Hell, One Way, Smoking

I guess it wouldn't be reasonable to expect train, bus and air lines to maintain routes going everywhere on every possible day. But man, do they make it hard to get some places.

A friend is having her wedding at a lovely site in upstate New York...in a town serviced by one bus line, a five-hour ride from the city. No buses leave Friday after work (I'm ineligible for hours off for non-medical reasons in my first ninety days of employment). One does arrive in time for the Saturday wedding, but to do so it leaves 5 a.m. that morning. And it arrives an hour before the wedding and would drop me two miles away, leaving me to walk to the site and hope that I have a place to change (or, alternatively, take the bus in my nice clothes on what will, with my luck, be a gorgeous, hot June day).

This may be the wrong time to ponder a July 4th trip, too, but that doesn't stop me. It has its own peculiar problems, notably significant expense (why have I been broke lately, anyway?) and difficult timing (it also falls just within that shockingly large 90-day window, so I'd have to beg for a day off or be satisfied with a three-day weekend).

Could be worse--I could be Jon, to whom travel is enough of an addiction that he's had to take three long trips to Europe or the tropics already this year and still plans to go again. (Wait. That's not worse, is it?)