Starting the Engines as I recollect on DC-3

Sept. 23,. 2021

 

 from Journal possible 4/28/99 or there about
 

Starting the engines starts with the check list and of course, before that, draining water called sumping the water from  the fuel tanks. With a plastic tube in hand that has a short metal rod attached one pokes the metal rod up into the fuel sump valve and water and gas may drain down and collect into the tube at which point one determines how much water is. in it and if it needs sumping again. One sumps all  the fuel tanks until nothing but gas drains out and the engines are not likely after starting to inject any water as they are running which is important because just a little water could cause an engine to shut down.

Carb heat off and locked, Cowl flaps open and off. Battery switch on, fuel tank selectors in main position, fuel quantity indicator, Ignition switch on,  Clear the right Engine, clear right, crack the throttle,  count the blade turns, start the booster pump at 9 turns, start tickling the primer button at 12 turns, turn on right magnetos, turn on the right booster pump, engine backfires from inexperience guy starting it. Don’t give up, watch for leaking fuel below the engine cowl, throttle position lever cracked, Mixture lever idle cutoff, a second fire in the collector, check for leaking fuel from the carburetor, none, keep cranking, don’t give up. 3rd backfire, then the engine catches, hold the primer, button stop with the starter button, let it stabilize a minute, move mixture lever from idle cutoff to rich mixture or is it lean mixture? I went to rich mixture, let go of the primer, turn off booster pumps, adjust idle to about 800 rpm, check oil pressure, good, watch CHT and oil pressure and oil temp check the manifold pressure for about 30 lbs.  

Repeat procedure for Left engine. I then ran engine individually to about 1500-1700 rpm’s and exercised the props. After bringing the idles back to 800 rpm conducted mag checks and let engines stabilize then one at a time, pulled the mixture lever to idle cutoff. I did it, and went to the shutdown check list and I was out of there. I put the oil  drip pans under the engines, turned the props so they were all oriented the same, wiped down the landing gear struts and the cowls on the engines.

September 23. 2021

And it is even more of a leap than that, my time traveling. As I listen to Roger waters and his band, Pink Floyd takes me back 50 years to sitting in my DS 19 Citroen at the property in Williams Oregon where I worked at least through a summer and part of a winter before moving back to CA. I never imagined what life would be like at 71 but here I am. I have not anything consistently and even my writing has not been consistent, but what writer has done constant writing. I have been writing over 40 years, all of it in paper journals into about 20 years in and then computers and lost much of it. Who cares about all that. It is what I do now that counts, always has and I have never more aware of how important the present is than now,. Just now.

I listen to these great musicians and they have been doing something, building on their music pushing into the future building on their foundations, enjoying what they are doing and feeling incredibly blessed to have come out on the other side of time, I am certain.

I watched 1 1/2 movies this morning with Adam I am sorry who had open heart surgery about a month ago and he in my opinion he is withering away. He sits and half sleeps and sometimes awake, but he is in denial about seriousness of his health condition, still smoking and that was a blow to me. The man has no will to live. I doubt that he has had much a will to live since his wife died. Wow.

part of aviation, but not the big part

 I wrote this in June 2020 sometime.  Dates I write things are  important to me, because I lose track of time all the time.

 

 When I was furloughed from UAL in Oct. 2001 I was depressed and collected unemployment about 8 months. I then got my shit together, put my resume into a paper form and applied for a job with Fed Ex Express as it was called then. I got an interview and went into the Oakland Hub in the afternoon and saw a woman by the name of Tammy, not remembering last name. A little about her I learned ws she was from Indiana and had a really nice mustang convertible she drove to Oakland, CA

So, she was a supervisor and hired me an I gave her my resume and she said she would post it on line at the FedEx online site. I took her at her word and was hired and told to come in at 2 am the following morning. Yikes!

When one comes to the FedEx Express Hub at Oakland Airport you come to their entrance. Everything is controlled there by FedEx Security. Going in and going out one has to submit to magnetic imaging inspection. you have to take your shoes off both ways and put them on the belt with everything from your pockets etc. One day on the way in, I buzzed and realize my favorite pocket knife was still in my pocket. They took it  said in the am they would return it when I was leaving. I guess someone wanted it more than I.  I should have given them a bill for the cost of the knife. I tried to suggest that was theft, but they said if you were at the terminal, they would have taken you into a room without windows. Now get your stuff and don't be late for your shift!, Next!

I was hired as a material handler and would driving a tug and pulling dollies, ld 3's and ld7's full and empty to and from airplanes. It turned out I was working for her and although she said she liked my resume and interview I felt she didn't really like me and perhaps thought was after her job. I am a self starter and I was working hard to keep that job and move on into the mechanic end of it in lA where they did their heavy checks. That is what I was doing at UAL SFOMC. I was working on narrow body plans but that is another chapter.

I was moving ahead and we were unloading and loading MD 11's, 727's and Airbus A300's. sometimes I would be assigned to go up into the plane and receive the cans, which is what we called the containers the freight and packages were in. We would receive the cans from the loader and make sure they were facing the right direction and push them towards the rear of the plane and once there, set the floor locks, very important and go get the next can. Once all the cans are in, we would step onto the loader and they would drive it back a foot or two and we would actuate the door closing switch and the big cargo door would close and we would latch it and give it a slap, a procedure to show it was downed latched.

Then we had a choice, ride the platform down and take the stairs. Stairs were safer ad the loader had all kinds of casters on it to position the can in the right orientation to off load onto or off the plane.

