L.A. STORIES / A Slice of Life in Southern California : You Can Get Here From There . . . and for Only $1.85

I thought this idea was my idea.

The brilliant light bulb came on one day when a San Diego bus driver handed me a little slip of yellow paper. A transfer.

Why not, I thought! Just keep transferring all the way to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to The World! And for a mere Buck-25.

So on a Friday morning I took off for Bill’s Excellent Adventure.

6:05 a.m.: By dawn’s early drizzle, the 901 rocks around the corner of Orange Avenue in Coronado. Little does the driver realize--as she hands me the transfer--that she will be the first of many to help me on my way to Los Angeles.

6:45: The 901 arrives in downtown San Diego. Switch to a 34 to UC San Diego in La Jolla.

7:50: Now on a 301 North County bus to Oceanside. (The driver charges 25 cents, so the total now spent is $1.50, but the principle is holding.)

The going’s slow. We seem to stop at every red light between San Diego and Oceanside and pick up and drop off every citizen that belongs to a seniors’ club. We’re even visited by the green-uniformed migras, who haul off two apparently illegal immigrants in cuffs.

9:00: The 301 pulls in to the cavernous depot at Oceanside. I’m already deciding how to write the All-America Cheap Travel Guide . . . and where I’ll go for lunch in L.A.

It turns out the bus to Orange County isn’t due until 11:20. Two and one-half hours! That’s all it takes a Greyhound to do the entire trip. Ah well. I kill two of those hours at Bessie’s cafe chowing down menudo.

It’s when I come back to the depot that I realize I’m not alone with this idea.

There’s a guy leaning against his dirty red backpack. Hadn’t he been on the last bus? He’s talking to a couple of young guys, showing a slip of paper to one of them, who is sending laser beams of spit to the concrete and taking mouth-corner drags from a cigarette.

11:40: The 305 finally pulls up, 20 minutes late. The three men leap up. All of them have bedraggled little yellow transfers.

I join them and pay another 25 cents. Total now: $1.75.

The two guys swing up to the back of the bus. One twiddles a guitar, the other pulls out a knife and starts sharpening it on a stone. Someone else on board is reading a Bible or Koran aloud to himself.

During this next stretch, either we’re all going to be knifed or proselytized to death.

The guy with the backpack is still down front, talking in a sort of Caribbean accent with the driver. He shows him a small, heavily fingered white card. It has the numbers of the chain of buses from San Diego to Los Angeles.

“I got this from the San Diego Rescue Mission,” he says. “They give them out to people who have to go up to L.A. to pick up their Social Security checks.”

So much for my brilliant idea.

We pass into Camp Pendleton under a sign saying, “Recycle Semper Fi.”

“There’s a lot of people doing what you folk are doing,” the driver says. “We get a lot of vets, too. They come down from L.A.--even San Francisco--to VA hospitals that have the specialty they need. Takes ‘em maybe a day and a half and $5-$6 to get down from Frisco to the VA in La Jolla.”

We’re driving through the isolated countryside of the Marine base. With so few on the bus, it almost feels like family. The driver says to call him Roy. Roy Cardigan.

“You fellers are lucky, know that?” he says. “Actually, just to take you on this stretch costs the bus company $7 each. That’s our real cost-per-passenger. The rest is made up from subsidies. Hell, a new bus costs a quarter-million dollars. Lasts 15 years, and it has to be driven, maintained, fueled up. . . . You’re getting the last of the great travel bargains.”

He slows down as we come up alongside a rain-bedraggled platoon of Marine jarheads. He opens the front door.

“You guys want a lift somewhere?” he yells. The sergeant answers, “No thanks. We’ve got a few miles to go--on foot.”

Roy closes the door. “There you go,” he says. “See how lucky you are? You got a nice warm bus and you got me. Know how far I’ve driven since I’ve been with the company? Six-hundred-ninety-thousand miles. I’m 61 now. I’ll have done a million miles by the time they retire me at 65.”

12:50: San Clemente.

As we slurp coffee at a Carl’s Jr. waiting for the 91 bus, the guy with the Caribbean accent says his name is Robi Williams. He’s got an accent because he’s from New Orleans. He has $10 in his pocket. Slept in Balboa Park last night. Is working his way up to Seattle.

“I’m going fishing, man--six months on the Alaska boats . . . $20,000, maybe $30,000. Then I’ll get me a car and drive back home to New Orleans. Settle into the old neighborhood, so I’m near my two ex-wives and my children. Got one kid just born with my second ex-wife that I haven’t even seen yet.”

The guy with the accurate spit says his name is Spray Paint.

“Honest,” he says. “I changed it by deed poll. Two years ago. When I was young. 16.”

Spray Paint is an artist. “I’m into airbrush designing. Dropped out of high school in 11th grade. Started my own company. My motto was ‘You name it, I’ll do it.’ Trouble was, nobody named it. I got no work. Now, my grandma just tossed me out of her house in San Diego. That’s why I’m here. I’m broke. Heh! Going up to see my mom in L.A.”

His friend’s name is Kevin Fleming. He’s a musician, and he’s really known as K-7. He’s on his way to Santa Ana to “clear up a will.”

“I got to get to some bus shelter north of L.A. by nightfall,” says Robi, “so I can stretch out there and start with the birds tomorrow.”

We’re buzzing through the fashionable ‘burbs of San Clemente. Outside, peach-colored Ritz Cove, Monarch Bay, Treasure Island and other gated beachfront communities whisk by. At a stop, a young woman tries to clamber aboard with two huge plastic bags filled with soda cans. Robi jumps up and takes them from her. He hauls them clanking up the back. She thanks him with an educated voice and lowered eyes.

1:30 p.m.: The 91 drops us off at a K mart. We’re not quite sure where it is. By now our sense of geography is history.

Spray Paint and K-7 say goodby and climb aboard an 88 for Anaheim. Robi Williams and I are holding fast at $1.75 as we catch a 97--free with transfer--for Laguna Beach and on to the neo-Venetian Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach. There, 10 cents and another transfer get us aboard the Long Beach-bound 95. Total spent: $1.85.

We split at Long Beach. It’s almost emotional.

“You want to know the truth?” he says as we haul into the Blue Line trolley terminal. “I had to leave New Orleans. My second wife ran out on me, pregnant and all. She wouldn’t let me see her. I just couldn’t take it being so near and her not letting me come around. Now she won’t let me see my own son. All I want is to go back--maybe when I’ve got the money.”

He struggles into his backpack, jumps out the door, runs toward some buses and is gone.

As I climb the platform steps to the Blue Line at the Long Beach terminal, I feel like some conquering hero. Little do these commuters know what odyssey has just been undertaken.

It’s not until I find a seat that fatigue actually sets in. As the train rolls along, a cramp hits my left foot. Some people do this everyday--and not by choice--and survive without complaining. But my buns, my lower back, my knees (which have been bent too much), are all screaming “Enough!”

The hour it takes to get to L.A. is one of the longest of my life.

Eleven hours and 40 minutes after leaving Coronado, we pull in to downtown Los Angeles. Arrival time: 5:49 p.m. In that time I could have driven to Los Angeles, back to San Diego, back to Los Angeles and back to San Diego again.

Or flown to London.

On the other hand, I would have missed out on Robi, K-7, Spray Paint, Roy the bus driver and what must be the nearest thing to stagecoach travel in California.

And at $1.85, it must be the nearest thing to stagecoach prices too.