A Ride on the Bus

A Ride on the Bus

As we left the Emergency Room of Cedar City Hospital, my wife and I had a problem. Cedar City, Utah, is a fine place to live, but we lived in Santa Maria, California. We had five young children, each other, and one wrecked van. A middle-age man with a cheery disposition introduced himself to us.

“Hello,” he said, “My name is Keith Anderson. I’m a social worker here at the hospital. My job is to help patients with non-medical problems.”

With his help, we obtained a motel room. Cindy and the children stayed there while I dealt with the Utah Highway Patrol accident investigators, insurance adjusters, tow truck driver and wrecking yard operator. Keith also helped me package what belongings we could salvage. We filled about three good sized boxes. This process took most of the day.

We decided the best way for us to get home was to take a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles and then to Santa Maria. What I really should have done was call on the phone and pled for someone to pick us up and take us home. But with a large family and lots of belongings, that didn’t strike us as practical. The Greyhound from Cedar City to LA left at 12:05 pm and 8:30 pm. It was already 10 am when we told Keith we would take the bus. We figured we would take the 8:30 bus, since we didn’t have time to get packed, get some money, and buy our bus tickets. Keith insisted we could get ourselves to the 12:05 bus. To our amazement, we were at the bus station, ready to go, ten minutes before the bus left.

The last thing this man said to us was “The impossible just takes longer.”

In Cedar City, we were told we would arrive in Los Angeles at 10:30 pm and depart for the coastal cities at 12:30 am. We dreaded the layover in LA, but decided to hang in there.

Taking five young children on a long bus ride does not sound easy, and it’s not. But our children were very well behaved and totally cooperative. Eventually, they all fell asleep.

At about 10:30 pm, our bus drove past the drunks on skid row, passed a gang breaking into a parked car, and into the large Greyhound Bus Terminal. We dragged our family off the bus and into the waiting area. We had a two hour wait and there were no empty seats in sight. It gets worse. Just because it seemed like the thing to do, we went to the Information Desk, which was in the center of the waiting area. I read the list of departure times for the buses heading up the coast towards our destination. The only route that listed Santa Maria as a stop left five hours later, at 3:30 am. Cindy insisted we ask the man at the information desk about the 12:30 am bus. Yes, we were told, the 12:30 bus did stop in Santa Maria. That was a momentary relief, but it gets better. A mechanic at the Information Desk overheard us.

He asked, “Where are you going?”

“Santa Maria.”

“Santa Maria? Go to Door 2 right now. The bus is about to leave.” Door 2 was about a hundred feet away. We grabbed our younger children and told the older children to hurry up. In mere seconds, we were on the other side of Door 2. The door was closed and the driver had just started the engine. We pounded on the door and she opened the door and asked where we were going. We told her we were going to Santa Maria and she asked for our tickets. Cindy whipped our tickets out of her purse so fast, you could feel the breeze.

“Get on,” she said. She didn’t have to tell us twice. Once we were settled in, Cindy and I looked at each other in total amazement. A two hour layover had turned into a five hour layover which had turned back into a two hour layover and finally turned into a sprint from one bus to another.  

A few hours later, we saw the typical summer fog over the Santa Maria Valley.  It was the only time I have actually felt good seeing that gloomy accumulation of low clouds, because it meant we were close to home.

We were able to replace our van, our bruises healed, and my ego restored. But we have remained thankful that we survived the accident with so little injury. The results could have been so much worse. We have also remained thankful the mechanic overheard us and spoke up. Perhaps it was a mere coincidence. Perhaps “Someone Up There” felt we had been through a lot and we needed a break. Whichever it was, we thank God it happened.