the toughest job that i'll ever... love?

gallows humour, that's how it begins in any driver's room... because you know that despite the insurmountable sleep deficit, attention to detail still has to prevail when you're on the road, but you know that you've worked pretty well into the farthest regions of that magical (to drivers...) figure of 70 hrs that are allowable by federal law in a period of 8 days. i get some time off due to that magical little number and when they realised that, they sent me on a bus that continued onto oneonta, while i stepped off back home, or close to it as kingston is...
but i love it, i think... new york city to hoboken and getting mileage under my proverbial feet while i cross that infinitesimal line between new york and new jersey that is linked within the confines of the echoes of the lincoln tunnel. how many times have i driven through it in the last four days? to drive in new york, you become a new york driver, i've found out, cut them off at the pass and get into that lane... otherwise you'll be sitting at the light until tomorrow night.
yesterday after the tunnel, i was making a right onto 40th, within sight of the port authority, just about to get ready with the announcement, get off the bus and take everything with you because god only knows (or smurf, as the port dispatcher likes to be called...), smurf only knows where this bus will be in an hour... when pop!, there goes the power steering and with it the wheel swings back in the direction of the wrong way into a one way street and set there firmly with 40,000 pounds of bus holding it right where it was, at a dead, dead stop, blocking the piling up of morning commuter buses pulling around from the dark of the lincoln only to find my bus halfway between the off ramp and 40th west with a puddle of red atf fluid beneath her... it took myself and the port authority tow truck driver ten minutes to wrestle that wheel around and dump the poor ole prevost h345 by the side of 40th street. a casuality of the tight turning corners of nyc, like many a poor soul who has come there and had the streets swallow them whole and leave them by the side of times square to bleed, so too was my bus. poor snorting beast that i rode in on but later drove another of its same pedigree to fleischmans.
what day is it? thursday i think though i hardly know where i am, oh yes, the cats, must be at home. if you can hear the trees and its not oneonta, then it can't possibly be even central park...