An overnight bus to Little Rock

blessings, bicycles, bridges and bourbon

After several days of slowing down a little with my family in Kentucky, I’m finally sleeping again. Plus, I successfully made it from Texas to Kentucky without a car (or at least my own car, ha).

At a Little Rock dinner party I told my new friend Stephanie’s husband Jason that everyone seems to think I might get shot on this trip. We all laughed at the silliness of that, but then he added, joking “but, don’t get shot.” (In the last few years, Little Rock has developed a reputation for crime.)

Stephanie was such a godsend for my time in this city. She put me up in her Airbnb in South Main (SoMa) for free, and I had a good, central location, complete with a bike to ride. It was a historic house, and she was a knowledgeable contact if I needed it. What luck.

Little Rock Dinner Party

When I first arrived to Australia back in 2010, I met a traveler from Argentina named Ari. After a night out in Melbourne, Ari took the trams with me and several other backpackers to get home. We all got off the tram at the same time and then most of us agreed to take a taxi for the rest of the way. Ari wouldn’t come with us.

“It is against my principles,” he told us.

I interpreted this to mean he wouldn’t spend money to support individual cars. I wonder how he got home. I wish I could have such high resolve when it comes to public transit. I love buses and trains, but I will happily jump in a car when I need to. It is not an excuse, but being a woman can put you at higher risk to be so bold. Maybe I’m just a spoiled brat though.

Today as I sit on my parents’ comfortable couch, the fear about traveling on my own seems almost laughable. It’s similar to the feeling of wandering around at any hour in Australia. For context, Australia is the 22nd safest country in the world. USA is ranked 131, nestled between South Africa and Brazil.

Please will someone pay me to write an article about fear that is warranted and fear that isn’t in this modern world. It would be so interesting to consider class, culture, location, statistics, safety and so much more. How, to live in a city where everyone can walk around at night is an extreme privilege and yet, like many other “privileges” it should simply be a human right.

Last week I wrote about meeting Hexel, the Dallas transport genius. When I left him at the train station and got in the Uber at 10:30 at night to the Grand Prairie mall parking lot where the bus was scheduled to leave, my excitement about travel vanished, and my fear returned. It was time for the overnight trip to Little Rock.

I’ve been analyzing why I get so scared in these moments of transit, and is it worth it to explain them? It’s definitely connected to the fact that I’m doing it alone. If I had a friend with me, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.

After weeks of worrying, I managed to get on the bus just fine and hilariously passed out instantly. I woke up at the Prescott pit stop around 3:30am and then felt my heart hammer in my chest for the next hour as I tried to organize an Uber to pick me up from the Little Rock gas station as soon as I arrived. (Stephanie had recommended making sure a driver was waiting.) I swapped between Google maps and the Uber app to try to coincide arrivals. (I couldn’t request a ride in advance.) It all worked out. My Uber driver was a chill, big blonde lady, probably younger then me, with a great southern accent. She told me she’d been driving Uber all night and it’d been mostly fine, “a few drunks.” Her nonchalance about the area made me feel silly for worrying.

A lot happened during my time in Little Rock, and if you have a subscription, you can read about it in the Newcastle Herald. A few highlights include a local couple blessing and praying for me at the markets, which was actually really sweet. I’ve included the unedited interview below with Perrion Hurd, Adrianna Kimble-Ray and Gina Newman from Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. It was a great, varied museum, and I like hearing the perspective of staff.

I didn’t have much luck riding Little Rock’s public transit system. The Megabus got me there, but beyond that I explored the town via foot and bike. On a Saturday morning, I made a new friend and rode bikes around the city, branching out beyond South Main Street and riding across the Arkansas river. I met pedestrian advocate Chris Woodward via my post in the Critical Mass Little Rock Facebook Group. It was hot, especially with so much concrete everywhere. Wide roads and huge parking lots were in abundance. We saw few cars, maybe because it was a Saturday. It made riding a bike pretty darn easy. We did wait for the bus with our bikes at one stage. We had plans to visit the culturally significant Central High School, home of the Little Rock Nine desegregation in 1957. But the bus already had two bikes on the front, and I guess it didn’t have room for more because it didn’t stop for us. Sadly we didn’t get to see the school.

Chris and I rode bikes to a local favorite place called “House of Mental” where we had vegan soul food.

Below you can check out the route Chris and I took. It’s not the most accurate map, but you get the drift.

The Green route is our bike ride, the blue is walking.

