More adventures of a school bus operator.

4/29/17

5/4/20 I came back and started looking at my drafts. I always get distracted. I started here this morning. was into my daily journal, did a walk and came back here and now it is 1730 and I am thinking about dinner, but I am not Rollin yet. As it stands now in 2020, I am officially in the retirement state of mind. I have yet to give notice at my job and will be doing that around the 7th of June. That is when the school year would have been over. I plan on hitting the road end of June for Sisters Oregon to visit my good friend Sue Purcell. I have visited with her a few times most recently last summer. She will be my first stop before an extensive tour through Oregon and down to California where my two sisters and I are planning a get together in Santa Cruz County.

I have a lot of friends in CA and some 0f them want to visit with me and I them. That is going to be the rest of my life, hanging out with friends who have made a strong impressions on me and I on them. They know who they are since most of us have had contact with each other in the last 20 years. This is just the continuing story, another chapter in the life and time of this one guy.

I try and put dates on my writing because I need the refrence for later. Without a date, it just rolls into oblivion for me.

I was just pouring my 3rd cup of coffee and thought, wow, I plan on rolling along the highways of America in a couple of years for the Twighlight of my life. Twighlight and morning light. I like the mornings the best and on Sat., like today, they are awesome. I imagine spending the twilight evening hours drinking some hot tea, watching the glow of the setting sun. My memory recollects some of those times in the quiet evenings of my past.


Today, I don't have to wake up at o'dark anything and it is usually light when I get up. I am at work week days by about 6:10 am and because of that time I get up and wake up, coffee, come out of that haze of sleep and do the things I find help me wake up. Shower and dress. When I leave the abode I am awake, driving to work I am awake and awake when I arrive. Some of my fellow drivers often look like they fell out of their car and that woke them up as they drag into the dispatch office. To me that is scary, but part of their routine and some of those don't start work as early as I do. They drink the free to them coffee, with the imitation creamer that comes out of a cardboard can with a metal bottom and a plastic lid. They drink a lot of coffee there with creamer and sugar. Every place in the transportation industry I have worked provides coffee, some of it free, some of it not so free.

Workers today like to complain about many things when they have jobs that they made a conscious design to accept. Whether they chose it or it chose them. I once knew a guy who was telling me that the school bus operators job choses us, not the other way around. I believe that to be true. Back to the complainers and "free"coffee and creamer. If workers would get the big picture about their situations they could start getting organized and take charge of their lives .When. it gets down to that though, they are afraid of the companies they work for and act as though they could be easily replaced.

It would not be in my best interest not to note the passing of Gato the cat who lived where I live, yesterday. He was such a wild and beautiful cat, Tuxedo cat as they seem to be known. Of course he was part feral and not an indoor cat. I have fond memories of him. He helped me get over my loss of my other pets as pets often do for us. Our companions of unconditional love!

I do have to get moving along though because I will be going over to NoPo and getting my truck to work on it, purchase some more 2x4's etc. Spring is here and the weather is dry and I can now work on it more steadily since school will be letting out on 15th of June, just a month and a half away. I am signing up for summer work though and have taken on a job tomorrow at 12:45 pm taking a band from Ceasar Chavez School in NoPo to Snitzer Theater for a show.

A lot of my decisions are now based on feeling, the way I feel. I feel coming to the end of my working career I must still keep my hand in it, to earn that extra, not money to subsidize my lack of working steady. I have been having trouble with some kids that I drive and the VP doesn't seem to understand how difficult and dangerous the behavior of these kids is when driving a 40 foot bus.

Hopefully these kids will mature and understand how dangerous it is their behavior and find other areas to amuse themselves because it is not ok. I have had to really focus on not giving them fuel to have me fired which is thier stated objective, not understanding what kind of impact that would have on me or anyone else. I have started citing the Administrative Directive from the school board as one of the violations. AD 4.30.060-P on anti- harrassment. I want the record to show that the administrators at the schools know what we know, that they are in violation of not thoroughly investigating or nipping at the beginning of the abuse we suffer. It is not ok. I have asked the kids before what they thought of if their parents went to a job and a co-worker was harassing them? They side step because they don't want to face that they are committing abusive behavior towards a person who just wants to do his job safely, get paid and go home and do the things that make us happy.

Nothing says home from work like..........

I forget to take off my boots, but when I do wow! My feet are free again from the confines of my boots. I can freely wiggle my toes, twist my foot around at the ankle, back and forth. Feel the air as it penetrates my socks, yes still wearing my socks.

Home, boots off, Freedom!

As it turns out, this thought ocured to me again in 2018 a year or so past when I started writing this tought as an essay if some sort.

Kicking my boots or shoes off initiates my feeling home at last after a trying day safely transporting the children.