If we had loaded a plane, then we would have to  take the dollies to the Dollie corral and leave them there for the next flight and some guys took a break or hung out somewhere. I was disturbed by the condition, the lack of organization of the can corral and would spend time making it right, eating out the bad doilies to next to the fence and the good dollies to the outside of the area easy to get out when needed. at some point when I came back to the area Tammy was in, she asked me where I had been and I said the Dollie corral and I straightened them out. I believe she said did someone tell you to do that and no one above me but my organized brains said, this needs to be done and I took it upon myself to do it. I thin that disturbed her because I had been working on the ramp as material handler for about 6 months when I was told to report to the sort. Tammy told me she thought I was dangerous and I was going to get hurt. I just alright then, and thought, this screwed up. I think that she was worried that her supervisor would see me doing that and ask if I would need to be elevated in my position. I think she was afraid that I wanted her job and she was not going to have me take over. I didn't want her job, I wanted this job in LA working on planes.

She had me transferred inside to the sort and that raised a little bit of a hub Bub. People were all like, he's a material handler, what is he doing in here? I adapted to that job pretty well, made some good friends on the job. When I came to work we would do stretching exercises and someone would lead them and one time I was picked and that was fun. I had got the pattern of the exercises down and many of my co-workers we're teasing me about it. Just about everybody in this work group were black and that was fine with me. I get along with most everybody and we all worked well together.

My supervisor, Cal was a jerk though. He tried pushing me harder than anyone one in his group and was already working hard and harder than many of my co-workers. So one day when he started pushing me and I could tell there others who he was being lenient with, go push them, stop picking on mer. He thought that was disrespectful and after the sort and after shuttle sort he called me to his office and told me I had disrespectful to him and I said how was that. And he said he thought he should write me for insubordination but was going to give me a break because I resisted his efforts to make me worker harder than was safe, harder faster. I told him I thought he was picking on me for being the only white guy and I was working fast enough. He knew he didn't want to fire me I was a very good worker, didn't call in sick or get hurt on the job.

Saturday July 24, 2021

 

 Today. Saturday July 24 on the street in NE Portland. Last night I was listening to music video's on You Tube, another Google enterprise as is Blogger and when I went to bed, music off good. I have also been watching Aircraft videos a guy who is called pilot mentor. I actually purchased his hat. 

 

Back to this part of the story, I woke up this morning to my alarm a rather pleasant melody played on  piano and  instead of music video's that I had left on my phone, there was a speech by General John Kelly who was 45's Joint Chief of staff. I played the video and it was tough to watch. He was talking about 2 marines who had been killed in action and what their job was and how they had died and some of the sequence of events after they were killed as was his own son. I posted the video on my Face Book page because it is important for those of us who are not in the military to know what our people are doing. 

We are insulated from wars that many of us contend should not be fought anyway. War is not the answer.

Living in my truck is a lot better than living in that cave!

For 2.5 years I lived in a cave also known to be the basement of a house on a bluff above the Willamette River.  It was in the U district in Portland, OR. Not to confuse the reader with the U District in Seattle, the space was dreary and unfinished and sleeping quarters were well sealed but one night having left something in the living area, I discovered one of the bad boy/girls as slugs are both sexes with my bare feet. I then had to dress and clean up the mess they created on my carpet and give them a decent burial up the stairs and out in the yard near some  plants because they were dead or dying. I never got to the object I had been going to get as I had to get back to bed after attempting to remove the sticky mess between my toes.  No, I don't want to publish this because it is not finished. 

 

I have decided to publish though, because I am practicing progress, not perfection and consistently inconsistent.

There are some draw backs to living in ones truck. For instance,. I don't plan well and I did not insulate for 26 degree days and snow and ice. Had to stay in a motel for 5 days. I didn't want to die as a frozen popsicle and be discovered smelling like the dead fish pile in the of compost at the collection area in some far off but not far enough countryside for the people living down wind. 

What are those dots at the bottom of the page? Well, they seem to have gone away, left for somewhere else. 

 

This is a lap top computer, but I can't use it on my lap, slides up and I have already used up my drop the coputer optio0n of my apple care having had it repaired two times. This is not the same computer I purchased 9in 2018 or whenever. almost all of it is new or refurbished their description.  

I am both happy and sad. I got $75 for the m/c carrier, the guy was likely willing to pay more, I was grateful he was an adult. There are to many non adults out there, he told me a story of meeting a guy in Beaverton who didn't show up and I shared about the guy who I almost put into the other dimension today. That was something I was trying to determine how to write about it. 

i had stopped at the MLK and Columbia Blvd NAPA store for some QD contact cleaner and spoke a little with no real name or perhaps, no character description a friend from the old Deans car care. I had been to her and JB's her husbands in the past.

But back to the time traveling adventure that almost ruined my day and perhaps weekend and out of town trip in the coming week. As I was leaving the store and driving the short distance to the Kenworth dealership. I was looking in my mirror for a moment like we do after pulling into a road making sure I was not going to get rear ended. I look and there is sat car partway out of the Kenworth dealer with it's nose in my lane. NO time to clear the mirror again., my defensive school bus training took over and I slammed on the brakes and horn at the same time. I am pretty sure I may have locked didn't hit he and his woman friend and I think at the last instant he was able to back up although I was within a few feet of sending them into next week. What I think happened is his friend was talking to him and he was stoned out of his mind and foot was not quite on the brake enough, didn't know he had crept into the busy street. It all happened very fast, hard braking because of a dip shit that should not have been on the road. I pulled into the tech insurance parking lot, my insurer and had to clean up my saw dust bucket that had tipped into the drivers compartment of my truck. Things move. And calm down. 

I did all the right things because I was taught to slam on the brakes if emergency, keep the wheels straight and if necearry hit the other vehicle, no swerving which could tip the bus over or the truck. I need to go back and check for skid marks tomorrow or this evening, no not now. I have a head ache.

Well I keep saying I am grateful to have had the best professional drivers training that I got from the school bus company because I used it today without thinking other than SHIT!

