This morning, I got stuck covering a route for someone who drives a mini-bus, so naturally, I was expected to drive the mini-bus. I hate the mini-buses. It's like driving a giant cube down the road, except it doesn't handle as well as a cube might. The mirror rigs suck. The driver's seat sucks. The steering wheel doesn't adjust. If I sit up straight, I end up staring at the headliner instead of out the windshield to the road. I hate them, okay? I was sitting in the driver's seat, pre-tripping the bus, and another girl who was on her last day of ride-alongs came up and knocked on the door. They had sent her out to ride with me to help with the directions, and to give her some experience. I decided to make her drive, since she knew the route area better, and since I really didn't want to drive the mini-bus. We didn't even leave the lot until 15 minutes after the scheduled time because they hadn't even had me start the pre-trip until the bus was scheduled out, so we picked up every kid on the route late. It was pretty uneventful, though, and I'm thankful for that.

This afternoon, the regular drivers showed up for every single route they were going to have me sub for, except one. It was a 4-student route on the other side of town, in an area I know nothing about. Several of the skippers and supervisors spent about 10 minutes debating whether or not I should be sent on it. I didn't really care one way or another, but I suspect that the route used a mini-bus, so I'm glad that the end result was a decision to send someone other than me.

So I got to spend even more time, just sitting around, doing nothing. Finally, they had me drive a bus around a little bit so that the guy who works on the camera/videotape systems could test one out on a bumpy road. We were driving around, and I was flying all over potholes and speedbumps, making sure the camera would continue to work. I went to turn around one corner, and had to wait for a family of mostly obese girls to cross the street in front of me. As they were walking past, they were looking up at the bus, and I heard one of them say “Ooooh, he looks good!” I don't know if they were talking about me or the other guy on the bus, and I really don't care. As far as I'm concerned, it applied to both of us.

After that fun trip, I got back to the lot, and got to go out as a monitor on a charter run to the annual senior ball downtown to retrieve some old folks from their day of fun and take them back to their nursing home. That was fun, but it was also very warm on a bus with old folks, since we had to keep the windows up to keep them from getting cold. If I had my way, we would have just left the windows down and turned the rear heaters on, but I guess that probably would have just made the bus uncomfortable for all of us. I finally left work 13 hours after I initially reported this morning, and I am now dog-tired. At least I have a 4-day weekend to rest it off before I have to go back in. Yay!

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It's amazing how much the kids change when their regular driver isn't on the bus. The driver I was supposed to drive with again was off this afternoon, so I had to drive out with one of the skippers on board.

We weren't but a few hundred feet off the lot when a call comes over the radio. “[Skipper]. Did you just drive off in bus XXX?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Why'd you take it? The mechanic downed that bus this morning.” How fun. They ended up having us continue on the route with the downed bus. I personally would have preferred swapping it out for another one. The ABS light had been on intermittently for at least a day. When it was on, the brakes worked fine. When it wasn't, the pedal would grind and pulse, and the braking power was somewhat reduced. Not fun to drive, to say the least. The brakes were so bad by the time we got back to the lot that when I set the parking brake and took my foot off of the service brake, the bus started rolling forward.

I also had the pleasure of refuelling a bus today, and getting diesel fuel all over my hands. Evidently, no one ever bothers to wipe off the fuel caps, and they are coated with diesel. It was quite nasty, especially since I had to get back in the bus and drive it from the fuel tanks back over to the building to wash my hands off, getting diesel all over the wheel.

The kids today were very upset that the neither the skipper nor I would let them off at their usual “Sweetheart Stops”. Evidently, the regular driver lets almost every kid off somewhere other than their designated stop. When I had run the route with her on, that's what we did, but I didn't know they weren't the official stops.

I still have problems, too, switching from driving the bus to driving the van home. I just feel completely wrong sitting lower to the ground, with a smaller steering wheel, and a more responsive engine.

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It was another morning with the same kids today. It's quite nice to get used to driving kids when they're well-behaved. This way, I can focus on not being nervous while driving, and not have to worry about discipline until I get some evil kids (which hopefully, I won't).

All of the driving this morning was very uneventful. I remembered a good portion of the route and stops, and the driver was actually paying attention, too, so she could help me out when I didn't know. We did, however, get to see a deer running off into the woods when we pulled into one of the schools. It was maybe 5 feet away from me before it started running off. I'm glad it didn't decide to run in front of the bus. I like deer too much to want to hit one, and it would make me feel even worse with a bunch of kids on board to see it.

On the way back to the lot, the other driver opened up the window beside her seat, and said “I'm sorry.” I figured she was opening it because it was so hot on the bus (the driver's heater wouldn't turn off and I was roasting), so I said “It's okay… I'm quite toasty, too.” She then said “No, it's not that… I farted and I didn't want you to have to smell it.” Gee, thanks for sharing. We then went into a lengthy discussion about the very very nasty and ripe wonder that some 6-year-old girl had let go on the bus on Friday. How such a smell came out of such a small person, I simply cannot understand.

I got complimented again on my driving, too, which made me happy. There's the possibility that I might have to take one of the supervisors with me this afternoon instead of the regular driver, because she has an appointment and might not be back on time. Right now, I think I'm prepared either way. I know most of the route already, so I should be comfortable driving it, so we'll just have to see.

