The last bus to nowhere!

[OneHungLow]

It is some years since I caught a bus anywhere. There is a local bus service that runs once an hour to another bigger town where one might catch a train to the bright lights big city of London, but I have only used that twice in the last 10 years.

The longest bus journey I have ever made was an 850 mile trip across the heat of the Karoo from Cape Town to Johannesburg which I cadged with POLSTU (Die politieke studente-unie) a group of mostly centrist RAU (Rand Afrikaans University) students who had come to have earnest, but naïve talks with similarly minded callow youths at UCT. Of course there were other motivations for such long round trips, like the girl that sat next to me on that bus trip, who was having an affair with well known writer Andre Brink and who had used the trip as an opportunity to continue the triste in Cape Town, while others saw saw the journey, primarily, as an opportunity to enjoy the beaches and sunshine of the peninsular. Everybody on that bus came from a wealthy, some might say privileged background, and there was none of the sense of the desperate, poverty stricken Greyhound bus ride that served as the denouement to the film Midnight Cowboy, for example.

In fact I have never caught a bus in the USA save for the tour bus that they used to transport tourists around Cape Canaveral, but in my poverty stricken early daze here in the UK I caught the National Express busses between towns, only to find the whole experience grimily depressing and silently gave a hallelujah when I had enough money to buy my first car here.

I realise that many people need to catch the bus for many reasons, like my lovely elderly next door neighbour whose eyesight has deteriorated to the extent that she cannot drive any more and occasionally catches the bus into town to catch up with old friends, or those few maverick friends of mine who don't drive at all!

Anyway all this is just a preamble to this fascinating vignette by UK based Canadian author and travel writer Joanna Pocock who wrote this about a recent Greyhound bus/coach trip across the USA. I have copied the whole article out for those who might not be able to access the article.

When was the last time you caught a bus or coach?

Gone are the small, clean, cheap motels and public spaces where anyone can find a place to nurse a cup of coffee. Yet the camaraderie of the Greyhound is hanging on

I recently completed the road trip of a lifetime. I struck out from Napanee, Ontario, to Los Angeles, California – a 2,800-mile trip that I had been planning since before Covid times. I wanted to take this time to think deeply about our overreliance on cars and our love affair with the open road.

There was a catch: as a non-driver, I would be crossing the country by Greyhound bus. It would have the advantage of getting me closer to the people I wanted to talk to, and the issues I knew I’d witness.

When I headed from Detroit towards Los Angeles, I knew I would encounter ecological catastrophe. I expected the poisoning of rivers, the desecration of desert ecosystems and feedlots heaving with antibiotic-infused cattle.

What I found was more complex, nuanced and intimate.

Historically, chroniclers of the road have travelled by car – intrepid individuals in charge of their destinies. They also tend to be male. The only book I could find by a woman about crossing the US was America Day by Day by Simone de Beauvoir. It is also the only Great American Road Trip book that features Greyhound bus travel. Simone became my companion on the road.

My first stop was Detroit. I was unable to find a clean, cheap hotel in the centre of town. My only option was to download an app by Sonder, which offered affordable Airbnb-style apartments with kitchens (thus saving me money on food). I handed over my debit card details to this San Francisco-based hospitality company and received a code with instructions to a room in a faceless building. I would not meet another human during my stay.

This atomisation, and the reliance on tech for our most basic human needs, unnerved me. It became a leitmotif during my trip, and also spoke to something I saw repeatedly: the exclusion of those without smartphones or credit cards. The cashless society appears to be winning.

[OneHungLow]

From Detroit, I headed to St Louis, via Columbus, Ohio, where the Greyhound would hit Route 66. My 20-minute stopover in Columbus was where a picture began to form of what Greyhound travel looks like today. The bus station consisted of a parking garage the size of a small airplane hangar. At both ends, electric doors opened and closed when a bus entered or exited. Between the two bus lanes sat a small concrete island where passengers were disgorged. There was a chemical toilet, no drinking fountain, very few seats and no windows. The air was choked with exhaust. A police van was parked at one end of the tunnel and armed policemen stood against a wall facing us.

If you had commissioned an urban planner to design the most hostile, uncomfortable and unhealthy environment for passengers, this would be the result. I guess this is what you get when you travel in a seat costing $35 as opposed to a $200 plane ticket or in a car with a full tank of gas.