I had just left the NAPA store on MLK and Columbia Blvd and probably not yet up to 35 mph, just going 30 and had just finished looking into my mirror and looked forward and a little Ford Focus had it's nose out in the road, coming from the Kenworth Truck parking lot but the guy was talking to a guy outside, next to the drivers window. I hit the the power assisted 4 wheel disc brakes in my truck, held on tight to the steering wheel with one hand and hit the horn button as hard as I could. I was slowing down but it didn't seem slow enough fast enough. Finally the guy outside the car jumped out of the way and the car backed up at the last possible instant before i hit them and ruined all of our Saturday and beyond. My truck does not pull to one side or the other and I am grateful for that. I proceeded into the Tec Insurance center parking lot, my insurer, turned 180 degrees facing the street let my truck cool down and then shut it down. I had a small mess to clean up, things that were still not quite ready for travel. I cleaned it all up and then put in a couple of eyelets and a bungie cord. I find bungie cords very useful. I sat there for a few more minutes. The guy and his gal drover away as though it was no big deal or perhaps he worried that I was going to come over and have a word with him. Yep, I don't want to go to jail, been there to many time is in the past.5-22-21

 

Another one of my friends is dying. A fellow school bus operator, trainer who gave me a nick name at work, who called me Red Leader from the Star Wars adventures. I am reflecting on their place in my life, my place in my life, that I have had many friends pass from this earth before Ia nd it is often by the grace of providence that I have been blessed with people of great moral character, who have passed before me.  It often begs me the question, why am I still here? 

The silence tonight, the absence of any trains which I hear from the shallowly insulated of my truck, the abscence of any planes, the stillness of the air is a little unnerving. Barely any cars traveling on Killingsworth. The absence of sound reminds me of sept. 11, 2001 when I was camping in the Eastern Sierra's and woke up on that morning to the absince of the the aircraft firefighingh the firdes in the western Sierra's. They had been flying almost all days before that fateful day. 8:30 in hte morning was eairly quiet. and now I am wondering, a,m I alive or am have I sufferend a catostrophc failure nd I am just imagining writing here? There is a moon outside in the S?outhern sky. I opened the door, the next beest thing to sitting outside and listening, feeling, feeling my livfe. Tomorrow I head out to Sisters Oregon to viist my friend Sue Purcell. Haven;t seen her in a few years and she is so close, 4 hours away only. Like a trip to the Eastern Sierra's from the SF Bay Area. I hear some cars. I suspect it is th ea bsence of the heavy transportation that is most contributing to the silence. I can now hear what sounds liek a few cars on NE Alberta ST. 

I have decided tyat it is so quiet it is a good time to brew a cup of tea. The clouds are beginning to mask the moon, They look to be stratus clouds, the puffy kind that fog is often composed of. I have the door to my truck open, because it is spring and it is quiet and relatively warm. like camping a little. Camping in my truck is not like camping in the woods, but there are often sounds that are more acute than if living in a well insulated house. some times i struggle to identify those sounds. It is ok, figured some of them out.

Adjustmets and ADHD or just plain ADD

 I never feel like I can move into a more permanent understanding of my thinking process. Is that what I want to or meant to say? I question myself more now than in the past. I rarely questioned myself in the past, hurt lots of people and never gave it much thought and now that I am older, keep going back to that past and trying to make it go away for my bad actions, because there is no fixing what I did, but the almost daily thoughts of Damn!

 

I wrote this before today, that is the first paragraph. I have been learning to accept the things I can not change more and more recently. The day as the afternoon has progressed has turned brighter, however, the moisture of autumn is in the air. Who, knows what affliction to my thinking that I have. I went to a high priced high IQ psychologist  who gave me a battery of tests and I gave them my history of banging my head, right in the executive branch of my brain. They told me, brain damage is accumulative. I have not hit my head out of fear of hurting myself beyond repair. All that hitting came out of my own insecurities and punishment for transgressions that I did out of frustration growing up. Since my father beat me with switches for my behaviors that were contrary to what I had been told or unsupported by adults and my own frustrations for not understanding and being told my questions were better answered if I paid attention on the first place. 

 

I have to now think more closely about I write, because I want it to accurately portray how I am feeling and isn't that often what we want others to see in us, better understanding of who we are and how feel? I am done here. 

But for the indomidable spirit that lives in all of us......

 In my truck tonight I got a flash of that hippie energy of long ago. I was standing in my truck cab, standing is an option looking towards the North when a young woman across the street looked in and I said hi and just like that she said hi back. That was it, that was that flash from the past in the present. That energy exchange lasted me several hours, it rekindled my spirit. I was thinking it would be nice if she would walk by once in a while and we could say hi. It is such a great feeling with nothing else attached, just an acknowledgment of being a friendly human being. 

This topic is coming up because I made a comment on Oregon or Portland for safe a safe return to campus on Face Book Group in response to someones comments. Someone made a comment the topic which is CRT which stands for Critical Race Theory and they don't want it t about is drug many take in the book Brave New World author Aldous Huxley that I read maybe when I was 12-16 in my reading addiction before I got into the other drugs. Right around that time. Took my first LSD in 1965s when I was 15. Took quite a bit back then and even  have a memory of a capping party in the Haight. I don't know iif it is a real memory or just an illusion. People wearing over the ear and in the ear headphones while out in public are the new turn on, tune in and drop out generations. They are so addicted to that form of having it whenever they are out, they can ignore the rest of us easily and do. It almost like a slap in the face for those of us who want to engage on a up front and personal level as little as saying hi while passing on the street. That was part of what was so refreshing about the energy with the woman who said hi when I said hi, we both present and that is important to me.

The constant sound as if from a coffee pot singing to it's owners that the hot beverage is almost here.

is how the rain sounds and it is likely to increase although it has slowed to the old Portland constant drizzle. 

