This is where I should have had a tambourine. And Amber begged me to please not take a picture. Cab rides three and four.

All through Maine and Canada, Rachel told tales of the X2 bus, and I was mesmerized. The crazier, the better, she said, and I believed her. Three preachers trying to save the bus at the same time, she said, and none of them like any of the others. And I wanted to see it.

So Amber and I took the X2 to meet Doug Hecox for lunch.

Nothing.

NOTHING!

Well - a very creepy man creepily arched his creepy eyebrows at a creeped-out Amber.

But really ... nothing. No one yelled. No one preached. No one threatened. The closest thing to any kind of less-than-civil behavior that I got to see was a woman telling a man that if he wanted to leave her effing bags on the sidewalk, then she wanted a divorce.

But on the way back ... Oh ...

There was a Com-to-Jesus meeting. Right there on the X2. It was a little creepy, actually.

I love Jesus, and I'm impressed with people who can just strike up conversations about Him with people they don't know. That impresses me. Talking. Not necessarily this kind, but it certainly entertained me and rounded out a not-quite-typical tourist's checklist.

He wanted everybody's attention. His name was such-and-such from Fort Lauderdale, and he just wanted to pray a blessing over our bus.

First - I appreciate that one. I'm never going to tell someone they can't pray a blessing over me or my bus. So we're cool there.

"Are you the po-leece?" a very frightened man asked from behind us.

No, the red-T-shirted preacher-prayer person assured him. He's a pastor. From Fort Lauderdale.

"Cuz you shore look like the po-leece to me."

And then the man in the red T-shirt prayed while his assistant/preacher-in-training? watched on from behind him.

And then it turned into the quickest altar call I've ever seen. Repeat after me, he said ... and everyone did. EVERYONE did. Like robots. Like he could have been asking them to affirm their association with the Lollipop Brigade, and they all would have gone along with it. In Jesus' name, of course.

There was a murmuring Amen throughout the bus. And then he got off the bus. And I didn't take a single picture, as Amber had pleadingly requested.

Sarah the Bumpkin had a few more moments of unexciting note, including the one where a woman threatened to steal our bags full of cans of enchilada sauce if we set them down, but my feet hurt, and I have the promise of the Eastern Market tomorrow morning looming in front of me like a carrot before I head off to the City of Brotherly Love, aka the City Where Hollyberry Doth Dwell. I'm hittin' the hay. Pictures are slow in coming. But they'll get here. I hope. Before Christmas. Maybe.