Merrily he rolled along

When I think bus, I think John Candy in the triumphant movie ''Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," leading his fellow passengers in a rousing rendition of ''Meet the Flintstones" on the long journey home.

When I think bus, I think of the constant grammar school field trips to Plimoth Plantation, the place never changing a lick, which I guess is part of its point.

When I think bus, I think of the chemical smells drifting from the lavatories on the Greyhounds I'd occasionally ride home from college in Maine.

But I type these words aboard a bus that is making me reconsider my view of this most lowbrow form of transit.

Specifically, I am aboard the LimoLiner, traveling from Boston to New York. I am reclining in a soft leather chair, stretching my legs, tapping on a laptop that's hooked into a power outlet and the Internet.

The sun is streaming through the tall, wide windows as a nice young woman wanders the aisle offering uncommonly soft bagels and strawberry yogurt. Later, she'll wield a basket of healthy snacks. I swear, the guests at Canyon Ranch aren't eating this well.

CNN is playing on one flat-panel television in the front, what appears to be an Angelina Jolie movie on another. John Madden doesn't travel this well.

I should confess, I am on the bus mostly because I hate the train and by train I don't mean the nice commuter rail service that's about to come to a South Shore town near you. I mean Amtrak's Acela.

I know the Acela is fashionable. I know adherents brag about its convenience, with no expensive cabs to the airport, no security lines, and no harried flight attendants.

But here's the problem with the Acela: It's pure fraud, promising something it can't deliver, which is fast, reliable service.

It's such a fraud that when the Acela went down with bad brakes last year, Amtrak officials found themselves in the awkward position of arguing that their replacement Metroliners really weren't any slower. And they were right.

Thus, the bus.

The scheduled departure time from the Hilton Hotel in Back Bay was 7 a.m. I showed up at 6:55, took my reserved window seat, and at 7:02 a.m., we were off.

There were 28 seats on board, about half of them filled.

By 7:10, we were on the open road, in this case, the Massachusetts Turnpike. By 8 a.m., breakfast was delivered to our seats. By 10 a.m., Daryn Cagin arrived on the anchor desk at CNN.

I was sending and receiving e-mails, making and taking cellphone calls, because, unlike the plane and the train, all this stuff works on the bus.

Hartford passed in a flash, which might be metaphoric. Bridgeport appeared in the rearview mirror, the perfect vantage from which to see it.

We entered Manhattan at the top of the island and rolled merrily down Columbus Avenue.

At 11:08 a.m., we pulled up to the side of the Hilton Hotel in midtown New York. It all seemed so abrupt I almost wasn't ready to get off. The kind attendant bade me farewell with a chocolate coin, the letters ''LL" imprinted on the wrapper. I'm sorry, but how great is that?

Better than the ride back.

Ends up, among the LimoLiner's many charms, the ability to take flight isn't one of them, so the 4 p.m. Friday departure from New York wasn't the best of ideas.

By the time we ground over the Connecticut line, I was questioning every decision I ever made in my slow-moving life, this bus trip first among them. CNN isn't nearly so great when you're watching the same story again and again and again, lurching, stopping, lurching, stopping.

We arrived in Back Bay after 9 p.m., in roughly the time it would have taken me to fly to California.

It's a nice idea, the bus. But never again.

Next time at Logan, that security checkpoint is going to feel like a breeze.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.