I have returned from my Thanksgiving trip to Ana's house in Logan, West Virginia. It was a lot of fun -- there were many family-oriented excursions, and Ana's family seems to like me.

But that's not what I'm here to tell you about.

Before the morning I was to leave, Ana's grandmother fed me an enormous piece of this ambrosial yet sugar-poisoned desert, that was something like a banana-split pie. There was whipped cream in it, as well as bananas, butter, graham crackers, and about a quarter-ton of raw sugar. The net result was my tossing and turning on a sugar-high until 4am. My alarm woke me up at 6:00am.

Immediately upon waking, I felt what I thought was a bronchial reaction to Ana's cat, "Paco," in my chest -- sort of a wheezy, irritated, asbestos-y sensation. I figured that it would abate when I was no longer breathing Paco-polluted air. But in Wytheville, Virginia, as I was reading on a bench outside the Greyhound station, it had gotten worse, and my fingers started to become painfully cold, even though it was not particularly cold outside. I relocated inside a nearby McDonalds, and there I felt the familiar rushing, tingly, hot-cold, light-headed sensation of a fever. So, I walked across the parking lot to a gas station and bought a large-ish jug of grapefruit juice so I could hit my incubating viruses with some vitamin "C." I don't know if this works or not, but I've heard it's good to do. It probably doesn't work.

There was some confusion on my part about which bus to get on, since they weren't marked and didn't arrive on time. Apparently, I was the only one confused by this, since everyone there somehow knew which bus to board. I grew sicker and sicker en route from Wytheville to Roanoke, my next layover. I was unable to sleep despite my having had only 2 hours the night before, but thought that once it grew dark I wouldn't have any trouble.

While unpleasant, the rides from Charleston to Wytheville, and from Wytheville to Roanoke were bearable, if only barely. The jaunt from Roanoke to Washington, however, was truly something otherworldly.

First of all, I was really pretty sick when I boarded the bus in Roanoke for the final stretch. As the ride got underway, I was burning up with fever, my whole body ached, my head was pounding, and sleep was just impossible, even though it was nearly pitch-dark. On top of this, some kind of delirium had set in, and I was plagued by a gushing of random, racing, intrusive thoughts. I sat there in the dark staring straight ahead, occasionally glancing around at the other torsos sitting upright in their seats, listening to my mind deliriously and incessantly chatter away, and compulsively checking my watch. Without fail, between 3 and 6 minutes would have passed since my last check. So, I restrained myself from checking, and as a result the period of time between checks increased to around 10 minutes. This continued for the duration of the ride from Roanoke to DC, which was 6.5 hours long.

And then there was the driver, a sullen, squat, mumbling man who sported one of those little derby hats. I saw a plaque above the driver's seat that read, "Your Operator: Courteous, Safe, Friendly," and I amused myself to some degree by imagining in its place "Your Operator: Dumb, Ugly, Rude." This didn't provide much respite from my own private Greyhound-hell. The driver suffered from something like Tourette's syndrome, and when isolated by the darkness and what I imagine might have been his assurance that most passengers were asleep, he started uttering a torrent of nonsense words, grunts and other borderline-human noises. He was also an extremely aggressive driver, and would tailgate at 60mph at a distance of 10 feet to encourage people to get out of his way. There was also an incident somewhere in virginia comprising his pulling into a gas station, stepping out, making some kind of exchange involving an envelope with two women, and then either letting them off or on the bus. I was pretty delirious at that point.

We drove not on the interstate, but rather what seemed like the entire way from Roanoke to DC on two-lane roads. I couldn't imagine this to be the proper way, and I had absolutely no idea where we were. Ordinarily, I would have been more willing to trust the judgment of a bus operator to navigate his way to the destination city, but the Tourette's syndrome, fever, and darkness damaged my confidence. As he repeatedly left and re-boarded the bus, I came to truly despise our driver, his deadpan, sullen eyes, derby hat, Tourette's syndrome, road rage and idiotically inefficient route to washington DC. I wanted to see him die.

At one point, I thought I was going to have a full-blown panic attack, there in the darkness of the bus, as I roasted with fever and stared into the night beyond the windows. It felt almost like a kind of hyper-awareness, especially since I couldn't sleep and checked my watch every few minutes; I was painfully aware of every passing second. My fever, the madman driver, our circuitous route, my inability to sleep, and my having traveled at that point for about 15 hours were contributors to the gradual loss of sanity that I was really afraid might end badly.

The thought that God was torturing me kept entering my mind, as did the hope that the bus would careen off a cliff and end it all. I saw, at one point, a street-sign that read "EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE," and mused to myself "That's what I need"'

The bus pulled into the Greyhound station in DC at about 10:45pm, in fact a bit ahead of schedule. I walked six blocks or so to the metro, and took it home. All told, I had traveled for 18 hours, from 6:00am in logan to 12:00am in Gaithersburg, having had 2 hours of sleep and coming down with what I'm pretty sure was the flu.

I think the things that most nearly sent me over the edge were the delirium and intense wakefulness; sitting in the dark for almost seven hours with my brain on manic, incessant overdrive was unbelievably torturous. For next time, I will hope for a shorter trip, the absence of influenza, and a more morally aesthetic driver.