Sometimes when I'm on the bus, it's been an uneventful ride and I'm absorbed by the scenery, I blink and the landscape changes. It's not the same Pacific Northwest scenery that I've grown accustomed to. The mossy pines get replaced by cacti or centuries-old oaks, the rolling hills morph into dusty plains or icy tundra. I watch and try to figure out where "here" is.
Highway signs are a dead giveaway, as are the billboards or the ads on the sides of buses, so I try to ignore those. I look for the birds, the foreign deer, lions, carts full of wares being pulled by bored-looking camels. These make the whole ordeal somewhat sporting.
But it's gotten too easy. Which is another way of saying that I've seen every single country on the planet. The ones that have buses, which is most, save for the Vatican or Monaco.
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