It isn't until after our scheduled 11:15 p.m. departure comes and goes that we meet Kenny. A homeless, 45-year-old street musician, Kenny has thoughts on everything. Right now he wants to discuss the inequalities in the world.

He rants about the injustice of the Greyhound bus station for forgetting us, the injustice of the government for not expunging his felony and the injustice of love for not bringing him a good woman.

All of Kenny's possessions amount to a trumpet and a school bag, yet he's the best-dressed passenger waiting in Albuquerque's Greyhound station. He's certainly dressed better than my husband, Josh, and me, with his pressed black button-down shirt, grey tie and black wool hat.

As Kenny continues on his disgusted tirade against Greyhound, I remember the first sign I read in its Denver station that morning.

"Faster routes, because we're named after a greyhound and not a sloth."

The sign, apparently, only applies when the station bothers to schedule a bus driver. Fortunately, nothing makes people chattier than an irritating delay. It's because of people's stories -- more than ruins, beaches or cities -- that Josh and I decided to spend half a year traveling the length of North and South America.

And Kenny has a million stories.

A self-proclaimed "hustler," he's out to make money however he can while seeing as much of the country as possible. Maybe one day he can move to the Philippines where his dollar will go farther, or buy a house in the country where he won't have to be around mean people.

For the many injustices of the world, he keeps a surprisingly upbeat attitude. He could work a minimum-wage job, but at the end of the day he'd have no more than what he started with.

No, he's tried that.

He will travel, playing his trumpet in cities throughout the U.S. He's better at the saxophone, but he pawned his sax to buy an unlimited Greyhound pass. Whatever happens, he's not going back to Philadelphia. All that waits for him there is a low-wage job and women who abuse and take advantage of him.

It would be easy to judge Kenny, a man eager to tell strangers in a bus station that his last several girlfriends were crack or meth addicts. But, on another level, he's a man who commands respect, both for holding his head high through a harder life than mine and for doing what makes him happy.

The conversation once again returns to our delay. We hope it won't last until 4:30 a.m. when the next bus comes. Finally, a groggy driver wanders in dragging an overnight bag and we form a line.

In front of us is a grey-haired man in his 60s sporting a gigantic turquoise belt buckle. He's been chatting up a young Australian couple, weaving them through true and not-so-true stories on U.S. states. I just learned about Montana's apparent desire to secede from the Union.

A girl behind us worries the delayed bus will put her in Sacramento, Calif., too late for her interior design class.

By the time we actually board shortly after 2 a.m., I'm happy to be on a bus, but less irritated about the delay. If we had left on time I wouldn't have learned a lot. And I wouldn't have talked to Kenny.

Maybe it's for the best that Greyhound's sign lied about faster routes. If listening to stories is our ultimate goal, then perhaps more delays are exactly what we need.

Christine Peterson is a former reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune. She and her husband are traveling the Pan-American Highway from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Argentina. Along the way they will pass through the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Look here every other week for an update on their travels. For more stories and updates, visit Christine's travel blog at longesthoneymoon.wordpress.com