My next bus was scheduled to leave for St Louis – a mere 530-mile trip – at 3.00pm. I looked around at my fellow island-dwellers: an elderly man with four large zip-up bags printed with “Patient Belongings”; a couple travelling with a large fluffy blanket propped up against the Porta-Potti as a makeshift bed; a mother and her teenage son carrying large cardboard boxes. The sign on the empty Greyhound kiosk read: “As of 25 January 2023 – you will need photo ID to buy tickets.” Yet another barrier between those with little money, no fixed address, no car, no passport or credit card and their ability to travel.

Five pm and still no bus. Another passenger, a university student from India, had been checking his app, which showed that the bus had been and gone. How could we have missed it when we hadn’t left our island? Ruben, a young Amish man, approached. I gave him my phone so he could tell his family he would be late. A one-handed man asked us if we knew what was going on. We didn’t, so he told us his story: he had lost his wife and daughter recently and had just emerged from a 14-month coma – the result of being electrocuted at work, which also saw his hand melt. Like so many of the people I met on the road he had suffered extreme anguish, but had found God. “I am now never alone,” he told me.

The four of us were discussing tactics when a Greyhound employee showed up. Desperate passengers trying to get to bedsides, parole hearings, jobs and loved ones swamped her. She looked utterly out of her depth.

Our bus showed up, but we were further delayed while passengers on it waited for their luggage. Apparently, its faulty hold had opened and bags had scattered along the highway – or so the story went. You never quite know on a Greyhound. The rides can take on a mythical dimension. Our driver had never done the Columbus–St Louis route before and we wound our way through unlit back roads until a marine on board snapped and ordered her to use his GPS.

At Indianapolis, the driver – shaken and angry – quit. A replacement was found, and we got into St Louis as the sun was rising. An eight-hour trip had stretched into 24.

My motel in St Louis was a run-down Americas Best Value Inn & Suites wedged between Interstate 44 and the Mississippi River. It was the cheapest motel I could find; there were conferences and ball games in town which meant prices had been jacked up. My filthy, dark room set me back $180 (and another “accidental” $415 taken from my debit card which took weeks to sort out).

After a sleepless night worrying about bedbugs, I got to the bus station at 6.00am. Several buses had been cancelled and the station was heaving. The vibe was nervy and angry. Miraculously, a coffee counter was open. In most stations, the diners are closed and the vending machines border on empty. I ordered a bagel with cream cheese as a skinny man with eyes the size of silver dollars started yelling about a lost cellphone which had his ticket on it.

The security guard, a tall trans woman with bright nail polish, calmly walked over to him. The guy next to me at the coffee counter nudged my arm and pointed: “Her revolver is the same as my grandad’s,” he laughed. “It’s old. Probably doesn’t even work.” The man was now pounding the wall while the security guard kept one hand on her holster.

We could relate to the screaming man – somewhat. “The problem is, it’s all digital now. They just look at their computer,” the guy said, miming someone typing officiously on a keyboard. “‘Sorry I can’t help you,’ they say if it’s not right there on their screen. Nobody cares.”

The combination of cancelled buses, a customer care phone line that is impossible to penetrate, an online system that can’t track bus routes accurately, and exasperated and unsupported Greyhound staff leads to desperation for travellers. Even for those with smartphones who can download the app, the information on it is often wrong.

From St Louis to Albuquerque, I had over 1,000 miles to cover. I had planned to read, but none of the overhead lights worked. Many of the buses are slowly falling apart.

The company has been struggling for a while thanks to cheap flights and a pandemic which reframed close quarters with strangers as a potential death trap. Greyhound was bought in 2021 by the German-owned FlixBus. They don’t own the physical stations, however, and are fast becoming another Uber-style company, connecting consumers online with a service. One of my bus stops consisted of coordinates along a four-lane road.

Simone de Beauvoir’s descriptions of riding the Greyhound are unrecognisable: “I read, I look, and it’s a pleasure to give myself over from morning to night to a long novel while the landscape slowly unfolds on the other side of the window.” The quaintness Beauvoir describes in 1947 sounds wonderful, but on another level her journey was marred by injustice. In the early 1960s, Greyhound buses were used by the Congress of Racial Equality for their Freedom Rides. Members rode through the south to ensure stations were complying with the US supreme court rulings to allow Black and white people to mix – sometimes leading to violence against the freedom riders.