Almost 17 years ago I wrote something that I feel I should share here. I would love to share writing to Facebook, but it all disappears there and at least here it is safe for a while. I have experienced a lot of life in my 71 years and now understand everything is fluid and nothing is as permanent as we might think it is. 

I was sitting, listening to the quiet, celebrating the first day of Summer, down by the water. I welcomed the solstice by playing my tin whistle, walking my dog Buster down by the shoreline, a part of the Oakland Estuary feed and MLK Waterfront Park that I felt safe to take him where he could swim and walk without a lease part of the time. 

The reeds are growing out of the shore and make a contrast to the flotsam that wahes up there. It is obvious that this is still a little used park, that the parks dept. has better places to spend their diminishing budget because of the amount of development and lack of trash pickup. 

chapter 001 about aviation.

June 6th, 2020

When did I begin noticing airplanes? It was probably in San Mateo, the Hillsdale district. We lived on a hill and I could sometimes see the airplanes in the pattern for San Francisco International Airport. They would make the turn by the Dumbarton Bridge on the aviation frequency they call that Dumba up near Menlo Park and fly mostly straight on their final approach to the airport. The planes were mostly 2 or 4 radial engined planes with propellers. That was to early, in 1954 and 1955 for jets I think. We still had steam locomotives on the rail line down by the El Camino Real.  We used to take my dad to the station so he could take the train to his job in San Francisco.

Sometime in 1955 we moved from San Mateo to Los Altos CA a rather upscale small town. My parents were purchasing a new house there, just been built right in the middle of an apricot orchard with a walnut orchard still next the next plot over with an old barn where mushrooms grew and they had a rail cart with high sides we could push and jump into that ran the length of the barn in the mostly dark with some light provided by missing planks on the roof and walls. I remember it was like up in the loft.   I remember when we looked at houses there in the new development. We looked at the yellow one up the street, a two story, but they didn't want that one. It had a second story as an architectural feature with like an A frame roof. 

It is important to know about living and seeing airplanes as there were different ones to hear and see. Los Altos is just a little northwest of Mt. View which had the Naval Air Station built back in the day when the navy had dirigibles. At the time we lived in Los Altos, the navy had A-4 Skyhawks and they flew regularly over our house and often we could hear something breaking the sound barrier. The A-4 was a subsonic plane and didn't go that fast. However, there were often visiting planes and the Navy flew the Gruman F11-F1 which was also a carrier plane and the Blue Angels flew them from 1957 to 1968. The did go supersonic and I remember regularly hearing sonic booms and thought Awesome. Apparently the encroaching civilization didn't like them much and petitions were filed along with complaints to the Navy and A-4's were moved down to Lemoore Navel Air Station.  We called them sonic booms, but the people in the new housing developments got testy about the booms and complained enough that the navy moved the A-4's to Lemoor Naval Air Station out further, but still habituated by folks.

Winding down

 A high schooler just went by on his skate board and I remember doing that. The motions are the same, the boards have advanced as have the skill sets and the amount of athleticism these young folks exhibit. I think it is awesome they are experimenting with doing stunts and bowls and pipes, 1/2 pipes etc. 

There are some serious amatures and serious professionals out there. 

Just got back from a walk and sitting outside cooling down, observing life as they go, the wind has also wound down to a breeze and the big cumulonimbus clouds with their boiling cauliflower heads extending high into the atmosphere have blown away or dissolved into small clumps of stratus and clear evening skies with neat a 1/2 moon. I didn’t get the memo if it is waxing or waning, if you want to know their are resources available. I know it is there, tranquility for thumped moments.

New chapter in the midst of the Covid-19 May, 2020

10/13/2020

Well, I am house sitting for couple of nights and time almost up. I have a dental appointment tomorrow early and then get my new lenses to glasses. I have to get my shit out of the house before I leave for dentist I think in AM and then return to visit, find out when my friends coming back in afternoon. To short of a stay for all the prep I need when staying at someones house, from my living situation in the truck. This is all to personal to post on FaceBook. when I post on Facebook, I open myself up to opinions from friends that I am not looking for. I am more about journalling and trying to figure out how to move forward on my thoughts etc. For instance what spurred me on to write this little detail is I was crossing my legs, left over right and my left knew, shit the pain. I have already decided to pull out the knee braces I have been using for years. I had already looked for new ones that I could use to replace the tired ones about 2 months ago. They don't carry what I am looking for anymore. Looks like Amazon will be my answer. Amazon,. the online answer to Walmart. Amazon is the on line store we love to hate if we are for fairness and certainly someone is not operating on that principle. It is just the way it is in this capitalist system. It is not fair and either we can stay angry about it, move out of the country or try to change it from within or with out. 

I was really struggling finding the right buttons to use to update, publish and revert to draft. I get worried that my thoughts transcribed to here which have no real value at all will get lost if I hit the wrong button. Am I that unfamiliar with this page that I have to first get frustrated and finally figure it out? I guess so. Then it was in the wrong place, somewhere in the middle and I finally figured that out and moved it, of course, here it is in the beginning because it is the most recent entry. 

Saturday May 23, 2020

I am watching, listening to the Robbie Robertson interview on you tube in 2016 , talking about his life, his magic, how he got into music, playing the guitar, living in Canada, Living in Arkansas, back to Canada, Ronnie Hawkins, how he got into the band, Levon Helm, Bob Dylan. It is Bob Dylans 79th birthday today. Robbie is talking about writing his Biography. I am listening so it may have an influence on my own writing. I think about, the focus that I never had. I just have to write it from my best recollections.The interviewer brings standing Rock to the interview and Robbie his answers, his focus, his pace, his rhythm is so measured.  Six nations is near where he lived and what he learned from his cousins.  

Book stuff. I can do it from my head. It brings tears to my heart, why who, what can I do? How can I tell my story and who would be interested. From my heart, from my heart, from my heart, how I have thought from my heart. 

