Margita Persson
Hi! I was traveling with the Grey rabbit bus 1980 from New york to Los Angeles. I had came from Sweden, traveling alone ,only 19 ears old. John Lennon was recently shot. I´m glad i found this page! I have some photos, and i often think about this big trip i did in your country. A lot of things happen along this journey. I remember that one girl had her dog run over and we had to take it in the luggage, and we forgot one passenger at a rest stop and had to go back and pick her up. She sat under a palm tree waiting for us. And we pick´t up hitchhikers along the way too. They had guitars and played for us. I remember a lot of things! Do you want to see the pictures and hear more?
Yes! -James
I rode the Rabbit in the summer of 1980 from NYC to Berkley. The bus was an ex-Passaic – Athena and said “MT HEALTHY” on the destination sign. As we were leaving Manhattan the driver said “this bus has 1970 air conditioning – we roll down all nineteen windows and drive seventy.”
I started talking to a couple girls from Long Island. One seemed to like me until I said I liked Zappa – she resented the song Jewish Princess. She wound up seducing one of the bus drivers and they disappeared back into the sleeping cubby.
No one seemed to have weed (and alcohol was strongly discouraged to avoid pee breaks), but starting somewhere in the midwest a friend and I sampled some purple microdot and were coming down just as we hit the hot springs. Priceless.
Leaving Tahoe where the road gets a little scary with a steep drop on the right we blew a rear tire. All us guys had to help wrestle the spare out from under the mattresses and swap it with the flat.
I rode the Grey Rabbit – or the Green Tortoise, can’t remember which – from somewhere in Montana to NYC sometime during the summer of 1980. I’d been hitch-hiking east, not very efficiently, and was running out of money.
So I had about $15 in my pocket when I got let out at a truck stop, then headed over towards the “hippie bus” I’d seen on the highway earlier. I couldn’t afford the $50 ticket but they let me on anyway, and I was in heaven – platforms, mattresses, sleeping bags, interesting people to talk to (including my future girl-friend).
The two drivers would take turns – one would drive and play an endless selection of Dylan et al tapes, the other would sleep in a cubby-hole in the very back of the bus.
At some point we stopped at a big lake in MN to swim and basically wash up, and I ended up rescuing a passenger who was having trouble swimming back to shore. That earned my ticket, according to the driver
We eventually made it to Grand Central, at which point my new girl-friend and I headed south to Maryland (my parents’) and DC (her parents’), respectively.
This all seems like several generations ago, needless to say!
I worked in Kendall Square for many years and just a couple of years ago, saw a Gray Rabbit (or Green Tortoise parked on a side-street. This brought back a rush of memories because it looked very much like it did back then. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
?
Just came across this site. I came across as a little girl with my sister and dad back in 80 or 81. My folks were friends with the owner and drivers. We packed all our belongings on the rabbit in Maine and it took us to Sonoma California. Every time I smell exhaust I remember that trip. The bunks, the drivers taking turns at the wheel. And watching the sights out my tiny toddler eyes. Names that come to mind, Cookie, Rusty, Ricky to name a few. I wonder what happened to all of them. Rusty was a big sweet bear of a man.
