The trip home was less to be desired.
First off, we leave to check out at the hotel and my mother asks the woman at the front desk if there was a way she could get a credit because we weren't able to use the pool once since we got there until it was to late. There was always something going on that the pool was closed. When it was supposed to be open and I got Josie dressed to swim we go there and the doors were locked. So, whoever also wanted to use the fitness room couldn't because they locked the doors!
The girl at the counter calls her boss and he tells my mother that the pool was only closed one day. That is bull it was closed more than one day. We know and so do half the people in the hotel who cared about swimming at all.
She also told him about the ants. Yes, you read that right. We had ants all over the place. It was horrible and disgusting. They were hanging around the microwave. We told housekeeping and front desk about it and someone came in and used a wipe it looked like . The ants were up the walls and once we woke up with them crawling on us. To be perfectly honest, I just opened my backpack to get out my charger for my phone and I found two ants. I brought home P.A ants, I swear I did!
The woman at the counter says that we could have asked for another room and one closer to the pool. What good would that have done ? For one, the pool wasn't accessible half the trip and for two we seen ants in the breakfast area (the same area that I got yelled at for walking to the room with a bowl of cereal and some coffee for me because we weren't supposed to take things out of the breakfast area. That is also bull because I seen many people do that! Also, that is 24 hour coffee I am not sitting in the breakfast area at 12 at night to drink my coffee and go to my room. What good is having a fridge , microwave and coffee maker in your room anyhow if you can't take food into your room?!).
The lady that was cleaning the breakfast area while my mother was dealing with all of this yesterday morning before heading to Greyhound to go home was even telling us that she finds ants by the coffee maker, sometimes by the chairs and on the tables. So moving to another room doesn't make sense. Then, she said and I quote," ...well there is the possibility that there was a tiny piece of food or something left over from another person that they could be going after," okay so that upset me. They are HOUSEKEEPING and they weren't even keeping house. I mean, isn't it their job to clean in the first place? Wouldn't that include cleaning the microwave, fridge, etc area? It was bad enough we had to beg for more shampoo when we first got there because we were only allowed one shampoo according to the guy in front. Also, We had to ask almost three times for extra towels because there was three people in the room .
Afterwards, he tells my mom since she booked it on expedia.com he couldn't offer a refund or credit of any sort and she is to go home and do that on the computer or call them. He gave her a reference number or person to talk to. I really hope she gets a credit. If I have to call myself I will.
Then, we are waiting for the bus. The lady in the Easton, P.A terminal downtown is the nicest, friendliest person on the planet there. She seriously is! She was so sweet to Josie. She was talking to Chickie which is really funny. She even came out to talk to Josie about her braclets because Josie is collecting those new fun shaped ones you see everywhere. Well the lady had mentioned that she needed a magic wand and Josie just happened to have a braclet shaped like one and gave her one. The lady came out and handed her a rubber band and told her now she has a circle one to add to her collection. Josie found this hilarious. She was silly with Josie the whole time and I just wish I had her name and will have to call later to find out. I also want to send her a thankyou card from Josie , Mom and myself. I think that would make her day. She gave Josie an orange pen that writes in orange and some little notepads. It was really nice!
We left at noon from Easton and got to several little stops in between. Here is when I use my twitter to quote myself and then tell you what happened that way I have things in sequence.
"My phone for no reason told me to say a command i told them to go to hell...and it said what shortcut?"
Oh, I had to add this to my blog because that happened the morning of leaving and I found it completely hilarious! lol
"Next stop allentown! watch here for updates...let u know joz and i are okay.
Yesterday at 12:24 via Text message Friends only" .
We hit Allentown first and as my friend Jana pointed out, " Allentown hits back sometimes." It kind of did. We had a slight stop over there for people to get out and smoke but I was feeling utterly sick and used the terminal rest room and not the greyhound bus bathroom. I would like to give a pointer to anyone traveling. The terminal bathrooms are gross but better than the bus ones. If you go anywhere by bus bring sanitizer, some clorox (or lysol - I am allergic to Lysol so that wasn't an option for me) wipes with you . Wipe down the toilet seat and around it if you are on the bus it is just a toilet seat on a silver square box and you can easily pick up something on your body that way. Wipe the toilet seat, put down toilet paper anyhow. Bring extra napkins with you or those travel tissues because it is possible and will happen that you won't have t.p in either place. The sanitizer in their bathrooms is being touched by other people's dirty paws so just bring your own at least you know you won't get some random sickness from the thing. Yes, I have mentioned before I hate public restrooms and totally agree with Howie Mandel. I try to avoid them but when you are traveling with a kid it is hard. OH, and also if you are female sometimes it is hard to NOT sit down try your best not to. Grab a clorox wipe and flush or push the button with that and not your own hand. Also, to let you know my daughter has a allergy to latex and some sanitizers has latex properties in them. I don't let her use any sanitizer or handsoap in bathrooms now because once she blew up at the zoo here in Indiana. It was horrible. I always carry my own.
