the gods must have cdls

its december and its cold and cold weather wreaks hell with buses and driving them. its made for some dr.zhivagoesque days of bleak and romantic featureless landscapes where the days seem to stretch out interminably and the driving has been a jack london make or break get this bus started or you'll freeze to death type of exinstentialism. there have been mornings where i thought that i should have lit a fire beside the bus and camped out beside it overnight huddled up beside her sharing our body heat in order to make sure it would start the next morning. but then i discovered that i could just plug the bus into a permanent extension from a tool shed in oneonta that powered its battery heater. i've driven into snow and windswept prairies before plunging into valleys keeping an eye out for indians looking for more buses to form a defensive circle and then realised that the mini mart was at the bottom of the hill outside of delhi. winter has caused a share of problems though and made driving a hardship sometimes. saturday morning was so cold, well how cold was it? it was so cold that i had to go through two buses before i found the third one was drivable in that weather and that was because the third bus had been stored inside the garage overnight. buses are normally parked in a huddled together group on either side of the garage making them in the snow resemble a group of shaggy bison standing together breaths smoking in the air. the first of the herd that i walked up and began a pre-trip on shuddered and sputtered but finally gave it her all and turned over. the bus slowly built up air pressure and the heater was lagging behind. i had finished the pre-trip and made ready to go. all that i had to do was shut the door, simple enough, right? but no, the cold had set in and the air wasn't building sufficiently to pull the door shut. it was a scrub. next bus... a much better choice in my opinion, an oldy, but a reliable goody. she started up like a champ and i knew that the heater would crank out some steady heat soon. i changed the destination sign, kicked the tires, she was ready to go. push the button into drive. roar.... hmmm... reverse?... more roaring but no motion. hooves had frozen into the tundra and she was condemned to stand there and starve or wait for the spring thaw. i thought then that morning that perhaps someone was telling me that i shouldn't drive that day.
the next day i drove through a snowstorm, a minor one, but the season's first real snow and because people naturally lose their acquired winter driving skills from one season to the next, it was a hairy drive. i've driven cars through enough winters to not let it bother me much anymore, but your perceptions change when you're behind the wheel of a twenty ton vehicle. every little turn of the wheel seems monumental and the rear end of the bus is so far away from you that you know that it will be springtime before a rear end skid is comunicated to your senses. but buses have one great advantage, weight and like those buffalo, they thunder down the road past the timid creatures that they send scurrying for the underbrush. that is, if you're comfortable with driving them through the snow and so i drove at a nice pace of 40 mph from belleayre where the rain became a driving snowstorm and back to kingston where it was rain again and into new york city where the winds picked up a pace that i felt as if i were driving with epilepsy and having back to back convulsions. as soon as the wind pushed me one way, you have to steer to counteract the push strongly, but not forcibly. i drove over one tall overpass in new jersey that nearly made me involuntarily change a whole lane and then the wind pushes you in the direction in which you were steering against. is this what a ship's captain felt like in a storm? no light houses or port to put into but the one 95 miles to the north? but i made it into port fully an hour later than it would normally take for a round trip. i felt like i had been lashed to the mast in the freezing spray for those five hours and finally could sit down to a cup of rum at the local seaport tavern... but dispatch had an assignment waiting for me eight hours later.
this morning, which was eight hours previous from when i had arrived frozen and triumphant from my mini epic, i was assigned a bus, 62926... hmm... sounds familiar... wasn't this the bus whose door wouldn't close the other day? start her up, start a pre-trip, start the heat agoing... and hey, i should just check the door for laughs before i get too far into this. i did and it didn't. next up. a ten speed, my companies seemingly bad joke of a semi automatic transmission that incorporates the worst of two worlds, a slow shifting semi's ten speed transmission and a clutch pedal that is heavy to push, exhausting to clutch and unclutch in heavy stop and start new york commute traffic and liable to be out of adjustment causing the clutch to enagage at wildly unpredictable spots in its travel, causing among other things, jerky starts, stalls that cause passenger to cast doubts on the pedigree of any seasoned driver and general uncomfortableness from passengers on their best days. driving a ten speed and trying to merge into route 17 new jersey traffic is akin to an adrenaline pumping deathwish. but here i had it and after the obligatory trip to new paltz, i was called back to my home terminal. i was taking a snowboarder, the only one of the day to the belleayre mountain ski resort.
