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With all the bloody bad press Greyhound got recently - thought I might post that I survived - without stabbing myself

Trip started on Tuesday the 5th - down to Bay Area. Originally I was scheduled to have a huge ass layover in Sacramento and then get into Oakland at 1:20 AM - and then it dawned on me - BART stops running at midnight, and that part of Oakland is no place to be hanging around waiting for BART to open up again (vicinity of 19th street station) - so I got a ride from Sacramento to my parents house.

By coincidence (and this really was not planned) - the San Jose Reptile Show was last weekend.
So on Saturday, my little brother and I took BART from Baypoint all the way to Fremont where we caught the 180 and then transferred to the 66 to get down to the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. About 3 hour trip one way.

I picked up a neat little Blizzard Cal King (double morph - kind of a paradox - amel hypermelanism - hypermelanism is what the trade calls the Cal King morph that lacks almost all white/cream/yellow patterning - I don't think it is truly over production of melanin, but they call it hypermelanistic. Amel is the gene that breaks production of Melanin (resulting in Pink Eyed Albinism)

Anyway - get both traits expressed in the same snake, and you get a snake without any pattern that is pinkish in color out of the egg, with the pink turning white as it grows. Hold it up to the light as a baby, and you can see some of the internal organs.

My little brother picked up a "reverse okeetee" (a selectively bred albino corn snake) and a tailed whip scorpion (not a true scorpion - looks almost like a cross between a scorpion and an orb spider). Whip scorpions lack venom glands, but they do have an acidic spray - and this little guy decided to demonstrate its spray all over my hand when I held it. Mild acidic, like vinegar. Not dangerous.

Anyway - I took the corn snake and the kingsnake home with me, on the Bus (I'm raising his corn snake until it is large enough to eat adult mice). Not suppose to do that - but ...

When I got to the Oakland Greyhound - they actually had a security guard checking peoples luggage. I've had my luggage checked leaving Sacramento for Oakland before, but never at the Oakland station. Fortunately, the security guard was lazy and didn't bother digging through my bag (like they do at Sac when leaving for Oakland). So no problems.

They never check at Sacramento headed north, that bus always has way way way too many passengers - so I got home OK with the snakes.

The bus from Sacramento to Redding was awful. It was hot and muggy and sweaty, the Bus Driver kept insisting the AC was on. About halfway to Redding, the Bus Driver says "oops, sorry people, I forgot to turn the AC fan on"

After that - it was cooler, but by then, the smell of sweat was enough to make a guy hall himself into the bathroom and stab himself to death ... fortunately, no one did.

And to top it off - the bus was filled to capacity, and the scary looking woman was sitting next to me - and kept falling asleep on my shoulder. She was scary looking. Did I mention she was scary looking?

If there had been any other empty seats on the Bus - I would have moved seats, even if the other seat was occupied by Charles Manson.

I don't think she intended any harm, but it's bad enough to have a stranger falling asleep on your shoulder. When it's a scary looking woman, it's really freaky.