On December 23rd, 2009, I boarded a Busco bus in Santa Rosa, CA, headed for Eureka. I did not have the trip I’d expected.

First, the bus arrived an hour late. During my wait I had ample opportunity to speak with my fellow passengers. One spoke to me of “the Russian driver”, whom she said had left a woman behind in Willits on the same route the previous year. She told me that when a passenger had pointed out the soon to be stranded woman’s absence as the bus pulled away, the driver said only “not my problem”. When our bus finally entered the Day’s Inn parking lot in south Santa Rosa, the driver stopped to honk repeatedly at a driverless delivery van parked inconveniently. Finally, the bus pulled up to the boarding area, and the woman with whom I’d spoken earlier said “the Russian”. This was not, in my view, an auspicious start for my journey.

When the driver started checking bags and passengers, I tried to ask him where in Eureka he might be stopping, so that I could text the info to my ride in that city. I got no further than “excuse me, but could you…” when he barked the word “No!” at me. He never once looked up at me, or any other boarding passenger that I could see. The bus was crowded, as I expected, so I moved to a space near the back and settled down for the ride. My seat was two seats in front of the bath room. The seat behind me had a trash bag on it, and the driver shortly entered the bus, came to the back, and made sure we all understood that the trash bag seat was not to be used by any person for any reason.

As the bus got under way, I noticed the smell. At first I thought it might be the trash directly behind me, but as the odor intensified I investigated the situation and discovered that the door to the bath room would not close fully. A broken door latch guaranteed that I would breathe the fumes of a chemical toilet, badly in need of a fluid change, for the next four and a half hours. Normally, this would only be an inconvenience, but as I had just recovered from a cough the chemicals in the air, stirred to greater concentrations by the driver’s vigorous efforts to make up lost time on the trip north, stung my throat and lungs. When I finally arrived in Eureka my eyes were watering, and I was coughing again. I am now using a steroid inhaler prescribed by my physician to reduce the inflammation of my airway caused by these burning chemical fumes.

I might have mentioned something of this to the driver, except that I had long decided that this man had no concern for the welfare of his passengers. I’d seen him kick a man, wearing only a thin coat, off the bus in Rio Dell for the crime of falling asleep with litter in the seat next to him, and heard him shouting the question “is this yours?!” at shocked passengers while waving a partially empty water bottle in their faces (he’d found it on the floor). I saw him take a bag off of the trash seat behind me and drop it on the floor. When the bag’s owner, an elderly lady, said that it contained her medicine and that she needed it within reach, he said only “it’s right there”, and stormed off to the front of the bus to continue his assault on the highway. I looked out the window and saw him crowd another vehicle partially onto the shoulder in a corner. The man was a terror.

In short, it was the bus ride from Hell. The bus was late, the air was toxic, and the driver was a malicious tyrant. I cannot imagine the circumstances that might cause me to ever board another Busco bus. Fix that bus and retrain the driver. You’ll be doing yourselves a huge favor.

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