it started out smoothly and i was still laughing inside at the coincidence? of the bus that i was originally assigned to this morning. and then i had to stop. the roads were still a bit icy and snow covered in spots and a car had run off the road in the morning or last night and a tow truck was retreiving it from the ditch and telephone trucks had shown up to repair a pole. we all stopped and we all started fifteen minutes later, except for me. i had rescued another driver from this same situation when his ten speed had locked in between gears. its useless, except but to a mechanic to reset the ecu that gets wet and confused as a proverbial hen locked in its wire mesh coop just a few feet from the spray coming from under the rear wheels. i'm told that this a common problem in wet weather. but i enjoyed three broken jumbled conversations on my company cell that was on its outermost edges of reception with dispatch who transferred me three times to the garage and i had three amazingly fun conversations with the receptionist, who was at least three times far down the chain of people that i wanted to speak to about this. three times she asked me who this was and i told her, but insisted that the most important part was where i was broken down and what had happened, bu she insisted on trying to get me to spell my name and when she did finally hear it correctly, she remonstrated me for not telling her exactly where i had broken down.
a bus arrived with the mechanic and i took it away, thinking that compared to times in the past that i had driven it, it was sorely lacking in power now. i loaded my snowboarder and demonstrated to him that we were a truly professional company when the door began to blow open by itself immediately after we got on the road. i pulled and shut it. funny the problems that i'm having with doors, i thought, must be a coincidence.
we arrived at belleayre and he was on his way and i had to phone dispatch. but first i had to turn the bus around. push the push button into drive and... remember saturday morning? except this time, i'm 40 miles from the garage with my second breakdown under my belt. but i fiddled with the control pad, reverse, first, third, second, reverse, drive and it moved. hallelujah. maybe i had just been stuck on some ice or something, except that i knew deep down that it felt exactly like my mama buffalo had felt the other day, stuck in neutral and bucking as though the parking brake were frozen on. i still had to call dispatch, ah don't sweat it, should be fine, just a glitch and momentary at that. i walked past skiers nearly landing on my ass several times trying to navigate the snowy terrain in my sensible company policied simple black shoes, no boots required or desired. and i was told to go back home. yay. i got on the bus, situated myself, got my lunch out and punched drive. a few seconds later i was hunched over the wheel thinking how funny it was going to be to call dispatch with another breakdown call. but i tried again and first, third, reverse, rock it a little bit, drive, reverse, second and i was slowly underway.
i drove back again defying the winds that wanted to push me headfirst into dumptrucks or through the guardrails and into a dark nearby mountain lake. i was getting home. coincidence. then the door opened. a little at first, but the wind picked up and the air pressure pushed it open and then shut, open and shut. thump, thump, thump, each time dropping the temperature by a little. it was trying to freeze me, but i was getting home. end of story, the door opened more and more two inches, then three inches. thump, thump. i had made it back to within five miles of the garage and had to stop at a traffic light. i started away and the transmission was doing something it never should. it whined like a high pitched jet engine as soon as i stepped on the pedal. i babied it back to the garage, threw it into park, not hoping or caring if it ever went back into drive and here i am, waiting at home, to hopefully not get called back in to work, because i'd like to listen to the gods now.

bad day for horses

i drove another charter on saturday. at the mention of a charter, my blood goes cold. at the mention of a charter to nyc especially during the xmas season, my blood freezes. driving a bus in manhattan is usually a thing that one can manage as long as you can keep the thoughts out of your mind that 6 million pedestrians will attempt to cross the street in front of you as you are turning and that the ubiquitous yellow cabs will swarm like flies around the bus in an attempt to be the first cab to drive six blocks in as many seconds during rush hour. you can fool yourself into thinking that this all a bad dream, because this does have the qualities of a bad dream and when i am driving i try to tell myself that tomorrow this will be all over and i will only think that i did this foolhardy thing.
