The only obstacle to my move across the country to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico was my own name, specifically, the inclusion of my name on the lease to a Brooklyn apartment. So, as soon as my place at the ranch was confirmed, I took photographs of the apartment from carefully selected angles and posted an ad on craigslist to sublet my room.

The first response arrived within fifteen minutes.

“Hi, I’m Lisa. About the share -- the apartment must be nice and clean!!!! I’m really into clean. Is it clean?”

 “No, it isn’t,” I texted back and resumed working. Ten minutes later, I received another response.

“Hi, is the place 420-friendly?”

That’s code for smoking weed. I had to google to decipher it. Huh, really, that’s his first and only question about the place!

“No,” I texted back, “it isn’t.”

Finding a suitable replacement wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just dump my two cool kids flat-mates with any random body. As well as having the ability to make rent, the person had to reach the minimum character standard– don’t be annoying.

I had a very confusing telephone call with the third prospect. Finally, I figured out that he was seeking to rent a studio in the Bronx, not a flat-share in Brooklyn. He hadn’t troubled himself to read more than two or three words in the ad. The fourth and fifth callers were seeking to scam cash from me. Luckily, I didn’t have any.

The next applicant sounded fine and we arranged for her to come see the apartment that evening. She didn’t show up. Maybe that was because her scheduled visit coincided with two people getting shot a block away. (Both victims survived and are expected to fully recover. The shooting turned out to be a work screw-up by undercover narcs). I resumed the search, which dragged on endlessly like a long day’s journey into a nightmare. The road to New Mexico began to seem cut-off by a swollen deluge of dysfunction.

And then a twenty-five-year-old water polo player surfaced. My flat-mates liked him. He was able to make rent. He wasn’t waving any obvious red flags. The road to New Mexico opened up wide and clear in front of me until a roadblock went up: having just split from his live-in girlfriend, Mr. Water Polo Player was only willing to sign on the dotted line if he could move in that very weekend. Instead of him being the one desperately in need of a place to live, that would be me. I hesitated briefly, assessing the risk. With an upcoming trip to Ireland, I would only be homeless for a few weeks. That seemed preferable to resuming the search. “Okay,” I said, and thoughtfully invited myself to stay with a friend who lives down south.

In the dark early hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning, I moved out of what had been home and onto a Greyhound bus departing from the Port Authority at 3:45 am. Our first stop was Washington, D.C., or as Sam, the African-American, Gulf War veteran bus driver put it, “the home of Barack Obama.”

To my surprise, the bus was full. If you are wondering who takes a bus from the pit-hole of the Port Authority at 3:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the answer is: meth addicts, veterans, foreign students, immigrants who commute between night shifts and day shifts in two different cities, a guy selling pirate DVDs and snot-colored Queen bed sheets, people down on their luck who have never been up on their luck, and the odd writer.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the atmosphere on the bus was cheerful because there’s nothing cheerful about poverty. But I was surprised by the total absence of self-pity. Everyone was just getting on with it. There was none of the petty complaining and turf-wars over arm-rests that occur regularly on flights. It was peaceful.

Having personally checked every ticket and loaded every bag on board, Sam stood at the top of the bus and gave a pre-departure pep talk:

“Listen up! If you leave some expensive fancy computer behind you on this bus, right now is the part where I explain what you need to do. It’s very simple. You go to your local BestBuy and you drop a thousand dollars buying a new one. Are we clear on that? You don’t call up Greyhound looking for a missing property office because that property is missing forever. You go to BestBuy! Get that! So take your belongings with you! And no sleeping on the floor. Because just outside of Baltimore, we reach a rest-stop. I’m going to stop to take a leak and I’m going to walk down the aisle of the bus to exit the back door. It is dark and if you are lying on the floor, I will step on you. I repeat, I will step on you. Any questions?”

There were no questions but there were some smiles. I admired Sam. I admire anyone who does their job well. And he did his brilliantly and with respect and compassion. Among the passengers was a woman in her eighties with a walker. There she was, hobbling along, boarding a bus alone in the bowels of midtown Manhattan at 3:45 in the morning. Sam treated her as if she were the Queen of England. I would vote for him for President if only that were possible.

More than a month has passed since my initial bus trip. I’ve been to Ireland and back. I have jet lag. I am in a dimly-lit motel room in Albuquerque, my penultimate stopover before I reach Ghost Ranch. The motel is located on a busy stretch of highway, nestled between a Waffle House and an IHop. I am sitting on a king-sized bed. If the color of the duvet was a nail polish, it would be called, “tired red.” The curtains would be “exhausted red.” Because the bulb is missing from the bedside lamp, I can’t make out the color of the carpet. I am okay with that. I have a pleasant view of a car park. I am not being sarcastic. The light in New Mexico is so fine that it can even brighten up the face of a car park.

The Americans in Albuquerque are not like those back east. Here they speak in low voices. The motel manager is named Harry. He said, “Bear with me partner” to the man checking-in ahead of me. I felt a delicious thrill. I have reached the southwest, and I am wide-awake.