to sneak past almost anything in my suitcase from my house for my apartment without anyone knowing. I knew how to look unapproachable and which seats to sit in. I vowed to never get a neck pillow. I still haven’t. I had a backpack and a roller duffel that stuck with my always. I really had a handle on millennial travel.

I have gotten used to anger as part of my routine. I was an angry traveler, a disgruntled passenger on any ride unless everything was working perfectly and smoothly. There are rules for my anger. I never take it out on anyone around me. I let myself have one freakout about it, usually on a venting app or some other form of media. I let myself sulk and grumble and fixate for about 30 minutes. But the beauty of travel is that you are never stagnant for long; there will always be forward motion. My anger moves on with us. Then I call my best friends and we talk, even the ones I haven’t seen in years. They have my undivided attention. Or I put my headphones in and I sleep. Or I grab a book out of my backpack and I read. (I could never get into the habit of pulling out a laptop, unless we were in a really fancy bus or train for a long time which violates the most important C of Travel Luck: cheap).

The destination becomes clearer each roll of the wheel or screech on the track until all there was left was a Small Girl with a really Big Suitcase (with gray hair) who didn’t look like she was from around here no matter where she went. Nobody could guess her age when she was Small Girl, Big Suitcase. Nobody wanted to, either. Nobody could pin her down when she was Small Girl, Big Suitcase. And most of the time, if not all the time, I enter the bus alone. Liberation and luck look like being able to fit into your suitcase and go somewhere if you plan it right and if you invest on the best environments for yourself.

I don’t plan to stop traveling. I plan for this wave to continue. Maybe if I get lucky, some college-age women of color will join me.