a day meant for driving

thus begins my week of 'break-in.' i don't want to think of the metaphorical implications of the term 'break.' i am a bit nervous, this is the first time that i will have to deal with passengers on the bus, will they be loud, will they be obnoxious, talkative? can they smell fear? fear is too strong a term for what i am feeling right now. it is more an apprehension that you can feel jumping into a body of water where you cannot see the bottom. i may hate this, i may be indifferent, i may love this after all and not want to come home to wife and hearth, but i doubt that my affliction with it will be that strong. it's a shortened route, but still one that will not see me get home until 5hrs later... i think that that is also another part of my jumpiness. i want to be at home, kittens curled around my feet and beer in hand talking about the day to m and say to myself, see is wasn't that bad after all, nothing to fear. i've done scarier things than this in the past, buried my dad six months ago, learned to drive the bus cold with the peer pressure that only you can feel is there (but in reality, wasn't...), making love for the first time is a scarier thing, i've walked away from women and had them walk from me, left home, lived alone and by myself with barely enough money for food, but ramen noodles before, walked the empty woods at night and the lonely shores of a november in plattsburgh with only the dinging and ringing of the lines against the masts coming from the marina of drydocked ships without a friend for 250 miles. i've done lots scarier than drive a bus 25 miles with people aboard and regular driver with me, but this is the first time that i've done that, oh well, once more, unto the breech and break-in.