When and where I was growing up people rarely validated my feelings.  I think my parents may have not thoroughly understood me for sure from the start, I was so different. I was happy, happy kid, and they just thought what they thought. I was different in many ways, I was brought up with feelings that when I tried explaining them people never seemed to actively listen to me when I spoke about how I felt. From an early age, when I would tell someone, my stomach is upset, why was my stomach upset, anxiety. I had anxiety about going new places, a feeling. Boys, we weren’t supposed to have  feelings. I was based in feelings, but I wasn’t supposed to have them. I was a boy. I was supposed to be different according to what I had later found out. 

We are each our own persons. Some of us figure it out sooner than some others of us. I didn’t figure it out for many years, at least until I got cleaned up from my drug abuses, woman abuses and other abuses, I can remember some pretty crazy things. I will talk about them when the time comes, another chapter in the continuing recollections from this aging retiree. 

In elementary school in Los Altos CA I was labeled right away as a trouble maker. I was almost ok until about 3rd grade one day at lunch. I remember lunch there at Portola Elementary School. The cafeteria with their steam tables and the nice ladies that cooked the food and the tables with benches. I worked in the kitchen cleaning up but don't remember much about how I got the job or when it ended or why. I was a boy I was distracted, probably had ADHD, letters after my name, that no one knew about in those days.   It is important to recollect these things since I don't generally make any note of them in my daily life, but they did contribute to shaping the person I became, The Who I am now. I didn't capitalize them. 

So, in third grade I remember being after lunch and on the grass out by the ball diamond and there was my teacher I suppose out there and we were sitting in the grass. I said something about having an upset tummy and she said I was imagining it. Nothing else or perhaps, stop making things up, you just ate lunch, wait for it to settle. I don't recollect what it was making my stomach upset, perhaps something I ate, but no validation or consolation. Just as I perceived it, this cold response. Maybe my stomach was upset by the way I got treated by adults and some children in school. Why was I sitting alone near the teacher and other kids were playing? I would not be playing if my stomach was badly upset, I would be sitting or was I being punished for something? My troubles started around then as I recollect asking a lot of questions in class and being told to listen because apparently they thought I wasn't listening or didn't instruct me how to actively listen. They must have thought everyone knew how to actively listen because a majority of the kids seemed to be listing, therefore, I was just trying to make trouble. 

I remember riding the bus to Portola School. The school was sold long ago, maybe 30-40 years ago and there are some kind of housing there as I recollect from a previous trip down memmory lane.  I remember they were Crown buses and I used to catch it at the street that Bob Crane lived on Langston ST. real close to Los Altos Ave. 

I remember, going to the bus stop and it was raining sometimes, the driver looked like my grandfather. He wore the same kind of khaki trousers and the same kind of long shirt as I recollect my grandfather wearing.  

more updates, 

I am celebrating Bob Dylans 79th birthday today, SATURDAY the 23rd of May. By listening to and watching U tube videos of Robbie Robertson and the last Waltz and I remember someone asking me if I was going at some point, though I was in Santa Cruz County at the time. I didn't;t go and missed a great event, It was a thanksgiving dinner and concert at Winterland a place I don't recollect ever going to except in a distant fog of a my memory. 

May 24, 2020

All my entries are sometimes not all of them but I have to have dates, perhaps places listed, from the parking lot at  SE Cesar Chavez Rachelle and Jim's who seem to be  hell bent on me moving to Arkansas. Although 1/2 my age, they seem to be my bestest friends. That's a hard one. Perhaps it is because we just sort of keep in touch and I am included a lot when their parents come. Rachelles mom, Jeanie helped me move last June. I couldn't believe it. I am forever grateful to her. She was a school teacher and she was visiting helping with Jim and Rachelle's new baby and took the time to help schlep boxes etc. She is my age. we are from a different time period. 

I just had to watch a video on using hinges because I was trying to mount a couple of strap hinges on my rustic cabinet doors and they wouldn't work without being mortised. I seemed to have forgot about that. Cheap apartments I once worked in hung doors without mortising the hinges and I almost always looked at that and whined.  Now the screws are to long, so1/2 round molding is required for the screws to die into. I will glue the moulding on there.

I am not publishing any of this until I get it all squared away or at least it seems to me to flow and then come to a reasonable stop somewhere up the road. When the wheels stop turning, the vehicle will still pursue the future. I think that is the end and it is. One more thing, it is June 6 in the evening and I am done with this piece. 

Just about July 1, 2020

My whole intention right now is listening to music at Daryls House, where he invites other musicians to come and play music and he also has guest chefs for the food part. I can listen to the music and also transcribe my thoughts here at the same time.

Today was a bit unusual. I went to pick up a package on my little get around 1982 Honda XL 185S that I purchased a few weeks ago. I have a little difficulty getting my right leg over the seat and getting it on to the kick starter lever which is on the right side of the bike.

Once I got the bike started, I rode across town, Portland, Oregon from the NE to the SE to pick up a package but also to go to my storage and again, the 2nd or 3rd time trying to find my messenger bag. Got it, almost missed it again after totally rearranging that small 5 foot by 5 foot space. My goal this summer is finish the cabinets in my truck, get rid of the storage at the give it up place. Anyway, back to the pick up.

I get to the pick up location and get off my bike and go into the Plaid Pantry, chain local convienence store. I got to the hub locker popped it open, got my package and back outside. Reached in my pocket for my bike key. Well, it wasn't in any of my pockets, not on the ground, back track into store, not showing up there either. Not feeling real good about it. I almost called for a ride, but then got hold of the locker company, Amazon and after several minutes got them to open the locker thinking I dropped it in there. It was empty.

