Lessons

There are a finite number of positions one can sit in, especially in a narrow bus seat. After 12 or 14 hours the best strategy is to pick the one that hurts least and stay with it as long as possible.

Those little booster things that claim to extend iPod shuffle battery life with AAA batteries do. And very well.

A bus is not an ideal place for listening to books. Best bet - pick a book with a straight-line narrative. I am reorganizing my plan for the return trip to begin with a book I've already read, albeit many years ago - Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men."

Once you get past central Pennsylvania the land begins to flatten and by the time you get to Ohio the sky goes from one edge of the world to the other, as opposed to New England, where the sky is just a large chunk of blue, or New York City, where the sky is just what's straight up. On the flatter land, everything spreads out.