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.