It's still a Roller Coaster Ride!

My life is still a roller coaster ride. It has its ups and downs. I'm going up again, finding that hope that fuels my will to go on. Even when I write about my lows I suspect I will be OK. I have been trying to plow the same path because it is comfortable, resist getting out of the groove, but know that if I don't stretch beyond the pain, I will shrivel up.

I am checking into the community college. I'm specifically looking into the career counseling section, want to be evaluated, tell them what I have, where I've been and hope to find out where I am going. It is up to me to make my situation better. Duh!

I know these things, yet, still stumble to head in the right direction.

Life is an adventure and I have once again been making up some ground. It's that old 2 steps forward, 1 step back situation. Why should I think it is any different for me?

Looked at RV yesterday....

Went down the road to Gervais Oregon and looked at 1970 Blue Bird Wander Lodge. It was rough and attractive all at once. I took only one picture which I will post later.

1970 Wander Lodge with rear engine. Prototype with rear engine and airbag springs. 9 of type made, engine came gas, converted to diesel shortly after purchase.

I crawled over and under it for about 30 minutes. Of course I have no funds to purchase it, but would not have if I did have them. Condition was just to rough. The wiring had been worked over and it was done badly. That was enough to put a stop to it. There was more. It was ready for a complete overhaul.

I am now not sure what I am thinking, since I have no means to purchase something like this anyway and unless I win the lottery, which I have little money to play with, I guess I will just keep on continuing to slowly sink below the surface of the pool until I can no longer float.

It is floating and I have never been so poor except when I was living on the street and even then I could see more chances at survival than I seem to see now.

There is one factore though that I am encouraged by and that is we have new President Barack Hussein Obama. That overshadows all the above I have written. The sun is shining on us Now!

The dog show.....

Drove the bus yesterday for the dog show. Around and around from the over flow parking lot to the Expo Center and back, about a 15 minute trip with a waiting period to pick up passengers at one end or the other.

I'm not turning down work, can 't afford it. 7 hours of that, was scheduled for 8 hours, but thankfully the last over flow parker left at 1915 allowing me the drive back to the yard.

I'm headed for Keizer, Oregon this morning. Keizer is on the way to Salem. I'm going to look at a Blue Bird RV, a really old one. I will take pictures. It is my first opportunity to look at an example of what I am hoping to purchase in the near future. Not likely this one, but who knows. Now with my experience of buses I am better prepared to examine these big machines with some familiarity.

One thing leads to another.....

Whoa, there, hold up......

And it does. I just got done writing to much, so I copied and pasted it into my hard drive, where I do my other writing.

I have some questions.

Have any of you noticed how Barack Obama's hair has already gone grey? Was he dying it on the campaign trail to look young? Or has the shock of being elected caused him to grey? Or is that really gray?

One of my favorite quotes comes from Albert Einstein "The important thing is never to stop questioning."

Questions open more doors that not questioning. If we stop questioning and assume something to be true, what are we really doing?

A day to catch up

Here it comes, the flood of words, coming and going, in and out, back and forth, read and write it is all here and there.

I'm just now getting a chance to catch up with the rest of the country.

I think that I worked 45 hours this week. It seems like much more because of the split shift nature of my work. I get up at 0400 to walk and feed my dog, pet my kitty, take a shower, drink coffee and have a minimal breakfast so that I can drive the 7 miles to work and start work by 0600. My route ended at 0835 and then for 4 days this week I had field trips that started at 0831 and lasted until 0945. Then I would have an hour or so break, unpaid and sign back on at 1100 until about 1230 at which time I would drive the 7 miles back to my apartment, walk the dog, eat lunch and then drive back to work to sign on at 1440 to complete my route by 1715 at which time I would sign on as a bus fueler to work another hour and a 1/4 or so. On Fridays it is more like 2.25 hours and I got home last night about 2030 so that I could walk my dog, feed him, pet the kitty and eat dinner, watch a little TV which is not something I have been able to do all week.