driving wouldn't be too bad as i am accustomed to driving there now, but its the parking situation that is the real problem. i drove a two bus convoy with jerry, who is as mild as they come. a soft spoken and witty driver who i probably would have been friends with while in high school. jerry is pretty unfazed by it all and luckily gave up smoking before he began driving for our company. i'm still smoking as like many a soldier in a trench has found out that it can take the edge off of a stressful situation and give you a shot of adrenaline, curb appetite while you are waiting for your passengers to shop and take in a broadway show down near bryant park.
i have been in new york during xmas once before on foot and the feeling was of a great exodus of shell shocked people blindly feeling their way around a battlefield and now i was doing it with a bus. we got everyone off at 42nd and 6th amidst a convoy of mta and charter buses all trying to use this one block as a pickup and dropoff point. it went amazingly fast and we were on our way uptown to park in a supposed mecca for bus drivers, 53rd street. jerry said that many buses park along the street there and the cops don't bother them all that much, especially during the xmas season. the port authority was cut off to us as a temporary spot and this is what we had. we slowly wound our way to 53rd and along the way, jerry said that the first buses were already there. 53rd street is a one way, three lane street with prominent no parking signs, but we decided to stop there and not 'park,' but 'stand.' the signs didn't mention no standing and so we were good. the only string attached to this was that we were thus confined here for seven hours.
more buses made their way down the street like lumbering wooly mammoths looking for a relaxing stretch in a tar pit while taxi cabs zoomed down the street clearing the sides of the bus with maybe two or three inches clearance on either side and we sat. saturday was a bit brisk and a bus sitting in the shade of an apartment building soon cools down to the requisite temperature outside. i zipped up and took a nap, wishing for gloves and to wake up eventually and not freeze to death.
eventually i did. more buses had come. they parked in front of and i back of me and on the opposite side of the street making a neat little cocoon of aluminum, steel and rubber. in the course of waiting i got out and took a closer look at the parking situation. getting out now seemed like a disappearing dream. perhaps this was la brea after all and i was doomed to be frozen into place until the spring thaw.
jerry and i decided to leave with 15 minutes to spare to get back to bryant park and pick up our groups. before this happened, i discovered that the bus in front of me had a dead battery and wasn't going anywhere. obstacle number one. the three tour buses that i silently congratulated that morning on finding a tight row of spaces together on the opposite side of the street from me, were now a tight rock wall that i would have to maneuver around. obstacle number two. 53rd street is quaint and horsedrawn carriages decided to come out in the late afternoon on their way down to 11th ave. but one horse had had enough. a few hundred feet down 53rd is a hump in the road surface, maybe accidental and maybe a crude speed bump to slow the taxis down, but this one horse, fatigued and probably cold, slipped on it. his back legs went out on him and no one thought he would get back up. and there he was in the middle of 53rd blocking traffic, shivering and looking miserable. i had a picture in my mind of an nypd officer having to shoot him in the head like in an old cowboy flick. obstacle number three.
despite the absurdity of the situation (or maybe in fact of it...) i propelled the mammoth that was my bus out. and jerry and i drove down to 11th ave. traffic was heavier than we had anticipated and the traffic patrol had blocked off a number of streets in the seeming random fashion that they do. we had to improvise. travel further than we had anticipated and we were getting late. i stopped at a red light. two or three positions back and with jerry a block ahead of me. a clip clopping approached from my left. another carriage heading down the median of 11th. as he passed by me, his carriage caught on my left mirror. how a carriage that weighed a few hundred pounds pulled the mirror of a 20 ton bus askew was like asking how did a few cavemen bring down a mammoth... by repeated attempts that overwhelmed the larger creature. i had been feeling pretty good about not getting shooed out of my 53rd street spot and for finding an open spot to begin with and for getting out of it as easily as i had, but now a horse drawn carriage had nearly laid me low, pulling my mirror behind him and leaving me blind on my left.
i pulled over, tried to pull the mirror back into place. no go. it was bolted so soundly that i still couldn't figure out how it had moved so easily. jerry and i still had many blocks of traffic and turns to go before 42nd street. i drove as cautiously as i could, limited to about ten feet on the side of me that i could see. my esp worked and i navigated the invisible rear end of the bus to 42nd where adrenaline and anger allowed me to climb up on the bumper and throw my chest against the mirror and setting it right again. unfortunately, my finger was in the way at the time that the mirror let loose and here i was parked sloppily behind a traffic patrol car, passengers flooding back onto the bus and my finger dripping blood on the seat. i threw a bandaid on my bruised and bleeding finger and somehow the mammoth had survived. felt itself being pulled under by the suction, cut, bleeding, cold and pestered by little yellow cabs and bmw's and nearly gave up. but this mammoth made it home and avoided extinction to find out that it had to get up at 4am the next day to fight another fight.

