Bus people v. Airplane people part II

I woke up Saturday morning dreading the next few days and the journey at hand. My dad took me down to the Greyhound bus station in Salt Lake, which is located right between the homeless shelter and the run down park where the homeless get their drugs. There were alot of people that were trying to get to different buses leaving that morning, so the line was long to get my ticket confirmed. My dad waited with me for maybe 5 minutes before he had enough of the situation and bid his adieu and left. So there I was 57th in line for a bus that was supposed to leave in 20 minutes to go up through Wyoming where I would make my first transfer.

In retrospect I should not have been as nervous about missing my bus as I was at the time. There were so many people in that terminal that there was no chance that any single bus was going to leave on time, and certain not until every possible person was crammed onto the bus. About 20 minutes after my Departure time I made it to the window and got my ticket and checked in my bag (even though they were so busy I had to carry my own bag to the bus and physically put in on myself). My itinerary looked something like this:

Greyhound 543
7:05am Salt Lake City-Evanston-Laramie
Greyhound 4332
3:20pm Laramie-Cheyenne-Kearney-Omaha
Greyhound 321
5:15am (Sunday)Omaha-SiouxFalls-Fargo-Grand Forks

It could have been worse I was going to pull into Omaha in the middle of the night and have to hang out at a bus station for a couple hours, nothing too incredibly horrible. So I stepped onto the bus as one of the last people to board and the few seats available were not the pick of the litter to say the least. I finally settled in next to an older fellow that had a headset on listen to his Sony Walkman. He may have opened one eye to see that someone had in fact decided to sit next to him, but I figured that I was ok as far as not having to talk until Laramie.

I was unclear on the "small talk" etiquette on a long bus ride. Usually on an airplane, if the ride is less than an hour you are somewhat expected to small talk for the ride. Between the snack and beverage service, taxi out and in, Takeoff and Landing, climbing and descending (where it is perfectly acceptable to cut off a conversation to stare out the window), you should only have to come up with about a half an hours worth of conversation. Long airplane rides there is a moment or two after the climb and before the final descent that "small talk" is a courtesy that has become almost expected. There are stops for food and gas was this the appropriate time? I just didn't know!

Shortly after we departed SLC all of that immediately didn't matter as a small elderly lady across the isle started...and never stopped. Between the offer of Ritz crackers made into small peanut butter sandwiches that she had made herself last night in preparation for this ride and her cat in the seat next to her that needed to take her medicine and could I just please put the drops in the cats eye as she held her down, I knew the ride would feel like an eternity. Within the first few minutes of the conversation I had confirmed that she was NOT going to make the connection at Laramie with made me think that all would be okay. I remember thinking that if I could just make it to Laramie to the transfer that there was no way there would be that many people on the bus to Omaha. I was going to make it...but then it started to snow...