Schools out…

Forever….  Thank you Mr Alice Cooper….  These 3 weeks are always fun to drive because school is out. It’s times like this you realize how much traffic is generated by school, it’s easily 70% of the morning commute.  Not only is it the parents not taking their kids, it’s also all the thousands of LAUSD employees.

Folks I want to wish you all happy holidays.. I’m going to spend my time off resting. Eventually I’ll put some meta time into the blog trying to raise it’s profile. I find every hour I spend spreading and exposing it in other venues pays off 10 fold….

Peace and Goodwill on Earth

Mr. Farebox

Super Dave

I  met Dave this week and he’ll be riding my bus 2 days a week for the foreseeable future.  He’s a young guy, kind of lean and not so tall. Twice a week Dave attends 12 step meetings then takes two buses to the hospital for treatment. He doesn’t work, he can’t work. He says he ” has issues”

Dave Attends his court ordered 12 step programs because he got arrested driving under the influence of narcotics. ” They help me stay numb, he told me.” he also told me he hasn’t been doing drugs for a long time, but once he got started he liked the way it made him feel.

So that’s dave in a nutshell….  doesn’t sound like much? Well yeah I’d have to agree. I did however leave out a few details.   Dave is 26 years old and a veteran of the U.S Army Airborne Rangers. The pain he’s trying to mask is a missing limb lost in Iraq. I’m assuming it was from an IED but I’ve never asked him and the hospital I take him to is the VA.  Dave has been “home” for 2 years but honestly I wonder if you ever come home from experiences like he’s had.

The small VA hospital in the valley had been in decline patient wise for a long time.  George Bush and his mythical link of Al Qaida to Iraq has made their business boom again. Now I take a mixture of older vets of wars long gone by and seated next to them new vets starting their road to recovery at the hospital.  I hope their is some guidance going on their but I doubt it. People own their experiences and the experiences of one war don’t always translate well to the next war.   I’m a vet, but not a war veteran so I find a large disconnect from these vets. They have lived and put into practice that which I only trained for.  There is only one small thing I do for them. The entrance to the hospital is about 500 yds down from the bus stop. I always drive them down to the gate and pick up anybody along the fence who might be walking towards my stop.  Just when you think shit has got you down think of Dave.. super Dave?  Why do I call him Super? Author Chris Crutcher once wrote  in a book ” Superman’s not brave, he’s invulnerable. You can’t be invulnerable and be brave. It’s people like you and me who do stuff eventhough we know we can be hurt, we are the brave ones.- “Angus Bethune.” Dave is the brave one.  I wish him peace and joy on Earth….

I’ll be taking a break from the blog for the Holidays so I’ll do a blog on Wednesday and then be back after New Years.  Thanks to everyone reading…  frankly I’m shocked people are reading it at all but I’m extremely grateful.

Happy Holidays be safe and remember if your gonna drink think about taking some of the MTA’s all night free bus service on Christmas and New Years.  Also if your going to the Rose Parade let the Gold line be your savior from mass traffic.

To Bark like a big dog.

today was an interesting day on my bus. I broke down.  Usually breakdowns are nice but not today and let me tell you why.   My new run is unique in that for the 1st part of the day I drive a heavy high load line, then I get a quick 30 minute break and go out to the lightest line in the Valley. The lightest line has an hour headway ( meaning the next bus after me doesn’t come for an hour after me) So when you break down like that they have no option but to force you to roll late. I was 35 minutes late and people get mad.

