A traveller, in an unfamiliar land, unaccountably got himself lost – in a featureless wilderness with neither town nor house nor road nor sign to guide him.
Encountering what might have passed for a track, he was left with little option other than to follow it; and was heartened some hours later – when the sun was at its highest – to espy a motor vehicle upon the horizon and heading in his direction.
It appeared to be a truck or large-ish conveyance, bouncing and bumping along, kicking up clouds of sand and dust whilst emitting a similar volume of blue-black smoke.
And then he realised that it was a bus! Juddering along at some speed; its coachwork rattling, its roof-rack brimming with cargo and luggage and jolly passengers.
He hailed the bus and it hissed to a halt.
“Get in!” laughed the driver.
“Come on in!” the passengers urged him.
“Hurry up!” chortled the crowd upon the roof.
The traveller grabbed his bag and jumped aboard, to tumultuous applause.
“Where you going?” he asked the driver.
“Anywhere you want!” the driver laughed – engaging the gears and setting forth.
And, as the baggage racks and gaps beneath the seats were stuffed with people’s chattels, the traveller sat down upon his case in the aisle.
“You’re sure lucky we picked you up,” the nearest passenger grinned. “There ain’t another service like this nowhere!”
Which was true enough – but not necessarily in a positive sense.
For after some minutes had elapsed the traveller began to notice that a number of distinctive singularities applied to this particular journey:
The bus, in the first place, was in very poor condition, inside and out. It was old and dented and scratched. Moreover, the seats were damaged and split, there wasn’t a seatbelt to be seen – and some had come even loose from the floor, which could hardly be considered to be safe. Bits of webbing and trim hung down from the ceiling, some of the windows were cracked – some of the windows were missing entirely! And there were holes in the floor beneath the traveller – through which he could see the surface of the road whizzing by.
The road was barely a road at all, it was unsurfaced and ill-maintained (if it had ever been a good road at all). The vehicle lurched and swung and skidded. The traveller had omitted to check the tyres, but took a reasonable guess that they were likely to be as awful as everything else.
But most worrying of all was the behaviour of the driver. He drove like a man possessed. He observed none of the caution or professionalism one might expect. He hammered along the straights at an unsafe speed, raced through corners like a rally driver – had there been any oncoming traffic or other obstacles, he would never have been able to stop. If the driver wasn’t actually drunk, then he was probably mad.
“Whoooo!” cried the passengers, every time they rammed a pothole.
“Yay!” sang the people on the roof – bucking up and down like revellers at a funfair.
“Faster! Faster!” others urged (unadvisedly, to the traveller’s mind).
“Isn’t this a bit dangerous?” he murmured to the passenger sitting closest.
“He thinks your dangerous!” his confidant bellowed to the driver at the top of his voice.
Everybody laughed. The driver turned, grinning, and didn’t consult his windscreen for quite some time; he just kept grinning at the traveller as they hurtled along.
Suddenly, a goat appeared in their path.
“Go on! Go on!” chanted the crowd.
The bus hit the goat. There was a sickening thump and the windscreen was splashed with blood. They were doing about 40. Everybody cheered.
“Y’ see … ” one of the passengers explained to the traveller, “he’s only dangerous for goats!”
And also, as it transpired, crows, dogs, cows, donkeys and a brood of scurrying chickens. The passengers cheered at every death. The traveller felt rather sick.
Navigating a particularly hazardous stretch – steep and rocky and uphill – the traveller was dismayed to see a passenger tumble from the roof. He could see him lying in the road, still conscious, probably injured, certainly winded, yet the driver showed no sign of stopping to help or check or even pick him up again.
Aboard, the passengers rocked with mirth.
“Will you look at that!”? chortled one of them. “He shoulda hung on tighter!”
“Aren’t we going to help him?” asked the traveller.
“Help him?” squeaked another of the passengers.
And they had a good laugh about that as well.
“You see, in life, you have to hang on,” the another of the passengers explained. “That guy just got a free philosophy lesson.”
The traveller considered his options as rapidly as he could. In a remarkably short time he decided to get off the bus.
“I’d like to get off now!” he called to the driver. “I’ll make my own way from here!”
The driver turned his head, without slowing. “You wanna get off? No way buddy! You got on, you stay on – ain’t that right?”
The entire population of the bus chorused that this was indeed the protocol and that – having boarded the vehicle – the traveller should remain until they reached their terminus.
He couldn’t see how to persuade them otherwise, he couldn’t see how he might overpower the driver, so the traveller merely braced himself, kept a firm hand on his bag, and decided to jump at the next opportunity.
However, before the next opportunity arose the vehicle came to a crest and took a road along the side of a canyon. The canyon was perhaps around 2,000 feet deep. The bus was travelling right along the edge flicking stones and debris into the void. Anybody jumping out the exit would have gone straight over.
“Whooooo!” sang the passengers. “Whooooo!” Their faces breaking into smiles and giggles. The traveller started to pray.
“Don’t be so stupid,” the nearest passenger hissed. “He’s the best damn driver in the world.”
There was sudden lurch.
A loud scraping.
The bus started to tilt.
The back of the vehicle was visibly lower than the front.
“Oh-oh! Here we go!” the driver cried, quite merrily.
“Hurrah!” cheered the passengers – as joyously as he.
The bus was upended and corkscrewed over the cliff; and fell, spinning, like a leaf.
“What did I tell you?” the nearest passenger laughed – into the face of the traveller (a face – which it might be added – was rapidly turning yellow). “The best damn bus driver on the planet!”
Moral: Before joining any form of group or gathering, do first check that you share some common objective.
© Adam Acidophilus 2025