Survived

Friday was of course the day before St. Patrick's day, and I had a little surprise in store. I was still getting some initial runs ironed out for the bus, and my boss asked if I could be a bus buddy for Saturday night. I said that was fine. Later on in the day, though, she asked me if I could actually drive one of the two buses. I was taken aback at first. I hadn't been trained up on any of the buses except our one conventional. All of the rest are transit-style with the engine in the back and the front wheels behind the driver, so they're quite a bit different. I reminded her of my lack of training, and she suggested I could take the conventional. I agreed, but I was still apprehensive. My first run ever is going to be late night WillVill on St. Patrick's day?

For those who don't know, WillVill is our regular route that shuttles students between campus and the William's Village apartment complex, about a mile from the main area of campus. During the day it can be crowded at times due to surges, but is fairly tame patronage. But on the weekends on late nights, it becomes the party shuttle for the hundreds of kids trying to find a party somewhere between The Hill and WillVill. So suggesting that my first run would be late night WillVill on St. Patrick's Day sounded ludicrous! A brand new driver shuttling hundreds of drunk, rowdy college kids (drunker and rowdier even than usual) on the busy, narrow, pedestrian-rich streets of Boulder at night. My first thought was that I'd crash within the first hour.

Well, I took Saturday pretty easy. I went shopping with Ashley for a bit, then had dinner with my dad. Saturday night I drove up to the bus lot a little bit early to pretrip the conventional. I drove up to the WillVill stop and had a chat with the other driver, who turned out to be Dine, the girl I had just trained with for a month. She was my one consolation; I wasn't out there alone. We started doing loops, and after the first hour and a half, the traffic died down considerably. I quickly calmed myself down and just tried to ignore the bacchanal behind me. I drove from 10pm to 2:30am, then went off route. Dine was slated to finish up an hour later, and I bet she met all of the heavy traffic back to WillVill. I feel a little sorry, but I guess that's how it goes. Normally there's only one bus anyway, so I'm sure she was fine.

The next morning was training at 8am. I considered sleeping in my car that night in the bus lot, as going home would cut an hour off of my sleeping time. Eventually I just decided to go home and trade quantity for quality. I think it was a good decision, as I slept like a rock for 3 and a half hours. Running on energy drinks, I showed up for up-training on the rest of the buses. I learned that we have the mini-transits, which are short (25 ft?) buses that get used a lot in tight places and on geology mountain runs. Next we did a quick run over the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses. We have a couple of them, and they are supposed to be very clean vehicles, but they are basically out of use. I quickly learned why; the engine is extremely inconsistent and has very little power uphill. Hopefully that will be the only time I ever drive one.

The other two buses I trained on are our mainstays; the super-transits, and the Gilligs. Our super transits are specially modified 40 ft. buses with two doors. Their floors are very high up, and they are surprisingly maneuverable. The Gilligs are previously RTD local route buses, and are much lower to the ground and a bit harder to corner around turns. We almost got through training on the articulated buses, but the one we pretripped died mysteriously and we were out of time anyway. So we'll save it for another day. Our fleet also has the brand-new Nova buses. They're extremely nice, and so the managers want to wait for the new drivers to have more hours under their belts before they get out and ruin them.

And so ends my long, looong weekend. W00t for 3 hours of sleep!