None of this oppression is touched upon in the literature of the Great American Road Trip, because in your car you are removed from the communal, from the people who, behind the scenes, are keeping much of the country going: the cleaners, care workers, manual labourers and those doing necessary work – with little fanfare and often for very little money.

As you approach Albuquerque, just beyond the 100th longitudinal meridian – the dividing line between east and west – the light changes, the horizon retreats, the emerald greens turn minty, and your heart opens a little. At the Texas panhandle, the ground takes on a deep red hue, and by the time you reach New Mexico, the colours have become psychedelic. You’ve arrived in the west.

My hotel in Albuquerque was an Econo Lodge on Central Avenue (AKA Route 66), tucked under the I-25. A five-minute walk from my front door was what I took to be an abandoned motel. As I took some photos, a guy in a pickup rolled up. “Are you looking for Jesse?” he asked. Not being a Breaking Bad fan, I didn’t get the connection. Pickup guy was the owner of the Crossroads Motel. “This is where Jesse stayed,” he said. If buildings could be method actors, the Crossroads would win an Oscar, with the glowing pink Sandia Mountains and golden light in supporting roles. As with most of my stops, I only allowed myself a night in Albuquerque, but I had wished for more. I never like leaving New Mexico. Simone de Beauvoir called it the “Land of Dreams”, a place that made her “muse about the mysterious marriage binding our species to this planet”.

The only direct Greyhound bus you can book from Albuquerque to Vegas takes a minimum of 21 hours and does a bizarre route via San Bernardino. This is where you have to get creative. I worked out that if I went to Phoenix and changed there, I could do the trip in less than 18 hours.

I decided to walk to Albuquerque’s bus station early as I was tired of lugging my backpack around. A city bus honked and pulled up next to me. The driver motioned for me to get on rather than walk alone in the dark. What I didn’t know was that Greyhound stations now often close between buses to keep homeless people out – yet another communal space closed to those without the money to access private spaces. Dozens sat on the steps of the station shivering; some were lying in the foetal position; others hopped from foot to foot like their feet were on fire. I gave what food I had to anyone who wanted it, but I still had an hour before my bus.

I remembered Beauvoir’s descriptions of bus stations with restaurants, juke boxes, showers and lockers she compares to columbariums. Columbariums! I walked to a cafe where I very slowly nursed a cup of chamomile tea as part of my near-dehydration diet which had managed so far to keep me from having to use a bathroom on the bus.

Iwas arriving in Las Vegas on a Thursday, when the prices rise, so I booked the cheapest off-Strip motel I could find. As the bus approached town, I decided to read the reviews: “Filthy hotel … Wish I would have read reviews before I went to this dump.” Stained sheets and gunshots were mentioned. I panicked and texted a writer friend in Vegas who told me about the HotelTonight app. Once again, I succumbed to the appification of travel, which saw me bag a room at the Tropicana for $50 – far less than the price of my now-cancelled room at the Wyndham Super 8.

[OneHungLow]

In 2021, Vegas’s Greyhound station at the Plaza Hotel moved 10 miles south of the city’s downtown. With its xeriscaped native plants, the building is a glass and steel model of a functional civic space – albeit one removed from the centre of the city. After two nights in Vegas, I filed on to the Los Angeles-bound bus for the final leg of my trip, and watched a ticketless young woman with very swollen ankles beg the driver to take her out of town. We pulled away, leaving her crying quietly on a bench. The city disappeared behind concrete highways, eventually giving way to a vast desert draped in a strawberry-coloured dawn.

When Beauvoir first arrived in the US, she wrote about seeing “all of America on the horizon. As for me, I no longer exist. There. I understand what I’ve come to find – this plenitude that we rarely feel except in childhood or in early youth, when we’re utterly absorbed by something outside ourselves … in a flash I’m free from the cares of that tedious enterprise I call my life.”

That sense of no longer existing flourishes on the road. That sense of escaping the enterprise we call “our life” – that is the pull. Although, for many, their journey is their life. What I found on this trip was a changed landscape: gone are the small, clean, cheap motels in the centre of cities, gone are public spaces where anyone can find a water fountain, a bathroom, a place to nurse a cheap cup of coffee and human company. And yet the camaraderie on the Greyhound is just about hanging on – but I wonder for how long?