"Has the cutest two year old little boy in front of me...hyper...spits...and screams louder than joz. Yesterday at 12:59 via Text message Friends only "
Oh yes, I found myself constantly spitted on, drooled down the back of the seat and onto my luggage but it wasn't bad , I understand little ones. I just was using Clorox wipes like they were going out of style. He was very cute though. Him and his mother got hauled onto the crowded bus that there was no more room for anyone (coming later in the story) . I am still hoping she is okay.
"I am on the bus headed to Harrisburg...and completely bored out of my mind.
Yesterday at 13:49 via Text message Friends only · "
Yah, we are headed to Harrisburg I was thinking this is great because we are on track. I was so wrong.
" My mom is asleep in the seat and blurted out for sam to sit down and listen or she will take him out of the commisary and he wont get that ninja turtle...
Yesterday at 14:20 via Text message Friends only ·"
My mother was completely amusing me because she was talking to my brother in the 80's when we lived on the military base in Guam with my step father. The commisary is where you would get food, clothing , etc. That is where I actually bought my first official Superman comic.
" We are in Harrisburg where we have half hour layover and we are supposed to stand here at gate five and not sit...we were yelled at. grrrr
Yesterday at 14:46 via Text message Friends only ·"
This is where it all happens! We get there and the pregnant woman with the two year old who we were helping her with luggage was told she can put her luggage under the bus because we had a 30 minute wait. So, she starts headed there and we were rounded up like cattle. She was told she couldn't and we had to wait inside. We , for some odd reason, was not allowed to be outside. I don't see the difference. So, we had to stand in line for thirty minutes and was practically yelled at about that. Then what happens is we are herded like cattle into a line through Gate 5 which is this tiny yellow hallway. It was brighter than Josie's chickie, I swear. There was more people in the line then what got off the bus we were on.
They then tell us there is NO more room at all for anyone and that we will have to stay and wait for the next bus. In which they told us that they didn't know when the next bus was or anything when my mother asked. Nobody knew what was going on. Then, the bus driver goes onto the bus and comes down a few minutes later to announce there is three seats available. There is only one catch- they are not next to each other because he can't get anyone to move. Okay, you are the bus driver you can MAKE people move together so a mother and daughter sit together. What kind of b.s is this?! We were all hot raving mad. One seat was all the way up in front, one in the middle and one somewhere in the back. They were expecting me to have my eight year old daughter be seperated from me to sit next to some stranger far away from my view sight. That is so wrong! I went off and I really don't care!
Then they finally told us we could get on the state college bus which would put us a little behind but not that much. That is what they told us. We took a two hour tour of P.A to wind up back by Phillipsburg, N.J which is basically where we started to begin with. For those who don't know you can walk across the bridge in Easton by the Larry Holmes buildings and go into Phillipsburg , N.J. from there. I used to live in Jersey and work in P.A.
We finally get to where we are supposed to be to find out we are really behind.
" Just pulled out the laptop and turned on rainbow brite...
Yesterday at 15:37 via Text message"
"Fifteen minutes in altoona! hello snack bar...lol.
Yesterday at 17:59 via Text message Friends only "
"I can not wait til we are home. Joz was laughing and giggling and this driver told us to keep it down we were getting to loud. we weren't even that loud....:(
Yesterday at 18:55 via Text message Friends only · "
We had a lot of issues with this driver. I even watched him have a cigarette with this one guy and the next minute get ticked off with him because he wasn't at the bus in time.
This bus driver was certainly a trip that is for sure. I wanted to at one point just strangle him. I kept my calm and kept Joz busy but I wasn't about ready to stop her from laughing. That is just not happening. She wasn't disturbing the five odd people that were sleeping on the bus either. One of them she was talking to at some point about his really kewl orange shoes. She found out they were from Nike and cost over $500 bucks. She told me that was crazy. The guy had a little girl who was about two she thought her braids were kewl too.
" Just passed stuntman funeral parlor....
23 hours ago via Text message Friends only "
During this trip I caught the names of some things that I couldn't help but laugh at this was one of those things.
" Just went thru latrobe...home of the worlds first icecream sundae,1800s pro football team,mr rodgers,sic inc tats and summer's adult boutique....
23 hours ago. "
I still haven't had the chance to google this town but now that a friend of mine has family from there and I thought the town to look really interesting and there was history there I put it on my "to do " trip list for sometime in the future. Let me just note this if we EVER go anywhere again-it will be by plane.
" In pittsburg with a three hour delay we have an hour and half left.
21 hours ago via Text message Friends only."
These three hours went by really fast. It was just boring and hectic because we had no where else to go for those three hours. The same lady that was there when we arrived first in P.A was there. She is the lady in the sleeping bag. She has a sleeping bag and actually crawls inside and sits on one of the benches and bends her head over onto her blue suitcase bag that she puts in the next seat and goes to sleep. For one, this got my attention because the way she was bent over. I almost took a picture of her but didn't know how without her seeing me do it. She was twisted in such a way made my body ache. She was also a little older than my mother.
The guy that was sleeping on the floor with his blanket and twitching and screaming that he was in pain wasn't there. Which, someone might have came and got him. The woman who was sitting in front of us during that ride with the blonde dreadlocked up hair and way to much makeup was offering for him to have some pain pills. There is a longer story about that I might go into later on. Yes, I had an interesting trip.