anniversaries

i am approaching a momentous occasion, the six month anniversary of my tenure as a bus driver... fully half the time that i told myself that i would knock out doing this rarified occupation. when i began last june, i told myself that as long as i swam instead of sinking, that i would tough it out for a year and have it under my belt, "year spent driving a bus..." will go into my autobiography one day. i'm wondering if i should go buy myself a quart of motor oil or a sparkplug or something like that in another six months. is it oil or steel or maybe aluminum for the one year anniversary?
but like many a college student that i am driving back and forth to and from school, i am putting on the freshman fifteen. i am donning the appearance of a bus driver, potbellied, abrasive, fun loving, talkative. everything that is stereotyped by ralph kramden is true of most drivers. i haven't weighed myself lately, but i do think that i have put on a good fifteen pounds, maybe even more like twenty. its a job of without alot of activity except for turning a powers teering assisted wheel. the most physical work that you do is loading the occasional suitcase beneath the bus and its not like we warm up for that. if buses were powered like a fred flintstone car, we would get exercise, but when the majority of the activity that we can get is walking around the bus and moving a mirror, the result is weight gain.
melissa and i had our thanksgiving last night on my day off. thanksgiving dawned bright and cloudy last thursday. i rode to new york on another bus and found out that lo and behold, the overnight run to oneonta was open and i was tapped to be the driver. the night when everyone was stumbling around watching football and napping on the couch was the night that i found myself sleeping on a bed at the holiday inn watching old movie reruns with a 4am wake up call set at the front desk. the greyhound snack bar at the port authority had a drivers special which they do every year for those drivers stuck away from home... a turkey dinner which i was too tired and depressed to partake of. it was the farthest thing from what the pilgrims had envisioned and i wanted nothing to remind me of the fact that i was 102 miles from home by the bus odometer, cleaning up the bus in a snowy parking lot when the majority of americans are just about ready for their third slice of pumpkin pie.
my smoking is concerning me too. on my days off, i am lucky to smoke one or two cigarettes. with the prospect of standing around wondering how far i will drive today and when my ass will start aching from sitting in a bus seat for five and a half hours in a row, i smoke like a chimney. its a rare driver who looks like he has beeen there longer than a few months who doesn't light up a smoke as soon as he or she gets to the dispatchers stand at the port.
i think that for my health at the very least, i should give this up on my first year anniversary. my dad would be inclined to agree. he worked for general electric for nearly 28 years all the while pining away for the career that he had wanted, to teach english. i watched him during the late 1980's go back to school and get his masters from the college of saint rose in albany. while others at ge were working overtime, he gave up half a shift once or twice a week, got less sleep and spent afternoons writing papers on the porch in front of his big black manual typewriter. he loved it and while i completed high school, my father was getting his masters. he had always planned upon going back to teaching despite the years after he had retired and starting anew at something that he had always wanted to try his hand at. my father warned me on more than one occasion that you should never get too tied down to one career, unless it was absolutely what you loved and wanted out of life... and he would always add, how did you know what you wanted until you tried it? i have tried driving a bus as a career and found that i liked it, but it didn't ring any big bells for me, just the occasional air horn trumpeting, but that wasn't a sign from heaven. my dad would be proud of me for trying this and will be even prouder when i give it up and move onto the next big career while i, like he, find out what i want to be when i grow up. in this month when i have just, thankfully passed through subconsciously and consciously unaware of the one year anniversary of my fathers death, i have this to thank him for. we've both moved onto different things and experiences, both where we never knew that we would see and did not know how we would grapple and deal with them. as my dad sits in the happy hunting grounds, valhalla, heaven drinking with william shakespeare, hemingway and faulkner, i thank him for this and hope that he too is getting an answer to at least some of his questions about the unknown.