I have a spare key, over on the other side of town, where I had come from. Called the cab company, Radio Cab and a the driver drove on all these small streets, faster than the posted speed. I know as a professional driver, not going to tell him anything about his driving. He is a professional too and I am in the back seat and many of us know what it is like to have to listen to someone telling us how to drive. Get to the truck, get the key, drop some other things off and back the way we came. I gave him a handsome tip, because he is an excellent driver.

Got the bike going again and decided my other errands could wait to tomorrow. Came right back to the truck, my mobile living situation and using the tools that I had picked up to compress the spring on a pair of shocks I bought to take a specific part off that is missing from my motorcycle. No, couldn't use these shocks on my bike, from a different size bike, but the parts are similar. Got the hang of the tool, not quite like on the video I watched on You Tube but I managed. With that, I was done.

The loss of my two keys got me in a bad place. I intend to go back there tomorrow and bring a magnate and push it under places in the store I could not see under etc. and finish up my errands, likely buy some fireworks and get ready for the 4th. We don't have any loud fireworks in this state, but there are people living here who have them. Those loud booming fireworks scare animals, children, babies and throw some veterans into PTSD action and that is scary for them and sometimes us.

I know that about veterans from living with one who was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, Khe San in 1968 in the Ten offensive. That is another chapter and onward here. July1, 2020 10-4 over and out!

Chapter 001 May 25, 2020 as the rain drips on the roof of my truck

The roof of my truck, step van is broad and long. I park it partially under a tree, although not optimum for collecting sunlight for my solar system it is a gift from friends, parking under the tree.
The moisture is slight and the ground is barely wet, yet the moisture collects on the branches of the tree, the leaves and as it can no longer resist gravity, it drops on my truck roof with more volume than how it lands on the ground. My truck roof like a drum head and I am inside to hear the sounds being produced.

Moments, drip, drip drip. I did not think of this title to my blog on May 25, 2020, but back in 2008
I thought of the title sitting in the living room of my apartment and a faucet that might be dripping with this same kind of precipitation happening outside and I was sitting quietly enough to hear the dripping of the faucet. At least that is what I imagine and I am sticking to it, unless  I have a moment of clarity back into that past.

As the water with the rhythm of nature continues to beat on my truck roof, I decide to light my little heater to dry out the moisture that has managed to accumulate inside where I am living. I have decided rather lately this morning, since it is already past 12 pm to move to the cab of my truck that has seats where none are yet present in the sleeping food prep area. I have adapted to living in the truck. For instance, instead of sitting in the drivers area and using the steering wheel as a desk with which to support my laptop computer as I did last night, I am sitting in the passenger area with my feet up on the heater cover and my knees bent at an angle and resting my laptop between my thighs and supported there. Makes for a fine touch typing position. Of course, it is now late afternoon or should I say closer to early evening. I have discovered while not working as a school bus operator I have energy in the evenings and I have been reclaiming that energy and using it. Not having to force myself to get up at 0 dark anything has been a boon for me, putting me back into my natural circadian rhythm.

When that flash of time happened  when I worked on airplanes with me starting work at 2 pm and working until 10pm or so unless there was overtime was more relaxed for me and going to work was less of a chore than the last 13 years. I worked 4 10's and that gave me an RDO or Rotating days off.  When I went to work at 2 pm I usually left at 1 pm and before that used to smoke ribs in the morning and my neighbors would ask me why I was up so early smoking things or why I wasn't at work. When they got to know me better, they understood and I would sometimes ask them if they might be interested in eating some ribs. Yummy!


A brief interlude into my short aviation career. It started in 1995 when I volunteered to come wipe oil off a plane I was flying on. I got to wipe oil and so much more.  I worked on other airplanes and went to school to get my licenses. My career goal at the time was to work at UAL and when I got the job, that was  an adventure like none I have ever had. I was excited in a way that I had only been on small points along in my life. That is a whole other chapter that I have to devote time to. Actually, when I worked at that job, my favorite job, it was rarely a chore. I loved every minute of it. Even when I first started and the first 6 months they had us newbies greasing everything on the airplanes. We would get so dirty and greasy that we would wear Tyvek suits to keep our regular work clothes cleaner.

But I need to get back to the present and operating a school bus is much more difficult than the general public including teachers and staff at schools or parents can possibly understand unless they have done it themselves and done it for at least one year. This is one of my main concerns for school bus operators is the perception of most people because school bus operators are so under estimated and that keeps them down and not wanting to make waves because many of them have this as their only skill and don't want to be discriminated against or retaliated against at their there jobs. they could be discriminated  against I think it is called soft retaliation such as overlooking them from the seniority rotation, it was a mistake. Who's to say wasn't?

The job is already more difficult than can be imagined by many of you. Almost anyone can be taught to drive a school bus, but they can't teach you the skills needed to manage the students and operate the bus safely all the while protecting everyone on the inside and the outside of the bus. School bus drivers become operators as soon as they start transporting children. At that point they will will find out what is required. As an operator, I didn't  get it right away; I am a slow learner.  Much of what you do is try to stay out of trouble, stop at the required stops, pick up the kids and get them safely to school on time. All it takes is a late kiddo or a parent that wants to berate or praise or ask some question you don't have the answer for in the am or pm to be late for the next pick up or stop. It throws everything off, we are expected to be on time, but there are human factors that interfere. Human factors, they don't teach that in school bus operations as far as I recollect. I learned that in aviation human factors. Construction zones, flaggers, detours, collisions other drivers who fail to observe the school bus red lights and children in the area of the buses.

Just like the take off and landing of an airplane is the most dangerous part of a flight. So too, the picking up and dropping off of kids is the most dangerous part of our job, trying to keep them safe.   Safety is the number one job and although I hear from other enterprises that safety is also their job, it is not reflected in the operators that they have because they are transporting packages and food, clothing, auto parts etc. Transporting human beings and vulnerable ones at that is much more of a demanding job. It has been compared to being in the active military, foot soldier on the front lines being totally and hyper-alert all the time you are on duty in the yellow bus!

