Date: 2016-07-03
From: Columbus, IN

To: Marion, VA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

This will be my fourth summer to hike a section of the AT. I will start at the Partnership Shelter and the Mt Rogers visitor center near Marion VA. I started a blog for my fall hike, but I never posted it. There are two significant things about where I ended my fall hike. 1) It has a shower. I think it even has a water heater that burns wood. I thought it would be a kind gesture if I showered while waiting for my wife to pick me up. The shower worked, but not the water heater. It was a brisk October shower.2) The city of Marion VA runs a city shuttle to the trail and Marion is a stop on Greyhound routes. I can take a bus from Louisville to the trail! I got dropped off on Sunday night at the Louisville Greyhound Station. The bus ride was from 7:50 at night until 10:50 the next morning. It would be kind of a long bus ride, but I figured I could get some sleep on the bus.It was a great plan ¢¦ now for the reality. The first leg of the bus ride was from Louisville to Nashville, TN. It was an express route so there were no stops. All of the bus passengers were African-American except for me and a young man from India. That didn¢t bother me, it is just an observation. It actually made me think about our society¢s inequality that so many African-Americans are traveling by bus while white folks are flying or driving cars to get around the country. I also noticed that the black bus riders seemed to know how the system worked and the Indian and I were clueless. I ended up sitting with the Indian and I learned that he had only been in this country for a week. He completed medical school in India and was looking for a place to do his residency. We talked most of the way to Nashville; he had many questions about how things worked in the U.S. and what our culture was like. I could help him with most of it except how riding Greyhound worked.My plan to sleep on the bus was not very realistic. We got to Nashville at midnight and didn¢t leave until 1:50. During that time everyone had to exit the bus. You can¢t sleep in the bus station unless you can sleep sitting up on metal benches with metal arms between seats. I decided to go across the street to a convenience store and get something to eat to pass the time. Of course I had my backpack on my back which was a little tricky in the crowded aisles of the convenience store. I got an individual size pizza and sat on a bench outside the bus station to eat it. The bus station was definitely in the black part of Nashville. It was after midnight, but there was plenty of activity on the street. As I sat eating my pizza, a young black man came walked by and said, ¢There is a cockroach getting into your pizza.¢ I looked down and saw a cockroach heading across one side of the cardboard box ¢ straight for my pizza. ¢Thanks,¢ I said. He replied, ¢When you¢re raised in poverty you spot those things a mile away.¢ One reason I sat outside in the sweltering heat to eat my pizza was that there was a lady with a crying baby in the terminal. Of course I kept hoping that she was waiting for a different bus, and of course she was not. We loaded the bus and headed towards Knoxville. About 15 minutes before the Knoxville station the baby finally stopped crying and fell asleep. We pulled into the station, they turned on all of the interior lights, and announced that everyone had to exit the bus for an hour and a half. By this time I felt sorry for the mother. She and the baby were both sound asleep and they made them wake up and exit the bus.About 5:30 A.M. we got back on the bus. This time, as we headed to Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia we stopped at every little town along the way, until we finally reached Marion, VA and my section hike was about to begin.