Category Archives: Bus Ramblings

Don’t Park in Bus Stops!

Bus Ramblings

I had fun with this guy who parked in the Park’s Library bus stop (no pun intended in this story). He wouldn’t move when I got on his bumper, so I pulled around him and pulled into the stop, effectively cutting him off. I was early so I had to sit for a minute while he couldn’t get around me. Then I finally take off and go to Beardshear. There’s no one there, but it’s a mandatory stop, so he gets to wait some more. I’m about to leave when I see 3 people run out of Carver, so being the super-nice bus driver that I am, I wait for them. Sorry dude, I’m doing customer SERVICE right now. All in all I probably only held up the guy for 3 or 4 minutes, but he sped off once I got to the Union.

Don’t park in bus stops. We’re bigger than you are.

The fun part, is I wasn’t really bullying him either. Just doing my job. If he would’ve gotten out of the stop when I pulled up, he wouldn’t have had to wait for me. Anyway…. made my night by making me smile.

CyRide and the like.

Bus Ramblings, Leisure

Well, there’s one question answered. I’m not going to be a dispatcher. Guess I can see this as better than having to make the decision myself. Though I was rather sumarrily denied the position by a terrible "oral test" score… i.e. I totally failed the interview. Ah well. This way I still get to see Amanda, and I can take that week off this summer. All around I suppose it’ll be easier to get time off. Hmm. Maybe I’ll still get to be an instructor in a month or two. Then I’ll make something like 11.50 while training. Not quite 15, but it’s something :-).

Well, Amanda and I spent the weekend together. Couple rough patches, but overall we had a good time. We went ice skating on Saturday and saw a valentine’s proposal. This guy got down on his knee in the center of the rink while the girl was looking all around. Then he slipped a ring on her finger…. we assumed she said yes ’cause they hugged and skated around together some more… even though she wasn’t really watching where she was going…. more focused on the ring and him. Ahh l’amor. Or whatever that means in french….

Blizzards are fun

Bus Ramblings

So I get out of EE333 lab an hour late at 10:00, and get on Russ’s bus in our first Blizzard of the year. Knowing that we have a ton of newbies driving night shifts, I offer my services and end up just taking over the green minibus right in front of him. Maybe sliding around in a big bus would be fun, but I’ll probably get to do that tomorrow. The mini, though, was pretty sweet. Tap the brakes and the antilock comes on. You’d do donuts on ever corner…. lots of sliding fun. But when Russ offered his help at 10:30 they had almost everything covered…. so I said… "Um, if Russ wants some more hours, he could relieve me since I have an 8am class." So he did. And now I’m going to bed. Because I have an 8am class…. unless I’m snowed in. Meh.

squirrels and bugs

Bus Ramblings

Interesting bussing today. I hit a squirrel. 🙁 but it was already dead. Although it’s interesting to note how you hardly feel a small furry animal squish under your bus tires. Just a soft, little "bump," and that’s it.

I also saw a double-padidle (sp?)-beetle. It was missing one headlight and the opposite fog light. Funny lookin.

Not much else goin’ on. I beat Jak and Daxter within a week. I think it’s pretty good for a non-gamer like myself.

Is this an obligation?

Bus Ramblings, School

My Crazylife client just popped up on my comptuer while I was doing homework. I programmed it to do this so I would remember to update, but now I’m updating instead of studying!

um, well…. Saturday I took a 5.5 hour shift and ended up almost killing a blind guy. (Yeah I went all GTA with the bus….. um no). I was trying to tell him when it was clear to cross the street (30th by walmart) when some yutz zooms across grand going about 50 and doesn’t slow down for the blind guy in the middle of the road. I had to yell stop. And I didn’t hear what he said back to me. It was either very sarcastic and mean or a thanks. I’m pessimistic, so I’ll think it was the former and hope he doesn’t ride my bus again.

Yesterday was sunday. Meh. Drive and attempt to do homework. Fun fun. About the same today. Though when I was actually studying for my math quiz tomorrow (on the living room futon with the windows open is actually a nice place to study) my roommate gave me a Star Trek book and I ended up reading it for 2 hours. Oops. So now I’ll try to comprehend this last section of "Orthogonal Transformations and Orthogonal Matricies." Doesn’t sound too hard.

