Calling All Units

Tonight, for the first time in my short career as a bus driver, I had to call the cops to take some people off of my bus. I've been lucky to have almost zero passenger-related problems that required police assistance. Really tonight wasn't even that bad. On Wednesday nights I drive the last bus home for a bunch of people who are out in West Vail at the Sandbar for White Trash Wednesdays. It tends to be a pretty rowdy bunch at 2:00 AM, but luckily most of them get off the bus after only a few stops. The rest of them usually ride all the way back to the transportation center where I leave to do the last run of a different route. I don't mind when they are all rowdy and rambunctious for the few stops from the bar to where most of them get off, but tonight the really rowdy ones stayed on. I tried turning the lights back on to quiet them down, but it didn't work. I tried asking them to turn it down a notch because they were really distracting me, but it didn't work. They started getting belligerent and I asked more firmly for them to be quiet. They were very rude and instead got louder. I threatened to kick them off the bus which seemed to help a little. By this time I had already left for the last run and so I figured they weren't much more than a few minutes away from home. I mean I usually have obnoxious drunks on this last run, it's no big deal, just that these guys were ruder than usual. But then from what they started saying to each other, I got the vibe that maybe they were on the wrong bus and would possibly not be getting off the bus at the last stop. Great, here I was faced with the possibility of arriving at my last stop and having three drunk lost jerks. So I decided to call for some police backup. It turned out my hunch was right. When everyone else got off two stops before the end and it was just them left, they asked me about the stop that they were looking for, which wasn't anywhere near where we were or where we were going. At this point one of them knew that I had called the cops and they suddenly became much more quiet. I arrived at the last stop before the cops did and it was pretty uncomfortable just sitting there with these three jerks waiting for the cops to come deal with them. They kept offering to pay me cash to take them to their destination (some 5 miles away in the wrong direction). I was pretty irked and not very polite with them and I told them there was no way that I would do that, especially not after they were such jerks earlier. I also told them that this wasn't a taxi and that it's not my fault they didn't get on the right bus. I had no sympathy for them whatsoever. Heck, it wasn't even very cold out, I told them they could just walk home from there for all I cared.

When the cops came they just took them off the bus, asked what was going on and I told them that the three guys were being rude and that they need to get a cab to where they were going. That was it, and then I was free to drive back to the barn and finish my shift. It wasn't really a huge deal, but I'm really glad the cops were around and got there so quickly to deal with them so I could get back to the barn and finish my shift.

This reminded me of another police/bus incident a few weeks ago. I was not really involved in this incident, but I wish I had been. The dispatch guy comes on the radio addressing all of the bus drivers asking us to keep an eye out for the Sandbar Bus which had allegedly been stolen from the parking lot. Unfortunately I was on the Intown route at the time which is nowhere near the Sandbar, so I knew that my chances of spotting the joyriders was slim. I started thinking about kicking all of my passengers off the bus and leaving the route to go drive around Vail like a vigilante in my bus looking for the stolen Sandbar Bus. I imagined how it must feel to be the lucky bus driver who spots the target and calls in its coordinates to dispatch, saving the day and watching the Vail Police swoop in for the arrest, sirens blazing. In the end I think it was Ed driving the West Vail route who spotted the bus and called it in, but I'm not sure because I was busy answering some dumb tourist question when he came on the radio and I only caught the tail end of it. That darn Ed, he has all the fun. Every week I hope for more drama like that. Hopefully some week I will actually get to play a central role in some unfolding drama.

Sometimes when I see a near-accident or a close-call, I think to myself, "dang, I wish they had actually hit each other so I could call it in to dispatch." I would be like the star witness. Surely the cops would lend more credibility to my version of the events; after all I am practically a professional driver. Anyway, I'll keep hoping that I eventually see some carnage or something. Nothing too bloody, but just a nice little accident that does some decent damage would be nice.

The other day a woman almost got hit by a car after she got off my bus. She was talking on her cell phone and crossed in front of the bus and didn't look to see the car coming from behind on the side of the bus. I don't really want any carnage like THAT.

That's really the extent of the excitement I've had in this job; lots of close-calls, near-misses, missed opportunities, and a few drunk jerks. I think chances are pretty good that I'll get some real excitement before the season is over though. Keep your fingers crossed.

For today's YouTube video, Message In A Bottle by The Police seemed appropriate. This song was released in 1979 according to Wikipedia. That's practically the 1980s, and I generally dislike most things that came out of the 1980s, but I actually really like this song, still.