Many of us too have come from different disciplines, college graduates, Masters degrees and technical fields, aircraft engineers and mechanics, mechanical engineers, school teachers, school bus operators from other areas who know more than some of the average operators. It is good to come from a mechanical back ground and if one is operating a school bus the desire to learn more should be there, to better oneself in that profession. As with any profession we work to make ourselves better, work smarter, be safer. It is a good asset to have operators who strive to be the best they can be, who don't have to work because they are sick and there is a nationwide shortage of school bus operators.

Retiring this years is a  little difficult because I was not able to wish my groups of students well or have closure at the end of the year with5th and 8th graders who would be moving on to other schools and not being the senior class persons, but having having to start again at the bottom. Some of the same can be said for operators too. The last day of school and we gather at the dispatch office A new group of kindergartners and a new group of 6th graders.

I am adjusting the last couple of months to having an extended summer having been furloughed from my job in the middle of March. I had decided to retire this year after the school year was over the first week of June. I got a call the last week of May and dogged it because they asked if I was returning for the coming school year. It made it more real. I finally started calling back the following week, but I kept getting voicemail and was uncomfortable leaving one. I finally wrote an email to the guy that first hired me, who is still there. I told him I am retiring and that I also have a medical issue that I had to think about and it is hard to give up something that one has done much of their whole life, work that is.  All of this puts more on my table than I thought of at first. It is just compounding, it is like putting a layer cake together, except you are taking it apart because you forgot to put the frosting in between the layers.  When I think about taking responsibility for retiring and giving notice, I tear up because I have a lot of feelings around people I met, the change in my routine, going to a fixed expectations of the job and I don't do well in a non structured lifestyle. I am adjusting to  my own chaotic rhythm and my unstructured lifestyle.  I am readjusting to it. Also adjusting to the strangeness of living a truck. I try to be transparent, not like the other urban campers that don't have enough money or things and start moving onto the sidewalks. This is part of why I chose a truck and not an RV. I don't want to be associated with that group of folks.

I have reviewed this piece, edited and deleted, added more that I wanted to say, took away distractions that I had added and now, I will put it out there for you to read over.

Something strange, the electrical transmutation. Just a short piece, because I need to end the clutter of it.

I have always had a sensitivity to heat, sparks shooting from my finger tips, weird electrical sensations, Reiki Training, great perephial vision and this latest strangeness between my computer and I. It is an Apple Mac Book Pro, 13inch with some type of metal case 2017 and touching it with my hands and fingers is like a very low voltage, no amperage connection when on the charger is is stronger and I am touching the aluminum of which the whole body of my truck is constructed. It is strange, sort of vibrates my fingers, palms, wrists, going up my bare skin. Thought perhaps it might be static electricity, feels kind of like that, but it doesn't discharge. There is no discharge, it just keeps reminding me that it is there. I once worked in a winery back when I was 20-21 and that is another chapter, but I must say that I got shocked there many times being wet and working with electric pumps and extension cords that the insulation often got cut and the electricity leaked out for unsuspecting hands picking up a cord from a wet floor.. Another chapter as I said.

I just discovered something about it. I am wearing compression socks on my calves and they are pressed against this aluminum panel in my truck. the electrical charge is going between my computer and my truck and I am the conduit. When I take my legs off the aluminum panel, the feeling stops with hands or fingers on the compute, then I am not a conduit. Another day, I am wearing my pj bottoms and they and my legs or knees are touching the same aluminum and yes, I am getting the buzz.  It is like when birds sit on those 10K wires. As long as they touch just one, they are ok. if they touch two, they become scavenger food.

Upon further investigation, I find the electrical connection is electrical as I have it unplugged from power now and the charge is very slight, but still thereabout only if I am touching the truck. When it was plugged in charging, I was getting a rather strong sensation, not a shock. I have had plenty of those in the past. I know the difference. I try to stay away from situations that could hurt me. Like, hanging around under utility poles or big transmission towers.

Distraction continues to be my Nemesis

Sometimes it seems like forever that I come here to write, where does the time go? It is forever and a day. Facebook draws me away and of course, it is cyclic for me. Because I worked as a school bus operator for 13 years I had to find new word substitutions for times when I would have liked to use crass language. Nothing a middle school kid likes better than to use the F bomb and catch the new driver using it so they can get then removed! So, I went into a whole new language for my expletives, one that I invented for myself, more like a group of sounds as opposed to words and with that I can guard my position as bus operator from the spying ears of those who hold like to exert power over us. 

Onward, just want to report on my chaotic health. Got tripped down at work, it was an accident, not intentional that another driver stuck their foot in my path and caused me to fall right knee first into the hard concrete floor, hairline fracturing my right knee cap in two places hit my left shoulder on the wall further injuring my rotator cuff.

This whole thing, a crazy adventure. I will write more later on this very page when the computer platform is not rocking back and forth on my good knee!

The other thing, the neglected left shoulder, the one with the torn rotator cuff, the completely long biceps tendon torn from its anchor and retracted into what, the muscle? Went to the doctor on the 17th after many good days and some bad days before. It was almost feeling normal before the doctor, but he had me move it several directions and now it is almost as sore as in the beginning.

I am icing it as I work on the keyboard, but bed calls me. Time to lay down and get ready for tomorrow.

Chapter Oblivion, infinity

Feb. 8, 2016

My rebellion started long ago. It is now obsolete. No one cares that I have long hair, no one really has to deal with it besides me. There are much younger people at my work who have colored hair, mohawks, shaved on one side, long on the other. My battle over hair is over. Employers, schools now know that hair is not an issue that they care about. They still care about some of the same things, behavior, lack of funding, how can they teach those who can't sit still. I am nearly obsolete as well, not just my rebellions. I continue to fight against the system, but it has grown to big. I continue to stumble around with no apparent anchor. No foundation that keeps me stable, that I base my life on. In March of 2020 this is not exactly true for me now or was it then. I do have a foundation of truth, honor, justice, empathy and compassion. 

