Day 35. Leaving Elkhart

Day 35. 9^th

We began the day with our chores,

then for the most part, today was spent sitting in the same hitch spot, talking garbage & laughing at the expressions of the faces that passed us by.

At one point, we tried jumping into a pair of pants, just for the entertainment of it.

Three cars pulled over, but all were going west, instead of east.

At around 3pm we decided to be proactive in getting ourselves out of Elkhart & went to the travel information centre.
Here we were given the greyhound information & also some church contact details to try for assistance.

The first number we called was Church Community Services, an organisation that ‘makes God’s love visible & relevant for all people.’ They are ‘God’s hands in the community.’ They help the locals with food, mentors, finances & volunteer services. Quite the organisation! They listened to what we were doing & agreed, although our situation was outside their usual jurisdiction being that we were no part of their community, to give us a Greyhound ticket to Niagara.

We had almost enough cash for one ticket & had just been given another. We were just short one ticket for escape.

We walked to Greyhound to see what we could discover. We discovered they were closing shortly, but that a driver would take cash & ID & then allow us to purchase a ticket in the next big town.

Dean from CCS came down & not only bought us a ticket, but also gave us a bag of food & cash from Ted, the ‘rent-a-priest' who worked with him & then more cash again from himself. Ted had left the priesthood for love, going on to marry his love & now did God’s work outside the church at CCS & performed marriages when people rented him.

It was at the greyhound that we understood the hold up.

We met a bunch of people here who had all kinds of interesting things to say,

including Bryant, a legend of a man, who come documentary time, is one you’ll want to look out for.

He had all kinds of profound wisdom on division used through the media inspired by fear & how it’s keeping us all from our powerful, united potential.

We talked for hours about people, God, religion, spirituality & life, as we waited on the bus & while Paul worked his magic to get another bus ticket.

He ended up calling his professor in San Fran, Erik Kieser (http://www.erikcomm.com/)

who willingly paid the extra bus fare to get us to Niagara if Paul got a tatoo.
Done. With true monkly valour.

He figured it was only fair to honour our amazing PA, Pam.

And that was how we came to be spending the night on board another Greyhound Bus, whisked far far away from South Bend and Elkhorn & their toll road entrances & polite, zealous police officers & friendly Christian organisations & interesting local bus catchers.

I wonder if we’ll be missed?