This one irate guy got on pissed that I was late. He was loud in my face and willing to challenge me. I could of gotten  all big dog and challenged him back but that presents a problem.  Once I go there my hand is forced, I pretty much am inviting a confrontation.  If I decided to bark like a big dog I have to be prepared for the consequences, we could end up fighting, that leaves me in a bad position in so many ways. I could get my assed kicked or I could get in real trouble from the company, either way I’m screwed. But I’ve developed a tactic that works well to defuse these situations

When faced with angry emotional, irate, pissed off people I like to yawn.  I’ve learned people don’t know how to react to someone yawning in their face.  99.9 % of the time it defuses the situation.  I guess they think I’m unfazed or bored with their rant.  So as this guy was screaming at me today. I  just   “YAAAAAAWWWWWWWWwwNNNnnnnnnnned. and sure enough it worked.  Just as in defensive driving, you always want to leave yourself options the same applies to interpersonal skills. I don’t want to force an altercation. If it happens I will protect myself and open a can of whoop ass but why go there off the bat and force my hand?  Here is the thing once you get all in someones face you can’t back down but by yawning I leave all avenues open, if it works great, if not then I can still go all big.

In life you always want to leave as many options on the table as possible, it just gives you choices. That pissed guy was transit dependent he left himself no options but the bus and to be pissed when I was late. I left myself as many options as possible for as long as possible and therefore was way more flexible in the moment…..  so needless to say  the yawn worked. He gave me a dumbfounded look and sat down… Mr. farebox= winner.

by the way it took me 1 hour and 30 minutes to make up the 35 late minutes…. that was some serious high speed bus driving…

have a good weekend.  Next week I’m going to tell you about the tragic guy I’ll call Dave. He’s been riding my bus this week and his story is tale of burden our country has put on him.

The painful cold truth

I had two things to talk about tonight but I couldn’t get a full post out of either so I combined them both and they really fit together nicely.

” I know it hurts. It’s painful but you have to get over it. You need to go to school, life is painful, cold and full of burden’s you need to grow up and deal with it” That is what a mother was telling her daughter on her cell phone today. It’s moments like that I wish this blog was an interview blog. I really wanted to know the whole story. To bad I couldn’t just say ” Hey I write this blog and it would really help me if I could interview you so I can exploit what ever tragedy has befallen your daughter for my ego and my readers enjoyment. But that just seems too cold. Sometimes you just don’t get the whole story.  I hope that’s a talk I never have with my kids. Life should never be painful or a burden and hopefully in the tough times we parents can be there to support them but unavoidably life is full of pain.

Which I get because let me tell you about  how painful driving can be. When the temperature dips like this, I almost hate walking out to my bus. Buses sit in a cold yard all night long. Their solid steel bodies freeze up like the old metal ice cube trays. It takes about an hour or two for the heater to fully thaw the bus out. In the time between that it’s physically painful to drive.  The fact that I’m getting older only makes it harder to cope. The cold can penetrate down to my bones and makes me feel like a popsicle. Add to the cold the stiffness of sitting in a seat and life can be very painful.  even though I’m in pretty good shape for a driver it still wrecks my body.

I can crack my neck just by turning my head. Sometimes my back is so tweaked and compressed that I have to come home lay on the floor and put my legs up on my couch for 20 minutes to allow for my spine to decompress.  I’m pretty sure I’m solely supporting a majority of Tiger Balms sales and I don’t know what I would do without my wonderful masseuse .  I’m not alone many drivers I know are breaking down as we get older. The all to many miles and all two few breaks lead to wear and tear on our bodies; there’s no such thing as a skinny healthy bus driver. The union and the company are trying to promote wellness programs but in my mind if they really cared They’d offer more compassionate schedules that are less demanding on us drivers. my new schedule I started today drivers for 8 hours and 45 minutes. my longest break, is 9 minutes.

The weather outside is frightful….

It’s been cold and wet for the last couple days in LA.  Which makes it not very delightful and leads to one constant truism on the buses. When it gets cold the homeless ride because they got no place to go.  A bus is warm and cheap ( if they have disabled card it cost .25). They prefer to find long lines so they can sleep for awhile.  now before you get all emotional and think, well at least they have a place to be warm, I have to tell you I cannot stand it when they just ride around.

I’m not a rolling Holiday Inn. it’s not my job to provide shelter to the disenfranchised of the  world.  If they just got on and rode it would be ok, but it’s never just that.  There are many issues that come with them. First and foremost they usually stink. Next, the almost always get into some clash with other riders.  Lastly, many times it’s hard to get them off the bus at the end of the line.