When you find yourself gazing at the horizon as the sun rises, each little sage bush with its purple shadow stretching into a seemingly infinite sandy blur, a quiet descends. Everyone feels the power of these landscapes. Maybe that’s what’s unique about road tripping by Greyhound. There are other places we think we’d rather be, but here we are in the moment, trundling along all of us together looking out at the same earth, breathing the same air, all of us knowing deep down that where we are really is where we’d like to be.

There is no app for this feeling and, thankfully, there never will be.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023 ... yhound-bus

[Karearea]

What an interesting article: sad that the experience seems to have become so dehumanised and squalid in parts.

Last time I caught a bus: 1980s, Melbourne to Perth, return trip several weeks later, still have the "Nullarbor Crossing on the Bitumen" sticker on my suitcase, time I bought a new suitcase.
54 hours point to point from memory. I wonder what it's like to do that trip these days.

Have taken a number of coach trips around the South Island, enjoy them.

There is a drama film The Wayward Bus which, according to my notes made at the time, I "liked better in a way than Bus Stop though that's in a class of its own because of Marilyn."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wayward_Bus_(film) - it's still on YT.

[OneHungLow]

What an interesting article: sad that the experience seems to have become so dehumanised and squalid in parts.

Last time I caught a bus: 1980s, Melbourne to Perth, return trip several weeks later, still have the "Nullarbor Crossing on the Bitumen" sticker on my suitcase, time I bought a new suitcase.
54 hours point to point from memory. I wonder what it's like to do that trip these days.

Have taken a number of coach trips around the South Island, enjoy them.

There is a drama film The Wayward Bus which, according to my notes made at the time, I "liked better in a way than Bus Stop though that's in a class of its own because of Marilyn."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wayward_Bus_(film) - it's still on YT.

That's one Steinbeck novel that passed me by. I haven't seen the film either, but lo (and spot the helicopter too)!

[OneHungLow]

like the girl that sat next to me on that bus trip, who was having an affair with well known writer Andre Brink and who had used the trip as an opportunity to continue the tryste in Cape Town

Why is it that I always spot the mistake just as the edit option has shut down for eternity?

It is enough to make one "triste!"

[Karearea]

^ there's a lot of it about at the moment

[John Hill]

A few city to city trips in NZ, a lot of commuter trips in Wellington, a few long distance in Australia.

We tried to got from Hobart to Launceston by bus but when the time for departure came around the bus was overloaded and the called for volunteers to get and 'go later'. It was already so hot that it took no persuasion for XYL and myself to 'disembus.'

So we were sitting the bus office wondering what to do next when someone said the was a new bus to be delivered to Launceston. So, brand spanking new tourist bus with just two passengers riding in air conditioned comfort. There was a half way stop at Oatlands and of course the other bus was there and our driver offered to take some of sweltering passengers. The response from their driver was something along the lines of, well, maybe you can imagine what he had to say........!


Another time, but in NZ we were waiting at the bus stop for a bus that had not arrived when one going in the other direction rolled up and that driver told us that 'our' bus had stopped running a few weeks prior, but if we wanted we could go with him and so it was, a pleasant hour in the wrong direction with an excellent view for me who had often driven that route, the bus stopped for the driver's meal break and we had time for a reasonable meal then back on the bus but this time heading to where we wanted to be.

[Hydromet]

I haven't done a long bus trip (other than tourist bus) since 1980, when I went Adelaide to Alice Springs. At that time the road north of Port Augusta was unsealed and in pretty poor condition. I was seated next to a young lady in her final year at school, who was an excellent conversationalist - much more maturer than I had expected of one her age. She was returning to her home at Coober Pedy, an opal mining town where all the dwelling were underground. As we had a couple of hours tere she kindly invited me to her parents home to see what these homes were like. The rest of the trip to Alice Springs was in the wee small hours of the morning, and was mainly sleep, punctuated by the rough road, and my new seat companion waking each other with our snoring.
The return trip was uneventful, except that the driver scheduled to take over at Coober Pedy had, for some reason, left town and they couldn't get another one. The driver who had brought us from Alice Springs took us through to Adelaide - 1500+ km. I was in the seat behind the driver, and didn't get any sleep that night, as I was watching over his shoulder in case he went to sleep.
===========================
I'd commend the novel The Wayward Bus to anyone who likes a good read. It's Steinbeck at his best. I didn't realise a movie had been made of it.

