The Wave

There are many aspects to being a good bus driver, but perhaps one of the more important of those is the bus-driver wave. You've all seen it; when two bus drivers pass each other on the road they almost invariably wave at each other. Back in my pre-bus-driver days I always wondered about all the intricacies of this mysterious part of bus-driver sub-culture. How many times a day do they wave at each other? Do they wave every time they pass each other or just the first one or two times? Do they all wave at all the others, or is the wave reserved only for specific co-drivers? How much effort should go into waving at another driver and how much is too much? I had a suspicion that there was more than met the eye with these bus-driver waves, and now after being a bus driver myself for about a month and a half I have gained some insight on them.

Before I started this bus driving gig I wasn't sure if I was going to become a waver or if I would instead become one of those stoic non-wavers. It turns out that I'm a waver. Yup, I wave at every other bus driver I pass. Not only do I wave at all the other bus drivers that I work with, but I even wave at some of the guys that drive other buses and shuttles that I see around the valley a lot. In fact, I've found that the "bus-driver wave" is not limited to just bus drivers but can be extended to lots of other people including all other people driving Town of Vail vehicles, cops, trash truck drivers, snowplow drivers, shuttle drivers, etc. There are also some people who are not privy to the wave though. These include taxi drivers, CME drivers, and certain shuttle drivers. These people don't get the wave because they are discourteous drivers and we don't like them.

As for some of the other questions I had, I wave at the other drivers no matter how many times I see them. Sometimes I will see and wave at the same person probably 20 times in a day, but I wave every time. It's kind of like Pringles, once you start you can't stop. What kind of mixed messages would I send people if I was waving in the morning and then not waving in the afternoon? So I always wave.

Not all waves are created equal though. Some guys try to act all nonchalant about waving, like they are too cool to really be waving but they know that they have to anyway. Some give a nice firm, confident sort of "hey, what's up?" two finger salute. A few give a simple forward-facing up and down palm. Some are a little more creative though. There's one guy who sort of flashes gang signs, often with both hands. One guy seems to have a new crazy motion every time I drive past him. Today his repertoire included a "whipping" motion, a "mummy" gesture, a "chopper bike rider" one, and a "woman with nice curves" signal. Some give peace signs, and some salute military style. Then there are a few guys who are so focused on the task at hand that they just can't be bothered with waving. Sometimes they just give a blank stare. Almost every driver has their own distinct wave, but I personally prefer to just copy the wave of whoever it is I am waving to. When I'm passing the creative guy, I try to think of something creative myself. To the gang sign flasher, I try to respond similarly. To the stoic starer, I just stare back.

If I had to describe my own wave though, I would call it a flick of a peace sign plus the thumb, usually with the right hand. I think one of my favorites, though, is when it's dark out and the drivers can't see each other most of us either flick on one of the interior lights, or click the left-hand turn signal one time. Some drivers go a little overboard with the light flicking though...


Today's video is another 1997 video, "How Bizarre" by OMC. My fondest memory of this video was one day in the summer when I was at the Berthoud pool and I ran into my former best friend's former "girlfriend" and she was wondering where I had disappeared to (because that was after I started homeschooling). Then this song came on and she said, "Oh, like, this is so, like, my song!" I bet this guy would have a pretty good wave if he were a bus driver.

Bus Chronicles

I've really been slacking on this blog thing. I know that at least one person has been particularly anxious to hear about my life as a bus driver, and I have been anxious to write about it too, but I just haven't had the time/energy. Then after I was already a few weeks into it I felt like I had so much to summarize that I felt overwhelmed and just haven't written about it.

Basically bus driving has been going well. Driving a bus is as fun as I had always imagined it would be. The first few days were the hardest because before that point I had always driven with a trainer, but now I was out on my own. If I made a mistake there was no one else to blame. I was constantly and nervously checking my schedule sheets making sure I was on time and in the right place. No matter how many times I checked the schedule and my watch I still had this uneasy feeling that somehow I was still doing something wrong.

