Episode 01: Liability - 8/20/13

This is a story about a series of events in my life that led to the opening of my game store, Gamers Link Chicago.  It all started when my buddy Eddie told me he was opening a game store in Tennessee with a recent windfall he received.  It was odd to me, considering that he lives up here in Chicago, and I was not really shy about being jealous.  I mean, working at a game store has always been a dream of mine, which I am sure is true for most of the nerdy persuasions.  Eddie has family down in Tennessee, and they are running the store down there.

As I mentioned, I made it plain that I wanted to have something to do with the store down in Tennessee, but moving was not an option.  Flash forward about six months, and Eddie mentions that he has friends interested in starting a game store up here.  He then invited me down to Tennessee to check out the store, and I had luckily just been let go from my dumb job, so down to Tennessee I went.

Actually, getting there was an adventure all in its own.  Rather than fly, (because I’m not a fan of plummeting to my death,) I took the Greyhound Bus.  It was reasonably priced, though the trip was scheduled to take 18ish hours.  No problem, I thought.  I am a writer with a book coming out.  I will have plenty to do. 

There were a lot of strange things that happened on this trip, starting with the chance encounter of an old coworker.  He was my supervisor back when I worked for NORC, and now he was in charge of the bus boardings at the Chicago terminal.  He said hi, talked about kids and the trip, and then I boarded towards Toledo, OH.  This trip was not as productive as I would have liked, because there was some ghetto mama with her two year old boy sitting next to me.  You think I would have a complaint about the kid, but he actually seemed pretty cool to me.  Nah, it was the mom who was constantly whining and moaning.  I swear, I think every word to leave her mouth was a complaint. 

Actually, I need to back up a little, because something else happened at the terminal before I left.  This red head came up to me and asked me a question about her ticket.  It turns out we were both heading to the same place, but we didn’t really talk much… until later.

Okay, so the bus pulls into Toledo at about midnight, and once again I am hanging around with the red head.  It turns out that she is going to the next stop in Cincinnati, and wouldn’t you know it, her final destination is the same stop as mine – Knoxville.  Even more of a coincidence – we were both heading to Gatlinburg from Knoxville.  To help friends with a store they opened, no less.  Small world.

The problem – the bus to Cincinnati never came.  Too full, they told us. 

So, we were rerouted to Cleveland.  I am pretty much a cool cat, but I do tend to worry a lot.  By this time, I was fuming, and basically trapped at the mercy of the D-bags at Greyhound.  The fact that the chica was in the same boat as me helped some, and I was sort of able to keep it together by focusing on both of us figuring out what to do. 

How long would this add to my already too long trip?  I wanted answers, and got nothing helpful back from the completely unfriendly manager in Cleveland.  You’d think someone who lives in the butthole of the country would be nicer, no? 

Before the two of us would pass out, barreling off to a city that we were never supposed to approach, we were treated with the stylings of our very Asian bus driver.  He had the awesome accent that just makes everyone laugh.  At first, it was just some homies that were making fun of his accent, and I remember thinking it was a little messed up to pick on the bus driver for his accent.  I mean, this dude is about to drive us to Cleveland… don’t give him any reason to leave us there!

Of course, this all changed when the bus driver decided to discuss the liability issues on the bus.  Imagine the word ‘liability’ pronounced with all the trappings of the R/L sound confusion in Asian languages, so it comes out as “rye-uh-bih-ruh-ty”.  He said this, oh, about eight times, until even the most PC of white person would have been chuckling uncontrollably.  Seriously, riabirity is one of the funniest moments in my life.  The driver capped the whole night off with this – “Next stop after Creverand: New York… CITAY!”  It was hard to be mad after that, but somehow, I managed.

So, we get to Creverand, and I inquire about our bus route.  As I mentioned, the manager was not helpful at all, but we did manage to find out that we are going to take a bus to Cincinnati from Cleveland… four hours later!  I got a bit of sleep here and there, but I am not one to sleep much anyways, and finding out that I had to tough it through four more hours of being tired as hell was highly unappealing. 

Finally, we were able to leave for Cincinnati, and the trip there was mostly uneventful.  I got a seat to myself, so I ended up catching up on a bit of sleep.  I like to sleep before noon anyways, so it worked out.  It was hot as balls in Cincinnati, but that too went by without a hitch, and I got onto the bus without an issue.  I sat next to a white dude with tattoos on his face.  They looked like prison tats to me, but I never bothered to ask (cause I really don’t care).  He was a cool dude; we BS’d around a bit, but mostly we were drifting in and out of lala land (I said that as “rara rand in my head.)   

I get into Knoxville, get picked up by Eddie, and that is where I will start in the next installment.  Thanks for reading!