[limeygal]

My sister and her friend spent 6 weeks travelling across the US by bus in the early 70s-total cost of bus ticket was $60. I like using public transport, such as it is, in the US. Trains are my preferred transportation, but I used to regularly take buses (where available) when I attended conferences. As the author of the article says, everything is online. I found the information for bus services quite accurate. I also used Google Earth to look at the route and my final stop to see landmarks for when I had to get off the bus. Last trip I did was from Indianapolis airport to downtown. Round trip bus fare $1.75, taxi one way $35. I haven't done a long distance trip by bus over here, and for safety reasons, I wouldn't. I would agree that if you didn't have access to the internet you could be royally screwed.

[tango15]

My longest bus journey was in the 1970s from Montevideo to Fray Bentos. Yes, there really is a town in the west of Uruguay with that name. I was working in the paper industry at the time, and there was a large paper mill adjacent to the huge slaughterhouse, where the cows went in one end, and the tins of corned beef came out of the other, and the vultures sat on the roof. Both require huge amounts of water and were situated next to a large river. The journey took about five hours and the bus was none too comfortable. Worse still, it left a sleepy Montevideo at 0300 in order to be at Fray Bentos by 0800. Fortunately, the mill was a good customer, so the journey was worth it. The slaughterhouse has now been turned into a museum. Some years ago at a 'do' in London, I met a charming young Uruguayan lady who had been heavily involved in this, who was delighted to learn that I had actually been there!

My only other memorable bus journey was from Dublin to Weston Airfield, also in the 1970s. I took a seat at the front of the single-decker, in order to appreciate the view. As we went through the various towns and villages, people would go up to the driver and ask him to stop at the butchers or the bakers, while they picked up their orders. No one seemed to care, least of all the driver, who would answer with something like, "Now how is Sean O'Reilly these days? I must call in and order some pork from him."

[OneHungLow]

That's one Steinbeck novel that passed me by. I haven't seen the film either, but lo (and spot the helicopter too)!

Thank you to the kind ops-normaliser who pointed to me to the very helicopter that starred in The Wayward Bus and to Hydro for the novel recommendation.


Registration N141B, c/n 61 built in 1947 as a 47B-3. Converted to a 47G at an unknown date.

https://www.impdb.org/index.php?title=The_Wayward_Bus

TWB.JPG (65.24 KiB) Viewed 517 times

Good to get some facts right, even though I still can't spell tryst, clearly having fallen off the spelling bus, or should that be bee?

[OneHungLow]

My only other memorable bus journey was from Dublin to Weston Airfield, also in the 1970s. I took a seat at the front of the single-decker, in order to appreciate the view. As we went through the various towns and villages, people would go up to the driver and ask him to stop at the butchers or the bakers, while they picked up their orders. No one seemed to care, least of all the driver, who would answer with something like, "Now how is Sean O'Reilly these days? I must call in and order some pork from him."

Sounds very African!

I did once catch a bus from Cofimvaba to Butterworth, in what was then the Transkei, now the Eastern Cape District in South Africa The bus was supposed to leave at 10:00 hrs on Wednesday but when it hadn't pitched up by 10:30, I knocked at the window of the empty ticket office. Eventually a black gentleman, a would be passenger, waiting patiently outside kindly informed me that "the bus, comes when she comes", and that he would ask the driver to pick me up at the hotel where I was staying. Which he did. We left at 15:00 hrs, chickens on the roof and all! Nobody onboard, expect me, was in the slightest bit perturbed, at the delay nor the diversion to "pick up that impatient white man!"

[Smeagol]

Well, I must be the 'odd man out' as Mrs S and I use local buses frequently when we are at our holiday cottage in Penzance. Fortunately the bus station is only a couple of hundred yards from the cottage and we can get buses to all local towns and villages. It also means that visiting places like St Ives and Mousehole is easy, driving cars there and trying to find parking is almost impossible in summer. The bonus is it is all free with our bus passes. One benefit of being a 'wrinkly' .

[1DC]

Mrs 1DC and I use public transport all the time when we are staying in Melbourne,VIC. Whether it be Tram, train or bus it is very frequent and efficient most of the time.
They have very advantageous fares for pensioners if you are a local but Brits have to pay full price.

[John Hill]

Prague in the early '90's' saw me working at the airport there and riding the bus to the where I could catch a tram. One afternoon I got on the wrong bus and with no better plan in mind I decided to ride the bus until it completed it's circuit.

