Revisiting the American road trip: It's the bus. What did you expect?

Second of two parts

"You're taking local buses to California? How cool!" When people weren't appalled by the idea, they found it intriguing. But once on the bus, it takes about five minutes to realize that most regular riders don't think it's cool. It's not a novelty, fun, or eco-hip. It's just the bus, a way to get from here to there. They've been riding for a long time.

"I guess we're all here for the same reason," a man, mid-40s, announced at a South Bend bus shelter in southwest Washington. "No license?" He smiled. "I need to get out of here; the cops know who I am; I can't catch a break."

It was eight in the morning, cold, raining. The oyster-packing plant across the street on the Willapa River was already in full swing, rubber-boot-clad workers on a smoke break out front and a conveyor belt chucking oyster shells into bins. Two other people at the stop were bound for another packing plant, judging by their scant conversation and the logos on their sweatshirts.

Just the four of us, waiting. Which is what you do when you take the bus.

The budget vise

Sometimes you wait in the rain; sometimes there's a shelter. Sometimes the view is of river otters and eagles; most times the view is of a parking lot. Sometimes you're alone; other times a few people wait with you. There's never a crowd.

On the buses from Washington to California, in only two situations were they close to full. Spidering out from urban areas, the buses carried more people, as from Olympia, Wash., to towns like Cosmopolis, Raymond, Ilwaco. In the other instance, 30 sixth-graders packed a California bus, all very awake at 7:30 in the morning on their way to school.

The rural transit systems are small, but essential: Curry Public Transit's Coastal Express linking Coos Bay, Ore., to Smith River, Calif., carries little more than 7,000 riders a year, but there is no other bus service along the southern Oregon coast.

Even with limited ridership, rural systems are experiencing an increase in passengers in many of the areas I passed through. "Are you kidding?" Kathy Cook of Washington's Mason County Transportation Authority said when asked about ridership trends. "They're skyrocketing" — from 32,400 boardings in April 2007 to 40,800 in the same month this year.

Just when use is increasing, so are costs, mostly for fuel: Lincoln County Transit in Oregon has seen fuel costs rise 35 percent in the last 18 months. In Mason County in Washington, the transit agency paid $30,475 for fuel in May 2007 and $51,438 in May 2008 — a nearly 70 percent increase.

In Washington, revenue from state sales and use tax, historically a reliable source of funding, is drying up for the first time in years. "What we're seeing now is flatlining," said Kathy Cook of Mason County's transit agency. Flatlining. That doesn't sound good.

Bus? What bus?

"You don't take 'special buses,' do you?" asked a friend of my trips from the Olympic Peninsula to Seattle. I told her the buses looked like city buses, full sized, if old. But on this road trip to California, short buses were the rule — like senior-citizen buses, special-needs buses, tourist buses.

Only close to cities were the buses what city folk, or country folk for that matter, would recognize as public transit. "That's a public bus?" a woman in Florence, Ore., asked me. "I thought it went to the casino."

People who don't ride the bus, well, sometimes they don't know what the bus is.

Howard, from Rockaway Beach, Ore., rides the bus all the time. As a young man, he was hit in the head in a bar fight, leaving him with a seizure disorder, which means he can't drive. Now, in addition to using the bus for general getting around, he bird-watches along the coastal estuaries. The buses' large windows and slow speeds provide good viewing.

"Howard has seen eagles swim," the driver, Chuck, told me on the way from Manzanita to Tillamook, Ore. I looked at Howard. "No way."

"It's true," Chuck said. Howard had seen an eagle submerged in the water, its wings moving in a breast stroke until the large bird reached dry land with a huge salmon too heavy to lift. Chuck, Howard, and I craned our heads to look at a river we were passing, as if having mentioned the eagle's accomplishment we might see it repeated.

Aside from two other backpackers, the riders I met on the bus were locals: A mother and daughter both looking for housekeeping work in hotels lining the northern Oregon coast. A woman making the day-long round trip from Fort Bragg, Calif., to Ukiah to buy medicine for her mother.

Not all people I met ride out of necessity — because they don't have a license or money for a car. Jake, a 54-year-old nurse from Ilwaco, Wash., was on his way home from his four-day shift in Hoquiam. When the timing chain blew on his Pontiac last year, he decided the repair was worth more than the car. Now the car sits in his yard, and he's on the bus, paying $2.75 a week for his commute. "It's crazy that we're so dependent on cars," he told me.