Holidays

Holidays

Driving a bus on or near a holiday can be a lot of fun. Before the holiday the supervisors would anounce to the drivers that our uniforms could be adjusted to suit the holiday so long as the adjustment wouldn't affect the opperation of the bus. Some drivers, like myself, took advantage of the situation. Others would just simply roll their eyes and sigh, "Oh brother!"

All set for Christmas?

At or aproaching Christmas time, I always don a Santa hat or a bright festive sweater. I don't know if folks got tired of it or not but I always tried to wish them a happy holiday. Halloween is another day I like to "dress up" for. After the Downtown Transit Center opened, I felt it was fitting to dress up as a train engineer to drive my appointed route. Keeping in the spirit, this last year I dressed as a '60s biker with all the trimmings, right down to the black leather jacket and chrome "Kraut" helmet. Sadly my attention to detail did me no good as few people recognized the costume.

Wait, that's my stop!

It doesn't happen often but from time to time I'll miss a stop, it's embarassing but it does happen. Someone will pull the cord and for some reason or other it just doesn't register. Usually I'll have a good reason, my reason will either include the two way radio or time. By time I mean time passed, I'll pass a stop and someone will immediatly pull the cord. Then the bus will get stopped for one, sometimes two traffic lights before aproching the next stop. By now I've totally forgotton the cord had been pulled and go trundling past the next stop. Not to worry though, if the passenger who pulled the cord doesn't speak up, there is always someone else who will! As time passed I have gotton quite good about glancing at the "Stop requested" sign on the bus as I aproach stops. Then there's things that happen in traffic that take your attention away.

One Friday evening while driving Route 61, leaving CSU campus, just past the Towers stop someone pulled the cord. We were stopped by at the light on Shields when an unpleasent scene opened. There was a small blue car stopped on the other side of the intersection with a couple of women outside it. At first I thought maybe they were just having a heated conversation but when one of the women started lashing punches to a seemingly unconcious woman in the car, I knew the conversation had taken an ugly turn. The woman doing the punching was being (unsucessfully) held back by the second woman outside the car. Whenever the woman holding back lost her grip, the unconcious woman in the car would receive another round of pummeling. I got on the radio to call for Police assistance. While calling in the scene and car discription, I rolled past the next stop. Even though a couple of folks were inconvenienced by my passing their stop, I just couldn't let the fighting at the side of the road go unchecked.

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