Look I’m not inhuman I feel for them but you have to understand, anything that is not routine on my bus adds stress on the bus. It makes passengers uneasy and ultimately that makes my day a lot harder. Sometimes to persuade them to leave I’ll make the bus as inhospitable as possible by turning on the AC and opening the windows while it’s 45 degrees outside.  If  the bus isn’t warm then they have no reason to stay and they go on their way.  Is it the christmas spirit? nope. Is it the decent thing to do? nope. But is it the solution that makes my day less stressful? Yes. There in lies the secret, anything that makes my job harder jeopardizes my long term success so  to manage the risk sometimes my inner prick comes out.

Connotative meaning

I had an interesting conversation with my boss today. Let me preface my post by saying ” I love my boss” She is easily the finest person I’ve worked for at the MTA, but she’s still a boss.  Our discussion was about recent procedure changes at work and the sticking point was the definition of the word help.

she told me to assist drivers leaving on time she now has a supervisor in the yard to “help” us.  Here’s the thing. In 20 years I’ve never seen a supervisor help anyone. Supervisors at the MTA don’t help.. they write. More specifically they write rule violations.  so ultimately my boss and I didn’t see eye to eye because we connotatively have different meanings for the word help.

There are may ways to define a word.  you can define a word by example. For instance  ”Lend”  I could explain lend as ” I need lunch money so my friend gave me $5 that I would payback.” One can define a word by tradition. snafu   means “situation normal all fucked up”  It was coined by American servicemen and has been used for 50 years.  You can define words dennotatively, from a dictionary.  such as help

Help : to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist: He planned to help me with my work. Let me help you with those packages.

in direct opposition to denotative is connotative meaning.   Which basically is the implied meaning a community ascribes to and understands a word to mean.  For instance a Fag in England is a cigarette. In America the word is a disparaging remark to someones sexuality  same word different connative meaning.

We drivers hear the word help from a supervisor, well that just means a write up. Supervisors at the MTA are incapable of actually supervising. I was  in the USMC the main function of an NCO was to train and guide enlisted troops, not punish them.  I’ve never once received any advice from a supervisor that was actually offered as a means to make my job more efficient or helpful.  In fact I find them so devoid of any ethos that I actually prefer the general public to supervisors.  I’m only at my work location for 17 minutes a day and it’s more often than not the worst 17 minutes of my day.  The MTA’s way of getting us to put on a smiley face to our customers is to poke us with a knife in our back….  it just adds to the overall stress of the job and one major reason I can’t wait to leave.  but I’m nothing special, everyone has shitty bosses at work…

T.O Meat Locker

Thousand Oaks Meat Locker.  is located on Thousand Oaks Blvd. way out on the 161 line, which is the farthest west service the MTA operates. It actually goes into Ventura County for a block or two.

This place is old, it’s rickity, it looks like someones shed. and it is yummy.  If your an uptight type A freak who is all about the letter grade stay away, this place isn’t for you. I’m sure the antiquated  wood counter is full of all kinds of evil germs……  but I’m also sure this place has character.  Eventually you’ll notice a lot of my food reviews are BBQ…. what can I say ” This driver likes what this driver likes”

What I like here best is the tri tip sandwiches. They make them all early and keep them warm the whole day which tends to sog out the bread….   I love soggy bread.  This is like a Texas version of a French dip sandwich. also if you do go and they have fresh Jerky for sale…. Buy some!!!!!!

Character counts for a lot in life….   it gives things a sense of authenticity, of uniqueness, of integrity. I don’t like things that pretend to be something they’re not. The Meat Locker doesn’t make excuses for what it is or how it is… it simply does it’s thing. If I’m gonna spy a place from a bus and try it out, it has to offer me something more than food. A place has to offer me an experience, a sense of understanding about it’s history and location. The Meat Locker is a humble reminder of a rural area that has long given way to Upper middle class Americana suburbia. It’s not just a restaurant it’s an archeological artifact. Like a Jewish synagogue left in Boyle Heights, it speaks of the past.   My wife and I had a family reunion the day after our wedding and The Meat Locker catered it, they were great.

