Notes on riding the bus

General notes on making the transit experience a little better.

I have made it a habit of immediately stripping clothes straight into the washing machine after using the bus, so that any bed bugs / bed bug eggs are likely to go through the dryer.

This means, though, that I need another set of clothes to wear after getting home, or else I put on PJs and end up not going out e.g. for errands.

The end result is I end up with a heck of a lot more laundry, and there’s also more wear on my clothes.

Putting backpack in a bin would probably also be a good idea.

I use an extra large (70litre) backpack liner in which to put my backpack each night, instead of a garbage bag. It is stronger, does not rustle like a garbage bag, and the roll top makes a handle so I can hang it up and also drag my backpack outside the dorm in the early morning, thus avoiding waking others.

Is it worth it? It still has not stopped me from being bitten by bed bugs. It happened again on my last Camino Frances (in a good hotel, I might add) when I had three of the telltale bites on my face. Had to take all my gear to a commercial laundromat to put everything (including my pack) DRY through the hot cycle on the dryer to ensure I’d killed everything.

But I still had a fabulous time. I left the Francés and walked a different, less busy, camino path and stayed in the municipal albergues, all of which had metal bunks with those lovely thick blue plastic mattress covers! No more bugs.