As far as I know, however, I didn't really mess anything up. Actually, my first day was the roughest. After picking a bus out of the barn in the morning to take out on my route, I realized that the radio wasn't working and so I had to go get a new bus which caused be to be 15 minutes late on my very first loop of my very first route of my very first day. Luckily it wasn't really my fault but rather a simple mechanical mishap. Then on that same day, on my very last loop before clocking out, the bus I was driving broke down. I was able to get it started back up and get it back to the transportation center, and again, it wasn't my fault.

After that first day things went pretty smoothly. I work Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in the morning/day, and then on Wednesday I have a night shift that goes to 3:00 AM, so I get lots of drunks on that shift. I drive several different routes. I drive the "Intown" route that goes between Golden Peak and Lionshead for about half of each of my shifts, and then the other half is either West Vail, or the Golf Course/Lionsridge Loop/Ford Park. The only route that I never drive is East Vail. I'm guessing that East Vail must be the best one to drive because it seems like all of the more seasoned drivers who get first pick of their shifts drive East Vail while a lot of the drivers that I tend to see driving Intown and West Vail are the newer drivers like me who got the dregs shifts. I don't mind though. I like my shifts and I get a lot of diversity with my routes. There are some drivers who drive the same route all day every day, but I can't imagine how boring that would be. I would much prefer the mixture of my shifts.

Just physically driving the bus is pretty fun, and really that's the whole reason I wanted to be a bus driver. While it took a little bit of getting used to driving something that big, I'm already pretty used to it. I love using that big steering wheel to steer the thing around curves and stuff. I love all the sounds like the air brakes and the diesel engine and stuff. I even enjoy opening and closing the doors.

There's more to being a bus driver than simply being able to operate the thing. You have to know the routes and the stop names and be able to answer the myriad of dumb questions that people ask you about how to get here there or the other place. You have to pay close attention to the time to make sure you are on schedule. This is the hardest part, I think. Even almost a month in I still have to be careful not to get ahead of schedule. When I do get ahead of schedule I just have to stop and wait at a stop for a few minutes to get back on schedule, but I think that's probably just as annoying for all the people on the bus as it is for me. I wish they would just adjust the schedule so that I had to speed around everywhere really fast to stay on schedule, but as it is I have to poke along below the speed limit sometimes just to eat up some time. Now I realize that busses don't always drive slow just because the are big and cumbersome, but rather because they are just trying to stay on schedule!

I don't really have any good stories yet, but I do have lots of thoughts and impressions about bus driving that I hope to write about in the coming months, but for now I need to go to bed. It's almost 8:00 and I had to get up at 4:00 this morning, and I need to get up almost that early again tomorrow morning. Maybe on Wednesday I'll sleep in really late, 'til like 6 or something, haha.

The next Circa 1997 video is Macarena. Maybe this was more like 1996, I don't remember, but it was probably still kicking around in 1997 too. When this song was popular I didn't know that those two guys were speaking Spanish. I thought it was just some strange made up jibberish or something.

Obligatory New Years Post

Ok, I know, I haven't posted in awhile. I've been wanting to, and trying to, but for some reason I just haven't been able to. I know that an Obligatory New Years Post has nearly passed its expiration date at this point, but here it is anyway. Thanks to those of you who sent emails prodding me to write a new entry. I mean it.

I think the reason it has taken me so long to write this post is because I've been having a really hard time thinking of anything good to say about 2006. That's not to say that 2006 was a bad year, because it wasn't. It just means that it wasn't a particularly fabulous year. I didn't really do anything very cool/exciting/interesting. I was mostly just busy with working or going to school all year. To sum-up 2006, I was busy with school into May, then I was busy at Chinese Summer Camp in Minnesota until July, then I was busy with my linguistics transcription job at Infoture for the rest of the summer, then my last semester of college started and I was busy with that AND the Infoture job for awhile until I quit the job and was still just busy with school, and then I graduated and moved to Vail to drive a bus. In May (I think, or was it June?) I went to Phoenix (Tempe) to visit a friend of mine from study abroad in Nanjing. It was a lot of fun. Then in the fall I went to Baltimore for my uncle's wedding. So I didn't even go very many places in 2006.

