🚌 The Long Long Journey

 "Write about travel."  

In mid-July 2017, my brother and I decided to go on a bus trip from Mexico City to Oakland, California. The goal? We wanted to count the hours we could resist enclosed in that black-amusing rolling machine. Besides, a cousin living in the Bay Area invited us to hang around Silicon Valley and the surroundings. We saved sufficient money, paid the tickets, and embarked on the adventure with that purpose in mind. According to our premade forecasts, the total time would be around fifty-four and fifty-seven hours. I was not counting possible accidents or immigration problems. 

The challenge was easy peasy.

    The journey and logistics were simple, too. We would start in La Central del Norte in Mexico City, which is ten hours away from the beautiful city of Zacatecas—hour home village. Once in our home state, my parents would go to the bus station and bring us some groceries and clothes. The bus would stop fifteen minutes—enough time for the exchange of stuff. After that station, the following parade was Hidalgo de Parral, Chihuahua. A big city located in the south of the state and seven hours away from the border and where we would stop to eat. 

    The drivers plan to get to the borderline early in the morning—5:10AM—would let us cross to the U.S. in a matter of minutes. Though, before continuing, I will change how I am describing this story to what happened. As expected, the wait time in The Bridge of the Americas lasted one hour and thirty minutes. My green card was quite dirty when I presented it—I forgot to clean it; nonetheless, the border agent did not notice and let me continue—the same story happened with Elias.  

    Minutes before getting on the bus, Elias said his mythical phrase, "Well, this goes for the anecdote." "Sure it goes, man," I replied. I climbed the high ladder in the entrance, walked through the aisle, found my number, placed my backpack into the top's compartment, adjusted the seat's back, crossed myself, and sat. Elias did the same route as I did with one exception. He could not lean backward. Sad.

    Fifty-three hours sitting in the truck were worth it when we finally arrived in Union City. The cold breeze of the sea and the other language 

    However, the events following our arrival are not worth mentioning. Rocio—my uncle's daughter—picked us at the station. We went to her house to have a fresh lunch. We slept for a couple of hours and were ready to explore Silicon Valley companies. In particular, Tesla, Apple, and Google.

    Where was I? I yes, not worthy events. Well, there is one thing to remember, the most memorable memory I still have from the entire experience was when Rocio gave us a tour at Berkeley University and Stanford's well-known white-cardinal buildings. I had never seen them before; I was awestruck. Not even the Golden Gate nor the Oracle Arena—Let's go Warriors!—made me feel such adrenaline. 

        

    In this real-life story, I did not mention each city we passed through nor the drawbacks we experienced. I fell short in words, but no in emotions. I hope you laughed a bit with the astonishing number of hours we did. I recommend you to try the pathway. 

Onward...