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Over the past few weeks, I’ve alluded to the day Megabus fell several times. Well, today is their day of reckoning. And while it is true that the day Megabus fell was probably some time long, long ago — like maybe a day or two after their maiden voyage in 2006 — getting in a crash at 11:30 PM while lost in Milwaukee, in the middle of a scheduled eight hour trip, quickly deserves the adjective “apocalyptic” in my mind. Perhaps the driver sensed my approaching insanity, after the three U-turns and nausea-inducing, leaden-foot approach to hours of stop-and-go traffic, and merely created a hole in my window to accommodate me with a quick escape. There’s that famous Megabus service and professionalism, for you!

Ironically, they claim to offer “the highest level of comfort and safety”, and if that’s true, I’m genuinely frightened for the rest of our nation’s commuters. Granted, random stabbings are actually listed as an included service on the Fung Wah bus in New York, so maybe my standards are just a little off. Maybe the driver plowing through a traffic light, while attempting an impossible turn and going in the wrong direction of a one-way street, despite the panicked cries of the passengers, is just part of that “great experience and overall satisfaction” Megabus is so gosh-darned committed to providing.

Our seats were covered in glass, which we were then yelled at about by the frazzled driver, who may or may not have ever been behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle before. The hours of Cruisin’ USA experience Megabus integrates into their training courses were, apparently, not quite enough practice.

Don’t let these pictures fool you — the cops were only there to escort us to a grocery store so the crew could buy enough duct tape to adhere a cardboard box to the gaping hole in the side of the bus. Fleeing the scene of an accident and reversing over a landscaped island in the process? Not a ticketable offense in Milwaukee.

90 miles to Chicago. God help us all.

Boring photos of clouds post #531.

Now that the worst week of my life has come to an end, I can start sifting through the pile of photos I snapped during my camping trip two weeks ago. These are just a few taken on the bus ride to Wisconsin, which, while lengthy, was a relatively painless journey as budget bus rides go. Nobody barfed. Nobody got stabbed. Nobody installed a bomb that would detonate if the bus’s speed dropped below 50 miles per hour. All in all, pretty successful. The drive back… now that’s a horror story for another day.

All credit for these two really should go to the tint on the bus windows. What an artiste.

Some natural phenomena just never stop impressing me, no matter how routine they may be. Lightning, rainbows, rays of sun shooting out from behind clouds… the simple beautiful things that were there long before the concept of beauty was even created. Mamma Nature just knows how to keep a man interested, what can I say?

One of my earliest motivations to get into photography was seeing awesome, evil storm clouds on the horizon and wishing I could capture that image forever… that I could create a memory that would never fade (unless some jerk blows up a beer next to your camera). So I guess it’s no surprise that I’m still taking pictures of the sky, 7,000 shots of the sunset later. Sure, I’ve been accused of living with my head in the clouds before, but as far as I’m concerned, that isn’t such a bad place to be.

Pointless FYI: the sort of “glow” coming off the bus in that photo is due to the very technologically sophisticated waterproof case surrounding the camera. If you’re into photography and want to be able to shoot in the rain and snow with relative ease, definitely consider picking one up. They look something like this:

Also — and this is a practically unrelated question considering you can barely see the street in that photo — how is it that Chicago has some of the highest taxes in the entire country and all the streets look like they were hit with an aerial bombing? Or is this just skate-stopping 2.0?

Between the frozen tundra this place becomes in the Winter and everything else that sucks about this city (i.e. almost everything), it’s amazing to me that it’s the 3^rd biggest in the country. Sure is a great town to get shitfaced and fight over sports in though.