“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said. Well, the nineteenth century American philosopher never endured a 17-hour, 640-mile round trip Greyhound bus ride from Manhattan to Portland, Maine, over a weekend.
Each mile was a grind.
I could have flown to Thailand in the time it took me to travel. But the cost was almost a quarter of the price for a plane or train, including the $29 “bulky” baggage fee each way for my six-foot long hockey stick sheathed in cardboard. As a friend told me, taking a slog of this proportion would require a “lunch and a lantern.” I packed peanut butter sandwiches and apples.
I was determined to meet my boyhood hero from the early 1970s, the first-ballot NHL Hall of Famer Brad Park.“He was a defenseman for the new age, one as proficient in the offensive zone as he was defending,” The Athletic noted, naming him among the top 100 hockey players of all-time.