All the news has been abuzz with all the news of the coming inauguration, the US Airways flight that did an emergency water landing where all the crew and passengers survived.

I'm glad I have some knowledge of aviation. It seems the general public has either some knowledge or just stays away from knowledge about aviation until there is a mishap, an accident or catastrophic failure of a major component such as an engine or a double bird strike causing both engines to fail. Those of us who have an aviation passion or once had one which is my case have had enough training to understand what took place with the crew of that aircraft.

I'm grateful that I didn't have to deal with the added tragedy of an airline crash before the huge occasion of the inauguration of 44 President of the United States.

Of course, there are many tragedies occurring throughout the world right now and the new President has already been getting the briefings about them for some time. Everything will unfold and hopefully we will continue on a path of HOPE!

The first 59 years.....

That's right, on the 31st I will celebrate my 59th birthday. When I look back at my life it is hard to pin down much of anything other than chaos and confusion. There has been a storm of cataclysmic proportions raging inside of me for a long time. On occasion I would get glimpses of clarity and calm but they would not last, my howling senses or non senses would always come back and overwhelm that small sense of sanity that I would feel. This is part of the reason I named this new blog Moments, drip, drip drip....Moments are all I have. Only bits and pieces have I been able to string together of coherent thought. Most of my driving force the last 50 years has been about anger and frustration which have consumed me, thrown me into the Abyss of chaos and confusion. After last Friday the 9th of Jan. I finally feel like I am emerging from the storm and what has happened is hope. Hope has been creeping back into my life after being ripped away from me as a child. Since the 9th I have had long moments of clarity because the trigger mechanism of my survival has been disabled. 

It has to be the HOPE of a better future, the one I had 40 + years ago that was dashed by a series of events that devastated the country and my personal beliefs beyond my ability to step out and feel true peace. I'm still trying to organize my thoughts and feelings about what has taken place with myself. I am working on all of it and am pursuing my dreams in the 3 dimensional world. I will post pictures soon. If this seems cryptic and hard to understand, it is okay. My whole life has been hard to understand, it has been a bad dream that seems like I am slowly coming out of. I am slow and am finally accepting some of my limitations and moving ahead with what I can accomplish. My focus has been relatively constant, which is a contradiction.

Feast or the alternatives.....

I know I am inconsistent. I have opened this blog and get to it when I can, but am not bending over backwards in my "schedule" to get here to write. I have been working a lot this week. I'm not sure exactly how much, except it is likely over 40 hours. At my school bus driving job, I have not turned down work and that reputation is solidifying with my dispatchers. They seem amazed by my attitude. I think possibly they might have thought I was in semi-retirement, but of course, I am not!

Since Sept. 2008 when school started we have not had any additional trips and the whine around the dispatch office by others has been, when are you going to give me some field trips, where are they? Imagine a bunch of older 50 year older plus children all singing the same tune? And they call our passengers children! Another newer driver and I came to the conclusion that these senior drivers complain about the most trivial slights.

The other day I came back to work after my break in the morning and there were 3 parking spaces in our whole yard. The company was having the monthly safety meetings and even drivers from other yards come. So I parked my van in the spot that was closet to my bus and went out for the afternoon run and when I got back there was a note on my windshield. You have parked your van to close to my car. Next time find another space that parking space. I don't want door marks on my shiny car. I was shocked. A supposedly professional driver in lot full of professional drivers is worried that I don't have respect for their property and would bang my car door into their car. Of course, I immediately wrote a searing 4 page note back and stuck it along with my name and route number into their cubby hole in dispatch. Later, coming back from fueling buses after about an hour and a half, after calming down I decided to not leave the note. I went back to dispatch and I had placed it in the wrong cubby. I took it out and just put that persons note into the right cubby with no attachments.

There is no reason for me to buy into their petty little world.

I am having the day off, Saturday and will be working once again, Sunday, shuttle bus for the dog show, dogs allowed to ride the bus. Not the normal position of the rules.