Very bad day

Bus Ramblings, Life Musings

Hmm, I shoul;d’ve posted yesterday. I had the topic line still set as "Today was good." Well… today wasn’t.

Um, bad typos are blamed on the bandaiud on my index finger. Anyway, let’s just talk about the whole day.

Morning. First thing… I realized I forgot I had like $6000 of stuff checked out from ITC, so I had to drag that over there before my exam ’cause I had to be to work right afterwards and then all day. So I got hot and sweaty doing that, and I got to my exam just as it was starting, so I had no chance to review anything. Then…. again since I had no time the night before, I just assumed the green route was coming by at 9:32, since I knew it came by at 9:52. So I left the exam ten minutes early to catch the bus so I wouldn’t be late to work. Well, they’re on 30 minute intervals in the morning…. so my bad. Missed 10 minutes of an exam I needed, and still had to walk to work.

Anyway, first 5 hours of work went mostly well, until I got really behind on a red trip because several genious drivers were turning left in a construction zone where they weren’t supposed to. Took me like 10 minutes to get from Beach to Elwood. Then at City hall, workers had fifth all blocked up; I couildn’t even go straight across on the irght side of the road. SO I was late, and then on top of that the dispatcher who was mobiling trying to help me kept cutting herself off, and then started gettingmad at me because I wasn’t responding. At least I got some sympathy from the other drivers that rode back to base with me ’cause they heard the whole thing.

Um kay. Did a brown extra. Fun. Relaxing actually. After that…. joy…. I had a chance to go get my car. Surprise…. last night’s hail totally shattered my back window. And of course this nice new car that I got last month only had liability. So I was really grumpy about that.

Go back to work. Cover one orange run for another driver who was running late. When I try to ask him what the trip code was (since he had it right in front of him) he said "look on the codes chart." I was like, "the last 4 times I’ve tried to do that my bus was missing it. Just wondered if you could tell me." But he said "well then go back to base and ask someone there." So I did. But ended up complaining to like 3 dispatchers, a supervisor, and a few coworkers. It wouldn’t have been so bad had I not been in such a lousy mood. I was not happy.

But then I did 4 hours of green and relaxed a little. That was good. Went out to Perkins with a friend afterwords. That was good. Duct-taped my back window and sliced my finger in the process. That wasn’t good.

But I just got a phone hug from Russ, so that was really cool. And now I’m going to go to bed becaujse I’m on-call in < 6 hours. Night….

CyRide

Bus Ramblings

Oh, yeah. Duh. Since I see the LAST update I was just starting with cyride, I guess I could say I’ve now graduated from the training program and have been driving on my own for quite awhile. Anyway, my driving schedule is on my webpage if you at all care. (look to the top right on this page)

I’m gonna be a bus driver.

Bus Ramblings

I just thought that a two-week update should start with that :-). I guess my other updates have mentioned this, but I’ve been hired and made it most of the way through in-service. But the best part is I passed my CDL driving test today on my first try! Whee! Driving the bus back through town to base all by myself was really cool as well.

Moving has also gone well. Hmm, that’s all I have to say about that…

And then we’re at my classes this year. I’m leaning so much more away from computer engineering and towards music production/recording engineering etc. stuff. Unfortunately the person I was supposed to talk to hasn’t replied yet. And, uh, classes start a week from monday, so I kinda need to make a decision soon here. Maybe I’ll update later.

This has officially been an exciting post. Thank you for reading 😕

CyRide

Bus Ramblings

Wheee!!! I got called today and I start training for CyRide on Monday! Yay…. well, providing I can pass the test for my Commercial Driver’s License either tomorrow or monday. But it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Yay 🙂 I’m gonna be a CyRide driver 🙂

waiting….

Bus Ramblings

Oh, hey so I applied for CyRide last month, tested on Tuesday, passed, and then had an interview yesterday. I think it went really well, so now I’m just waiting to get an email from cyride telling me one way or the other. Anticipation is growing . . . 🙂

Well, it would be really nice to have a job and earn money during the year, especially since I didn’t really earn anything this summer 🙁 . . . hope hope hope hope…..