Originally Posted by John Galt
If you run with your fellow FT'ers and people like them, the world is small...dip into the "folds," and you'll see things very alien to your experience. Try taking a Greyhound bus between, say, Oklahoma City and Phoenix and you'll see what I mean.
Back before the days of cheap air travel everywhere, I rode the Dog from Champaign to Chicago a couple times a year. Granted it was a shorter ride - a small taste of Americana rather than a cross-country immersion in it - but I actually have fond memories of it.
On one of my trips, I met a couple of German backpackers who had some sort of cross-country bus pass. (Our version of a Eurail Pass I suppose!) On another one, I met a couple of Army guys headed reporting to duty (where, I don't recall). Always met a lot of college students on that route, as it was a fairly standard way for kids to shuttle back & forth from Chicago to U of I.