Rochester or Bust!

Forgive me Blogger for I have sinned, it's been a week since my last post...

Now that I'm going to burn in hell for mocking confession (it might not count though since I'm not catholic) I can begin my story.

I now know why the transportation industry is having so many problems. THEY'RE COMPLETE MORONS!!! Let's see, I want to take a plane to Rochester from Philly, that'll be $600+ for a 7 hr flight and a layover in ORLANDO! Does this make sense to anyone else? Now obviously that was just an extreme (although real) example. It really is crazy though. Bus, plane, train... it's all that bad. Amtrak's routes in PA only go east and west, nothing north. I can either go west and take a train out to Pittsburgh then Cincinnati then Buffalo then Rochester, or I can go east via Philly, Trenton, NYC, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester. Either way it would mean traveling through 3 states in a circular pattern just to go directly north (more or less) of my present location. How about Greyhound? They use roads and therefore would be more direct right? Wrong. I'm looking at 13 hrs by bus give or take 2 hrs depending on route. I'd really rather not waste 2 entire days traveling.

So let's recap my options so far:

Bus - >$100 but ridiculously long trip
Train - >$150, not quite as long a trip (about half the time of a bus) but incredibly round-about route
Plane - $200 - $300 (avg), get there much faster but very few direct flights (I'd have to travel out of the way to get to an airport and then most likely I'd have to have someone pick me up in Syracuse or Buffalo)

Those aren't looking all the great. There is still the slimmest hope that I might be able to convince my parents to let me drive up there but that's not looking too good (even though it would be the cheapest/easiest solution). I'll have to check out AAA and see if they have any bus trips going upstate to see if I could use for a ride or something. It could work but you never know.

One last thing while I'm on the topic...
Why in the world are the online system of these places so screwed up? Greyhound listed a 12hr bus to Buffalo that actually stops in Rochester before it goes on to Buffalo, yet when I looked at the buses to Rochester that one wasn't an option. Planes were the same way. There was one from Harrisburg to Philly to Rochester but they didn't list anything when I checked for Philly to Rochester. Is it really that tough to make this crap work right and make sense?

I've come to the conclusion that personal transporters are the only easy way to get from point A to point B, since they don't exist yet we'll just have to suffer through more and more stupidity as we wait it out.

Mark my words though, I WILL set foot on Rochesterian soil (I'm sure one of the many of you will correct me if this is not the correct term for "your people").

Eric