The lazy-eyed hayseeds and their drooling, kicking progeny seem to rotate from city to city, but they're ever-present. The worst is the young adult sitting next to you, though. He got on the bus in the middle of the night in Winnemucca, Nevada and won't be getting off 'til Salt Lake City. He's 18 and very upset that the driver confiscated the six-pack of Coors he had hanging out of his backpack in plain view. The mustachioed drunkard sipping generously from his flask of cheap bourbon in the back smiles and winks knowingly in a “glad he sat next to you” sort of way. The young adult (and you know he's an adult because he keeps reminding you during the never-ending tirades against his bitchy stepmom and how he's 18 and doesn't have to listen to anybody if he doesn't want to) doesn't take the hint that you're ignoring him until you're successful in drifting off to sleep, only to wake up to his napping noggin on your shoulder a few hours later, his alcohol-scented drool soaking your shirt in a pattern that could be the ugliest Rorschach test you've ever seen (and, considering the therapy you'll seek after this bus ride, you'll see plenty more).

Then again, pioneers who crossed the continent in covered wagons over months of hardship (and maybe even cannibalism!) would probably be very ticked off that us modernites are now able to do the same thing in a few scant days — or even hours, given our new-fangled aeroplanes! And immigrants who survived even longer voyages across the sea in coffin ships, well, they'd slap us silly for complaining about how easy we've got it now!

I'm just thankful that I've never had to eat weevils in hard tack…