Bus drivin’ in the new year

I had an unauthorized passenger today.

I finished my afternoon run and went back to the barn.  My driver’s logbook was at the last page and needed to be replaced.  I coulda left it til tomorrow, but, well, gotta run the clock somehow, might as well be really doin’ something, eh?

I took the old logbook to dispatch and picked up a new one.  My last trainer, the woman who taught me these routes after I got my CDL was there in the office.  Normally, that’s where she’s supposed to be.  She was a driver but "moved up" to the office… but the shortage of drivers means that she drives and gets way behind on the office work.  I hadn’t chatted with her alone for quite awhile, so we stood there and yakked it up.  (The cat is not disliked by the bus people)

I picked up my new logbook and said my see ya laters and went back out to my bus and pushed open the door.  I set the new logbook on the engine doghouse and heard a bird.  Huh?  Oh yeah.  There’s a small patch of woods behind the bus.  I knew the high schoolers had left some windows open – I figured I heard a bird in the woods through the open windows.

It was a Cat’s dream.  The bird was in the bus.  Trapped, he thought.  Heh heh.

But then the me part of me kicked in and I realised, oh no, this is gonna take forever, and the bird is gonna end up with a broken neck from flying at a window in panic.

Shit.

I took a deep breath and set out from the front of the bus towards the rear, where the bird was increasingly purturbed by my presence.  He was flying from side to side, touching the seats here and grazing those there.  He was talking about it too – no mistaking the bird was on the bus now!

Fortunately for him and me too, the high schoolers who’d opened the windows had been sitting at the back of the bus, which is, I guess, where the "cool" people sit.  Or whatever the word is for those who are looked up to – hip, cool, kewl – whatever.  Same difference, ya know?

The bird realised seconds after I did that there were open windows back there – maybe even the one he flew in through – and was out and away like that.  The inner cat was kind of down about it, but me, well, I was glad it was over and done with so quickly.  It’s not so much that I’d have to pick up his dead body and be sorry he died cuz o’ me – it’s that bird shit.  The elementary kids are bad enough.  They have been fairly good the last two days, but there were bags of trash to take off sometimes around Holloween.

I didn’t wanna deal with the bird.  He didn’t, maybe, wanna deal with me.  So, you know.  It worked out for both of us.

 

 

Speaking of "my bus", it’s actually a new bus.  New to me, anyways.  It’s an ’86 – older than everyone aboard ‘cept me.  Yesterday, the horn button in the center of the steering wheel dropped off.  Broke away clean from it’s three spots on the wheel hub.

Heh.

I picked up the button and dropped it in the nook between the dashboard and the windsheild and forgot about it.  The horn still worked – I use it mainly to announce I’m backing up, look out.

*

My #25 bus is in the shop for I dunno what.  I should ask.  I wrote it up twice before the winter break cuz other drivers told me it smoked "excessively".  No one wanted to be parked behind me if my motor was running.  I felt bad about it too.  You know, looks bad and generally means there is sumthin very wrong with the engine.  So, I wrote ‘er up twice.

During that week of new driver training I had first half of winter break, the head mechanic had given a talk and I had a few words with him about #25 on the break.  His position was that it is basically used up, that it ain’t worth anything, and that he wasn’t gonna waste 4 grand on a new engine for it.  Ok, I said.  I’ll just drive it til it goes.  He said, well, that’s what we’re gonna have to do, and I assumed that my #25 would be waiting for me to come back from break and ready as it could be to go move those kids around.

So I was really surprised Tuesday morning when I diligently checked the assigned bus board and saw that I was gonna be driving #30.  Same kinda bus as 25, although, 25 cornered better. 

In case I was like, totally oblivious, some of the high school boys will tell me, repeatedly and with great emphasis, that I have run over a curb.  Almost joyfully, you know?

I just smile and drive.  Usually those curbs I brush or roll over are  instead of buying that Mercedes, or that good ol’ boy chevy pickup.  Better a curb than a car.

 

 

Gerald Ford looks better today than he did in 1975, as I remember it.  I was 13 then, and paid a lot of attention to American politics.  It would have been work not to, you know.  But Ford looks much better now than then.

I don’t think he shoulda pardoned Nixon, who never had to stand accountable for the things done in his name and by him.  George Jr. has two of Ford’s top guys in his cabinet.  Top guys who have done SO well, doncha think?

But, while there’s a rant to write there, I’ll skip that now, eh?

 

 

Tonight would have been my usual night off, so it’s not so weird, but last night, when it was my fourth night off in a row, I was sort of discomboobulated.  I haven’t had more than two nights off for two and a half years.  I delivered the dailies for that long, and now, to be able to sleep more than four or five hours at a time is so cool.

I am glad I’ve changed my work life.  I’ll be delivering the Sunday first and final editions on the weekends, and that weekly cash will be nice.  Two shifts a week of that are enough.  That’s what I started with, back in January 04, just the weekends.

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>I’m not much of a vampire any more.

(still got a black cat though )

 

 

*heh heh.  I found a new button on my steering wheel this morning.  Brand new. One of the mechanics ran up and asked how I liked it – said he’d replaced it last night.  Looks good, I told him, and didn’t mention that I had the old one in my jacket pocket

Souvenir, you know.