An unexpected trend in my trip so far are all the tourist trolleys. Dallas, Memphis and Little Rock all have them. I don’t know how practical they are, but lordy are they cute and fun to ride! Yes I pulled the whistle, lol.

I keep saying yes to everything, pushing myself always to do more. Then when I start writing, I don’t even know what matters and what doesn’t. Which is more interesting to write about, the multi-racial, anti-gay marriage church I attended Sunday morning with a surprising guest pastor from Brisbane, Australia? Or is it that no one seems to walk around much here, similar to my next experience in Memphis. Maybe this is most of America, and I had forgotten. Am I not supposed to be on the streets? The 15-minute-walk to church in the Little Rock rain that Sunday morning was nice, but was it dangerous? Where was everyone? Was it just because it was raining that no one was out? But the more everyone walks around, the better and safer a place gets.

According to Smart Cities Dive:
”While correlation does not establish causation, the implications of the findings in Bicycling and Walking are intriguing either way:  One suggestion of the analysis is that, if we do more to create safe walking environments, people may walk more and become more healthy. The other is that, if people walk more, walking may become safer, creating a multiplier effect.”  

Chris told me that this mural was painted by an out-of-town artist, and later people came back and added the chess pieces so it would look less like gang signs. Here’s an interesting Reddit thread about it.

Or is this week’s story how last Sunday afternoon, I felt relaxed enough to have one adult beverage, the $6 drink of the week, “Groundhog Day” at the locally-loved Rock Town Distillery and then after that how Alec the bartender easily convinced me to have another, a $12 bourbon cocktail called “Midnight Society.” Then I bobbed around town for the rest of the afternoon, half drunk, all worries evaporating like the sidewalk puddles.

I bought myself a tasty cheese-dripping sandwich at The Community Bakery, and I bought two men standing outside the CVS Twix bars. (They asked if I would.) Plenty of people in Little Rock seem either homeless or poverty stricken, and they did talk to me. Maybe it’s scary, or maybe it’s entertaining. “Stay beautiful” one man called out. “I love that yellow” another man told me when I was walking home in my yellow skirt and raincoat. Two drinks from the town watering hole can change the world from a place of uncertainty to a place where you strut down the empty streets in your plastic raincoat, feeling like yourself and the world are fine AF.

But I sobered up, we always do. My last night in Little Rock I was in an adorable hostel called the Firehouse Museum and Hostel of Arkansas. It was right down the road from Stephanie’s place. (I had to move on as she had new friends coming in.) That night I found myself practicing Spanish with two men (volunteers) in the hostel lounge, one from Mexico and one from Brazil. The space was cute and cozy with all kinds of fire station relics everywhere. I work in a museum in Australia, and it is always interesting to see the different ways people tell stories of history.

Then I retired to my room to spend the next 5 hours panicking while determining the delicate balance of arriving to the sketchy gas station before the bus arrived, (imperative as it will leave without you) while also not getting their too soon and have to hang out in the night elements.

I woke up at 4am to strip the sheets and make sure I was packed. I requested an Uber at 4:39. The bus was meant to come at 5:15, and early arrival is advised. The Uber driver, Ukonu, arrived at 4:51am. It was a five minute drive to the gas station, and I asked him if he would mind to wait with me until the bus came. At first he told me he couldn’t; when he waited he lost money. He knew the gas station well, he used to live near it. He was from Nigeria and when he isn’t Uber driving, he works at a hospital. He told me how he never stops working. I offered to pay him more to wait with me, just a minute or two, and maybe he picked up on the panic in my voice. He told me he didn’t have any ride requests, he would wait.

What was I afraid of? Whom? What was the worst that could happen? Ukonu and I went on to swap stories of our lives and suddenly the bus was there. I offered him cash, so grateful that he had waited 10 minutes with me. He refused, and of course I tipped him in the app. I got back on the bus, this time bound for Memphis with the same bus driver that originally brought me from Dallas to Little Rock three days prior. He was a Latino man with jokes.

“Make sure you take all your belongings with you when you leave, otherwise you can find them on Ebay this afternoon,” he told us.

I curled up in a seat thinking about the people I’m meeting and thinking about how I’m not sleeping. I continue to feel overwhelmed with fear, joy and love. There was so much I didn’t explore in Little Rock, and I really don’t think I registered that until I visited the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. It’s hard to get to know a place when you’re only passing through.

I didn’t sleep much on that early morning bus ride, but I did get to witness a sunrise from the Megabus window. It was real pretty.