Sometimes I am afraid, afraid of what I am doing, how I can accomplish my goal. Afraid of not accomplishing, afraid of succeeding. I am alone and when I accomplish my goal will again be alone. I intend to visit folks, but I will still be alone. I have been ok with myself and being alone, I have been ok with myself for all this time, since about 1984 when the big change came. I have been alone with myself for a long long time. 

Watching the movie Kidnapping Mr. Heineken with Anthony Hopkins as Mr. Heineken. 

I am just hanging around waiting it seems to go back to work. I should be engaged with going to the outdoors, to the woods but I am holed up. Holed up in my place and watching a movie that is rather dramatic. A dramatic movie. Desperation, is following the kidnappers, desperation. Got all the money, but isolated. Got little money and isolated I am. I am isolated because I chose to be, I guess. Something is really wrong, it is to quite, the movie that is. Not trying to scare anyone here especially myself. 

One of Sir Anthony Hopkins lines as Freddy Heineken's in the movie was there are two ways a man can be rich: he can have a lot of money or he can have a lot of friends, but he can't have both. Hmm, food for thought. I have neither a lot of friends or a lot of money. I have neither. That is not true either here in April 2020. I have many good friends, good people like me. I have people who are concerned about my health, people who call me, people who ask for advice important moral questions. I have many friends. Why would I say I don't have many, I am a social person, perhaps because I still trying to avoid something that is difficult in my life. This is how it is with me, time traveling, it is what I do, jump around a lot, only metaphorically though. The jumping is in my mind. I am not physically jumping. 

Comeback to this in March 23, 2020

I don't have a lot of money, I have enough and a little more, but I have a lot of friends who have stepped into my life to make sure I am ok. I am ok, will weather this better than some of the people I know who can't live without employment. I have already set my life up for retirement and living without working. Before 1984 if I got uncomfortable, I would just disappear, a big mistake on my part. I left two different women that I found out later I was in love with them, each at separate times. I am discovering rather harshly that reality is a cruel companion at times. I regret my mistakes before 1984 and my own isolation is necessary. 

I have made up for a lot of my past. I became a school bus operator and really came to appreciate what the job entails. It is about building relationships and then as the children mature and move on we have to recover from that. But there are more children, more parents, more teachers, more administrators. Newer bosses. Changing partners. 

No job that I have ever had has affected me so deeply and with more satisfaction than keeping children safe on a moving school bus. Oh yep, I know that I wrote once it was the worst job I ever had, it is the hardest, but certainly not the worst.  It is a rewarding job, but there is a lot of BS and a lot of misunderstanding by the public and the whole education system for the job we do and the cooperation we are asking for and not usually getting it. 

I wrote an article once for a magazine, PDX Parent about school bus safety and of course, I got a rejection notice. I was surprised and disappointed. A magazine that catered to parents and they said they have in-house writers thank for your submission. It was just a passing thought. Have sights somewhere about that my career there is just a hapter in my ling blogging, that I may who knows, go into a book but it would certainly have to be self published. 

There are words I have had in my head for decades and whose definitions I must have got confused long ago because as I look them up, totally not what I thought they meant. Wow! This is just me, how I go about things when I am in my own time line, if I don't have to do anything for anyone else. 

Our President! This was 2009 and a far cry from today!

Add caption

once upon a time.

स्टील कंप्यूटर illiterate

इ दोन'टी क्नोव। इ दोन'टी क्नोव नो वहत इ हवे फौलेद up

Sometimes, I speak in tongues and even I don't know what I said, like here. I don't know, certainly not illiterate. Something. So, googling the text above brought me to conspiracyprophecyguy.blogspot.com

I must have liked it, I can't read it, ok by me. Just have to and the original date was 12/29/13.

Observations from the home is where I park it, my truck.

It is March 21, 2020

I am listening to the Grateful Dead Show on KBOO community radio which is another story in itself.

I am parked outside of the Bison Cafe in NE Portland Oregon. Having now been living, urban camping in my 23 foot step van since July of 2019.

Urban camping is especially a strange and challenging lifestyle. I have been working towards this for some time, although the actual working is still taking place. I have procrastinated many hours away because without a structure to my life, I am to distracted with my ADHD to settle down.

Now that the Corvid-19 virus is here, I am feeling more motivated and having survived the winter without having hooked up my little Dickinson Wood burning stove that is meant for those of us who might be living an alternative lifestyle. Actually made in Canada for marine use, but it has promised to be very excellant in my short van of which the living space is shortened to about 13 get long.

There are all kinds of blogs and ideas out there or van conversations and I am so far out of the box I did not follow any of them really.

Onward, this will be of my hang outs, no not the online hang out, but real time because I can use the internet here. However, there is a sign that says no overnight parking. Cully Blvd. Alliance.

March 22, 2020 no more hangouts for awhile, I am fixed here at my new home in SE at my adopted family who are also from another state. We do share a similar state of mind and they and I have been very close for the last 13 years.

I put the levelling blocks togetther this afternnon and backed my truck onto them. It looks pretty level, so I take out my torpedo level and viola, no not the instrument; the bubble in the level, only off one or two degrees. Sometimes we get lucky, but other times we practice and do well. There was steong motivation for me to get the truck leveled becuse my weather app says 95% chance of rain tomorrow.

It looks like a tornado went though the interior of my truck, I completely took almost everything out of where it was stowed. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to clutter or organization. Going to work has almost always been good for me because it provides an established structure. Did I mention I have ADD or some kind of variant to that.

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.