Here is a photo of Josie waiting in the Pittsburg terminal trying her best to be patient. She did really well. I am so proud of her!
border='0'/ />"Three hours to indy...
15 hours ago via Text message"
We were finally getting to go to Indy. I knew in three short hours I would be two short hours til home. I was starting to feel relieved a little bit.
On our trip to Pittsburg from Harrisburg there was some crud that was brown and orange like burnt orange almost covering one end of the bus almost to the back of the bus underneath where the luggage goes. It was gross. The pregnant woman with the little boy and I were talking about a Dexter moment. Maybe someone had a chopped up body in bags up there at some point. We finally brought it down to a cup of coffee went haywire.
This picture that you see is the bus to Indy. The vents were covered in mold and whatever else might be there. I didn't even touch the lights for fear of getting some disease. I Clorox wiped down the seat we were sitting on, the back of the seats in front of us, the window, etc. I went sanitary wipe crazy. I still felt "dirty". I think I am becoming OCD about things like that for some reason. Recently, I have discovered that my claustrophobia has became worse where sometimes I just panic in an elevator worse than I usually do. Either that or just that Josie has this weird latex allergy that popped up that I am just extra careful and when it comes to your kids you can never be to careful.
"So because of the screw up in harrisburg...us getting another bus...they are trying to tell us the 430Am bus is gone and next avail is at 545 pm! ahhhhhhh!
11 hours ago via Text message Friends only "
Yup, we wound up getting to Indy to have a rude customer service agent yell at my mother, talk down to her and just be all out rude when she was just asking WHEN the next bus was since the bus driver had NO information. We found out three different times rounding it to 545p.m at night. We were expected to be in Indy for that long with nowhere to go. I was starting to feel for Tom Hank's character in "The Terminal" because my life started feeling like I was living in one.
After about almost 45 minutes to an hour of that rude customer service agent taking ALL of our tickets and telling mom she needed them to help us and go sit down and not hearing anything my mother walked back up there to find out what was going on. She got rude with her some more and just down right nasty telling her she will get to her when she does, she is working on it and basically told mom that she told her to sit down and she will call her. She didn't call mom she called me plus, she pronounced my name wrong. How hard is it to pronounce the last name Soden anyhow? Seriously? I worked in telemarketing and had to say harder names then that and I mostly got them right. I am also the kind of person that does the best job they can for someone when doing a customer service job no matter how rude or nasty that person is before me unless they throw a beer bottle at me and screams. Then, I get a little rude back (in a nice way).
So, she calls us up mom gets a paper that she has to fill out. My mother is so exhausted and upset can't concentrate on things that I took the paper from her and was told that the lady wanted us to fill it out up front. I go to the counter and not two seconds does my paper hit the counter when she says, " CAN I HELP YOU WITH SOMETHING MAM?!!" I was so startled that at first words wouldn't come out of my mouth. I finally said, " My mother got this paper and I am part of the party so I am helping her fill this out," she then told me ," If you need me for anything I am right here at this terminal. In front of you . Here." " Yah, I see that, " I tell her back . She shoots me a bad look and at that point I don't care. I fill out the paper and I am waiting patiently for her to finish with a customer. She just puts her finger up to that guy and said ," one minute I need to deal with this chick here," then comes over to me rips the paper out of my hand. I had no chance to hand it to her. My wrist was resting on the counter with the paper in my hand and she tore it out of my hand. She did it in such a way that I honestly wound up with a paper cut.
She then called my mother up and explained to her she ordered us a taxi ride to home from there. My mom asked for the tickets back. She didn't get on the Indy bus so she wanted the receipts. Also, because Josie's from Easton was handwritten because of the mistake in Indy when we ordered a round trip and got a single trip for her it had to be fixed it was a handwritten one. There was NO record for that online. Mom just wanted the receipts. The woman tells her she needs those receipts. My mother said why and can she get copies. The woman is getting even more impatient and rude. It is crazy and ridicolous. If you don't like your job or dealing with the public then just leave. I mean , seriously, go find another profession. You live in Indy there are plenty of jobs! Wait, for her it might not be possible she just doesn't have that kind of personality to work with people period.
We get to the cab where this guy is joking with mom that Greyhound pays half and we pay the other half and mom is taking him seriously and he is laughing . In everything, he was trying to settle and lighten the mood. Let me just say this, I don't know his name either and I should have gotten it because he was very pleasant and said he even had problems with her being rude and obnoxious to him. He told us this before we ever brought anything up. HE mentioned it first. The TAXI driver had problems with her. He basically has a GPS system that talks in his van but the GPS doesn't go around like obstacles such as construction and what have you. He just went up there asking for a map from her and she got all rude. She told him she didn't have a map and that if he didn't know his job he shouldn't be doing it, etc. She just wasn't pleasant at all. He said usually if he goes to the counter of other terminals people are nice to him and help him out. He has ALWAYS had a problem with her.
We are home though... safe and somewhat sound.
Tomorrow, I do some homework and mail out some Ebay items that I sold to make some extra money. I also have to clean up my house and stuff. Fun Fun.
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