It was a longish ride and took us out of the city and even past the 'panelak' zone until I was the last passenger. The bus turned in to a large yard where dozens of other bused were parked! Of dear, what to do, the driver appeared to have no English but he helpfully pointed to a 'metro' sign and that led me down to an underground station, problem solved and back in the hotel 30 minutes or so later.

Who would have "thunk it"? They built the public transport before building the high-rise accommodation it was to serve!

[Hydromet]

Who would have "thunk it"? They built the public transport before building the high-rise accommodation it was to serve!

Would never happen in Sydney.

[Pinky the pilot]

Why, in reading this thread, does the theme music from `On the Buses` spring to mind?

[John Hill]

One day in the closing years of the last century the XYL and I decided to take a short break in Queensland, Oz.

With no particular care taken in planning we found ourselves in Townsville but the place seemed to be closed and we were obviously in the wrong part of town which was more depressing than anywhere else I had seen in the so-called First World. As we made our way towards the rail station we noticed a chalked board outside a grimy travel agents' shop. The sign said 'Alice Springs, $120 or some such.

Now Aussies are Aussies with all that conveys but in probably less than an hour we were seated in a modern bus with the company of young families, travelling youth sporting t-shirts and back-pack-stickers from far away countries plus a few older men who sat quietly reading newspapers and paperback books.

The driver took his seat and switched on his microphone "Two thousand and one hundred kilometres" he said "and it will take us twenty three hours". A moment later he added "When we see the next traffic light it will be red".

Evening found us rolling among ever diminishing traffic through towns I knew from the books of Ion Idriess and histories of QANTAS and the Royal Flying Doctor Service. There were stops of course, just time for a toilet break and maybe a cup of tea. I remember one place was more like a general store than a cafe and it was there they served luke warm tea, instant coffee and white bread sandwiches with raspberry jam.

Camooweal was behind us and we had entered the Northern Territory when the bus stopped at Barkley Homestead. Middle of the night and the driver went into a cafe type facility for his 30 minute break. A couple of naïve kiwi passengers thought they would have a bite too only to be told the facility was for the driver only, oh well, I guess she did not want a couple of hundred $$ from bus riders.

Alice Springs was all we expected and facilities were much improved since I had been there in 1969. As we entered the town the bus hissed to a stop and the driver said "It is always red."

We left 'The Alice' for the return bus trip and stopped at a place called 'Three Ways' where we were to have a short break at the roadhouse (2 am or so ), there were buses pulled up with destination signs from all corners of the island continent and hundreds of people in the bar. School kids were teasing a snake in the bus park area until one of the staff chased the kids away and he picked up the snake with his 'snake stick' and threw it into the grass.

Back on the bus and we were rolling eastwards through the darkness, not another vehicle to be seen until one that flashed his lights from about 10 miles away, obviously the recognition signal and were pulled up on the road and the other vehicle too. It was of course the 'other bus', the drivers picked up there lunch boxes and swapped over.

There had been a sprinkle of rain in the area the driver explained as we squished kangaroo after kangaroo. Apparently the 'roos seek the green shoots at the edge of road and when dazzled by the lights they jump forward under the wheels. Some of the passengers were getting quite upset so the driver went IFR, full blackout and following the road by the light of the moon.

We were back in Townsville a few hours later and home to Christchurch NZ a day or so afterwards.

BTW I have since found that Townsville is a great place and I can only assume we caught them on a bad day.

Barkley Homestead, my advice is that if you have a notion to drive the Barkly Highway make sure you have enough essentials on board to bypass the Barkly Homestead roadhouse.
They had two chances with me and blew them both, the first was the incident of the thirsty bus passengers and the second was just a few years ago where we limped into Barkly Homestead with a Landrover sounding on it's last gasp only to be told that we should ring the RACV (Melbourne, 3,000Kms away!) and no there is no public telephone at Barkly Homestead. Fortunately fellow travelers in an Australian Telecom (Telstra?) truck instantly diagnosed our problem and donated us new fuel filters.

[Karearea]

Coach trip to attend a Cliff Richard concert; returning home listening to the happy discussion of the performance and one of the ladies sighing "doesn't he look young!"
About the third time she said it her husband said irritably, "alright, alright".

Another trip, late at night, the mountains very clear and snowy on the western horizon.
"Sometimes you can't see them, and other times they're as clear as anything" observed one deep thinker, ignoring the full Moon high overhead...