One ticket to New York, hold the turtles.

For a brief moment, I was concerned that I would run out of personal anecdotes to arbitrarily pair with press releases. But then I reminded myself that I regularly take the Chinatown bus between New York and Philadelphia, and there’s no chance of running out of material as long as that bus line is in order.

Take this past week’s trip, when my friend and I returned to New York after the holiday with approximately 45 pounds of my luggage.

“I’ll buy the tickets, you just sit down,” I said to my friend as I handed him my over-packed suitcase and a portable sewing machine.

But after I bought the tickets, the woman behind the counter told me, “Next bus is in ten minutes.”

“What about that bus?” I asked, pointing to the bus my friend just boarded.

“No New York,” she said.

So I got on the bus, walked halfway down the aisle, waved at my friend and said, “Come on. This bus isn’t going to New York.”

And half the bus – including my friend – replied, “It’s not?!” in unison.

So I left to ask the clerk again and she assured me the bus was not going to New York, which prompted practically every passenger to de-board.

“I like that no one listened to me the first time,” I said to my friend.

“Oh that,” he said. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“Even you!’ I said. “Even you didn’t listen to me! God. Not one person thought I was right.”

“It’s really not a big deal,” he said.

“What’s with these people? Is it so hard to believe that I might be right?”

“OK, don’t get mad,” he started. “But on your way off the bus, I maybe told people not to listen to you.”

“You WHAT?!”

“Yeah, I said, ‘Don’t listen to her. She drinks.’”

“She drinks?!”

“They all laughed!” he insisted. “It was funny!”

Then he added, “Come on. It’s the Chinatown bus!”

And finally, “OK, I just didn’t want to lug the suitcase back up the aisle.”

Perhaps instances like this should factor into Access America’s next quarterly index measuring the frustration levels of American travelers.

“Based on a survey of more than 1,000 adults -- all of whom had traveled for business or leisure in the past quarter -- the aggregated hassle factor came in at 3.9 out of a possible 10, down from 4.1 in the year's third quarter,” reads the release.

Clearly, no respondents have been traveling on the Chinatown bus, where the “hassle factor” most certainly is greater than that of the DMV and Planned Parenthood clinic combined. In fact, based on this past trip, which after a lot of waiting on the sidewalk eventually ended with us boarding the original bus, and a previous trip that involved someone selling baby turtles in terrariums straight out of a garbage bag , I’d estimate my hassle factor to be at least a 9.99. The .01 is being held in case I ever get on a bus with an animal that gets out of its cage.

Anyway, according to the release, the two biggest complaints from travelers this past quarter is the price of gas and airport/airline service – both of which seem a small inconvenience considering that gas stations and airports generally don’t have turtle salespeople.

At the very least, they do something about the alcoholics.