As for last years resolutions, I think I did a pretty good job:

• Learn some Arabic - Well, I didn't learn any Arabic, but I did learn some Russian and Portuguese, so I think I succeeded.
  
• Graduate with at least a 3.5 GPA - I'm pretty frustrated with this one. It appears that I have missed this goal by the slimmest possible margin. Had only one single grade over the course of my entire college career been one single notch higher, I would have made it, but as it is I am graduating with a 3.495. Oooooh man, sooo frustrating.
  
• Bike more - Being in Minnesota for the summer put a damper on this goal, but I did do a good job of riding my bike to school almost every day this past fall semester. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have ridden as much if I hadn't got that awesome fixed-gear bike.
  
• Waste less time on the internet - This is the only goal on this list that I completely failed to reach. In fact, I'm wasting time on the internet this very minute! Except for my stint in Minnesota with limited internet access, I spent just as much time on the internet as ever (perhaps even MORE?).
  
• Work harder to be more financially independent - I definitely worked harder, and I haven't had to ask Dad for extra money in awhile... so I guess I achieved this one too. I still feel as poor as ever though.

So how about some goals for 2007:

• Save Money - I'm working full-time and making relatively decent money (compared to 'almost nothing'). Also, because I'm living at home my expenses are pretty low, so I should be able to save up a good chunk of change... and then spend it on booze, (haha, just kidding).
• Keep Up with the Languages - I'm worried that being out of school it will be too easy to lapse into a lazy rut and not only stop learning new languages, but also let the ones I already know go soft and rusty. So my goal for 2007 is to not allow this to happen, and make sure that my net language ability continues to increase rather than plateau.
  
• Be Healthier - At first I was just going to put "Eat Healthier," but really eating healthy is just one aspect of overall health. So I want to BE healthy, including eating healthier (more fresh fruits and veggies, more fish, less sugars and highly processed foods), exercising more(skiing, biking, swimming, hiking, and lifting mostly), getting enough sleep (this has never really been a problem for me though).
  
• Go somewhere outside of the USA - I haven't been abroad for awhile now and I'm starting to feel the itch again. I don't have any plans in place yet, but there are lots of places I would probably like to go.
  
• Take the GRE - I don't think that this is a very lofty goal, but I do think it's important that I take the GRE sooner rather than later when I have forgotten everything. Also, I think having taken the GRE will help to keep me motivated about going to grad school... eventually...
• Get a Girlfriend - I still don't really know how people generally go about getting themselves girlfriends, so this one will really be a challenge for me. Even if I only have one for a few months, that will be sufficient I think.
• Do Something Interesting/Don't Get Stuck in any Ruts - This one is pretty self-explanatory. Basically I just don't want to sit down to my computer a year from now and think, "Well, 2007 was a dud!"
  

Ok, I think that's a pretty good list of goals. Hopefully 2007 will be a good year. Hopefully I will do some fun things, some interesting things, and hopefully some worthwhile things.

Okay, that's all I can write for now. Updates on bus-driving soon to follow, hopefully. Happy New Years Y'all!

In honor of 2007, for the next couple of blog posts I am going to put up Youtube videos of songs that I remember from 10 years ago, 1997. That was the year when Mom finally got fed up with my supposed failing grades in 7th grade and decided to take me out of school and homeschool me (I still don't ever remember getting anything worse than a D, but she says I was failing...). Of course it's hard for me to remember with much clarity 1997 versus, say, 1996, so some of these songs might not actually technically be from 1997, but to me they will always be 1997.

Today's song is one that I remember being popular while I was in middle school. At the time it seemed like a cool song, but listening to it now it just sounds stupid. It is "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America. This song reminds me particularly of one day at Turner Middle school in the locker room after gym class and one of my classmates, Joey Schuetz, was singing this song in a stupid voice. At the time I didn't realize that it was a song and I was pretty confused why he was singing a song about peaches. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I heard the song and it all made sense to me.