I have a question for the experienced bus travelkrs on the list concerning GenCon? How long does it usually take Greyhound to get a person from portland, oregon to indianapolis? I'm trying to figure out what to do becase if I make a bus reservation on-line I have to be able to tell them which dates I'll be leaving each way, and I won't want to miss any of the convention.

I'm a greyhound rider from way back (well, not that far, really, but ten years at least) and I've got to say that, in my experience, what their website and/or customer service people tell you is usually pretty darned accurate. I've never had a problem with what they've told me, and I once had one of those 60-day "ride whenever you feel like it" passes, and used it enough to pay for itself three times over.

And, from the website, it looks like it takes between 2 days, 3 hours and 2 days, eight hours to get from Portland, Oregon to Indianapolis, IN. (The trips back are between 2d/5h and 2d/10h). Most of the departures have arrival times in the evenings (6:10pm through 8:40pm), but there's one with an arrival early (9:25am) that I'd probably go with, even though the departure time is 1:00am. For more, head over to greyhound.com and poke at it, there's a "duration" tab that's really nice. It's really rather customer-friendly (or maybe it's just that I've used it so much I've forgotten what it's really like).

Have you tried trains? That might be a relatively inexpensive yet... uh... "not bus" solution. Reason I rec it, my buddy has gone the relatively short distance from DC to Raleigh and back a few times via Greyhound, and this Mahayana Buddhist is always ready to kill a man by the look in his eye when he steps off the bus. On the trip to my place, I hear another tale of the woes of cheap transport, like the "screaming Arab child", "the drooling crazy guy", the "drunk who wet himself", "the four fat women who kept singing gospel tunes", etc.

The price may be worth your sanity.

Hello,

This thread is, I'm afraid, a little too general for the Forge. It's fundamentally about the best way to get from point A to point B in modern culture, and that's a decision which may be researched more directly than here. Let's close it nicely and move on.

Best,
Ron