Affording the Holidays

Despite the fact that Thanksgiving break is little more than a winter break tease, I have decided that I am going to make the 5-hour trek back to Ohio for the holiday. Last year, I chose to stay in DC, a foolish move for a DC-newcomer already depressed by first-year teaching and without a solid friend-base in the city. I remember sitting on the couch half-heartedly participating in my roommates' Thanksgiving festivities, snacking on whatever vegan options they had made, too lazy to make my own and too apathetic to splurge on a Tofurkey. At some point during my mopey evening, I told myself, "Next year, I am definitely, definitely going home." Alas, I've been telling my mom for the past year that I'm coming home for Thanksgiving.

Now, however, I have a problem.

Apparently, you're not supposed to wait until a week and a half before Thanksgiving to make your travel plans. Holy hell, you would think I had typed "Washington, DC to Cleveland, OH (in a private golden jet)" into Orbitz when you look at the prices they shoot back. My original plan was to rent a car, drive to Ohio after school on Wednesday, and come back on Saturday in time to make it to Homo/Sonic. For a moment last week, after I made a trip back to Ohio for a rugby reunion and fell in love with my traveling companion's Prius, I even had the delusional thought that maybe I would finally just break down and buy myself the hybrid I've been longing for. Those thoughts, however, were obviously the result of a Lemonhead and Starburst high, because arriving back in DC, I awoke to the reality that I am not even able to afford a $300 one-week car rental fee, never mind a $27,000 hybrid car that could fit a family I'm nowhere near starting.

After an hour of online rental car and ticket searching, in defeated horror, I did something today that I told myself over a year ago, when my dad ended up driving an hour to pick me up outside of a broken-down bus on the highway, that I would never do again: logged onto greyhound.com. Oh, even the website brings me cold, cramped, hungry pains. What I once referred to as a "five-hour trek back to Ohio" is now a "5,000 hour road trip around the mid-Atlantic." What was once a pleasant opportunity to relax and listen to music as I drifted the highways to the heartland is now an opportunity to test my maniac and killer senses; a test of my ability to avoid teenagers and those with continence problems, and to essentially deter anyone from sitting next to me other than the one or two other sane persons who might enter the bus on the 12 hour trip. Instead of relaxing and sifting through new music, I will spend hours straining to shove my ear buds further into my head in an attempt to drain out the Godsmack blaring from my neighbor's anti-noise canceling headphones. Then, of course, is my favorite part of a greyhound trip from DC to Cleveland: the 3AM one hour layover in Pittsburgh - just enough time to race to the front of the line to ensure that I'm not one of the unlucky souls at the end of the line that get to the bus door, ticket in hand, only to realize the bus is already full. "Sorry, Mom, but I'll think of you while I eat my single serving of Corn Pops in Pittsburgh."

I don't get it - when I was in Europe I could essentialy travel from Stockholm to Berlin in exchange for a bag of Doritos. Even when I booked my ticket from Barcelona back to Stockholm for a week after the day I was standing in the Barcelona airport ready to return (read: Ryan Air scammed me!), the new ticket I bought after sobbing to the unsympathetic Spaniards at the ticket window was only $250.

We all know about the Chinatown buses and Megabus, but what happens when you want to travel somewhere in the U.S. that's not NYC or Philadelphia? Is there an affordable, and semi-comfortable way to make it home for the holidays anymore, or am I doomed to the back-breaking discomfort that is a Greyhound trip?

Maybe I should just give up my sneaker collection, start shopping at Safeway, and buy that Prius after all?