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Today I finally got to drive the bus with kids on it. It was very funny picking them up at school. Their regular driver was sitting in the passenger seat, so they didn't see her, and several just walked right past the bus. It probably doesn't help that we weren't in their regular bus, but it was still funny. One of the school monitors started yelling at some 6-year-old girl who walked past the bus, telling her to get back to her bus. Maybe I'm just lenient, but I really don't think the girl deserved to be yelled at because she walked past a strange bus with a strange driver that just happened to be her bus. Oh well.

The driver kept forgetting that I don't know the route, too, and we would end up driving past roads we needed to turn down. At one point, I got to turn the bus around in some tiny parking lot for a scenic overlook. There were three or four teenagers sitting in a car smoking cigarettes, and possibly pot, thinking they were all cool and watching me get the bus turned around. I wanted to just back over their car, but since there were kids on board the bus, I resisted. One thing that did make me feel much happier, though, was when the driver complimented me on both my driving and my mirror usage. I was kind of afraid that I might not drive well out of nervousness with kids on board, but I think I did just fine.

I did, however, have a completely bone-headed moment at one of the schools. We were there early, and got out to go use the restroom. I gave the service door a little shove behind me to close it to keep too much wind from blowing through and cooling off the bus. Evidently, I shoved it too hard, because the door slammed closed and latched behind us. So I had the honor of climbing back onto the bus through the emergency door to open the service door back up. Silly me.

Tomorrow morning, I am going out on the same run again. Hopefully I'll manage to remember some of the streets and whatnot. I don't think it should be a problem.

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This afternoon was awesome! I got to ride with the coolest driver so far, and she has awesome kids on her routes! As an added perk, the routes last almost 5 hours, so I will get paid a good chunk of change for them. And I get to go out and actually drive those routes on Monday, and possibly Friday of next week. Out of all the kids on both routes, there were only two that ever cause problems, and they were being well-behaved.

The driver was just so much fun. She and I spent a lot of time talking about food and cooking, and all sorts of other things. The kids were making fun of the bus we had (and so were we, really). It was a spare bus, and was just flat-out nasty on the inside. It can't have been cleaned recently. There was trash everywhere with no trash can. The hood from someone's jacket was under the seat. One little girl thought it was someone's jacket, and tried to tell them about it, but I just turned to her and said, “No… that came with the bus. You might not want to touch it too much.” I even managed to find a chunk of asphalt rolling around on the floor. Filthy bus.

On Monday, we'll be on a new bus… one with a working sound system. I don't wanna have to wait through the weekend… I wish I could just wake up and drive tomorrow. I'm so ready for it right now. And that makes me happy, because it is such a change from my attitude over the past few days.

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I got to go out on a really fun (and long) run today with a really fun driver. Only 3 of her 7 kids on the first route rode today, and they were all the good kids… none of the troublemakers rode at all. We were having tons of fun just joking around with each other. Then we went out for the second route. These kids go to a college prep academy, and were the best behaved group that I have ever seen on a school bus. No one even talked above a whisper, no bouncing around, shouting, nothing.

On the way back to the garage, the driver asked me if I had any experience parking the buses yet, since she wanted to run in as soon as she could to take some medications that she forget this morning. I told her that I did a fair bit of practice parking in training, so she called in to one of the supervisors to check to see if it was okay. The supervisor told her that I was only a monitor, so I wasn't allowed to. I told her that I was a driver, and showed her my CDL to prove it. Nice to see they are organized enough to forget my position after 3 days.

The driver I rode with this morning also warned me to not let anyone know that I am single and have no kids. Evidently, if word about that gets out, they'll be all over me like flies. Not that I really care, since none of them stand a chance.

This morning's driver also fed me for free! I got to have a Bacon, Egg, & Cheese biscuit and a hash brown from McD's. Yummy yum yum! In addition to that, we had an in-service after the AM routes, and at the end of that, they fed us lunch for free, so I got to have a nice hamburger. And I was surprised to see that they even offered a veggie burger option. I'm kind of wishing I had one of those instead, since McD's this morning plus a greasy burger probably isn't going to be too kind to my waistline.

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A few more bits of fun from yesterday afternoon that I forgot to mention…

It was only my first day, and already, a bunch of the ladies at work were hitting on me. This one older lady came over and introduced herself. It seemed innocent enough, until she said, “Ooooh… you are a cutie!” As soon as she was gone, all the other girls in the break room said to me: “Stay away from her! She's man-hunting!” My first day, and I'm already a target. Sheesh.

The 6-year-old girl who was convinced that I had a girlfriend was also obsessed with something else… my hair. She was determined to give me ponytails. I don't know how she planned to do it, since I have maybe 2 inches of hair tops. Her rationale for it being possible was that she gives her dad ponytails. One of the other girls pointed out that her dad has much longer hair than me, but the 6-year-old still didn't think that should matter. Oh well.

I actually would love to go back and get to drive those kids around once I get to drive buses. They were already planning for me to be their bus driver next year, but since they didn't want to lose their current driver, they decided that we would just have to alternate, so that they could have both of us.

One of the other girls on that bus was asking me my name, so I told her it was Mike. She then said, “What's your last name?” I don't really mind giving out my last name, but I don't expect elementary kids to be able to pronounce it, so I just told her I didn't have a last name, just like Madonna. I don't think she bought it. I guess some of them are smarter than others.

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