A friend to you and me.

See this lovely lady to my right? I’m gonna call her Tina ( not her real name). Tina is the kind of riders we drivers like. honestly we drivers spend 99% of our day with passangers. I only get to see my fellow drivers at layovers and as they pass me on the street, but people like Tina we get to know.  Let me tell you what I know about her. First She knows every driver in the division where I work. She has been riding buses for about 17 years and knows more about me and my fellow coworkers than we know about each other, she’s a great source of gossip it’s amazing how gossip gets around about us drivers considering we are all alone on our buses.  But if I fart on my bus a coworker will know about it.

Every Wednesday  she rides the bus to Value + market because thats the day of their fresh fruit sale. She’s on a fixed income and really tries to eat healthy. I think on Tuesdays she goes to another market for their meat sale.  Markets are where neighborhood awareness is sharpened, at least thats what Michel de Certeau thinks and I agree. de Certeau explains that buying is a public action that binds, not only by the price it cost, but because one is seen by others in the midst of choosing what will become a meal. What I’ve learned from her shopping trips is that Tina has a high self worth  and likes to eat very healthy food and even though she may not have the budget to shop at mainstream supermarkets she bears the burden of some bus rides to eat good food.

Every time she gets on she has an envelope of coupons for me. She always ask me about my family and will talior the coupons towards stuff my kids might like, Jell-o pudding for instance.  In that kind simple gesture there is an incredible amount of appreciation. It’s her way of saying thank you and expressing how important the bus and we drivers are to her.  That’s the kind of stuff that makes our days go by a little faster and with a lot more cheer.

I’m not going to sit here and say she is my friend, because honestly I don’t usually make friends of riders… (search out my post on Andrew from Tucson, Tucson Arizona for why) but I enjoy seeing her and catching up on the gossip  and don’t tell her but I’d like her even with out the envelope of coupons

Ride on folks… ride on

oh and if the weather forecast rings true, I may have some rain blogs this week.  Rain always makes it interesting on the buses.

Reflections; an anniversary post

If your reading this on  Thursday morning then I’m driving a bus and it’s December 3, 2009   my 19th anniversary driving a bus for the RTD/MTA, I officially started my 20th year at 4:21am.  I’m a big believer in the power of reflection. I think it’s important to look back and see where one has been to get a clear perspective of where one is headed so I made a list ( I know I’m forgetting a line or two but here it goes)

In 19 years I have driven the 2 Line on Sunset, the 10/11 line on Melrose, the 16 line on 3rd street (easily the heaviest line, people wise), The 20 line on Wilshire,I’ve driven the 26 to Hollywood, the 51 on Avalon, I’ve rolled the 56 to Watts, and gotten lost on the 65 to East LA. I’ve drive the 97 around Griffith Park, the 104 to Cudahy, The 150/424/425/750 on Ventura Blvd. The 152/353/418 on Roscoe,  The 154 on Burbank Blvd,The 158 on Woodman, The 161 to Westlake Village, Worked Sherman Way  with the 163,I’ve cruised Victory Blvd. on the 164 and Crammed a bus down Vanoween on the 165 route, I’ve rolled the dice with the 200 line on Alvarado,The  240/750 on Reseda Blvd. 243 on Winnetka, 244 on DeSoto, the 245 on Topanga, the 420 from Van Nuys through Hollywood to downtown  and the 426 to Western. I’ve also worked the 900 specials to the Hollywood Bowl, Dodger stadium and the Rose Parade.  That’s a lot of miles on a lot of streets on a lot of lines and I’ve seen tons of shit.

I mentioned in my interview with Alex that ” nothing shocks me, it would be impossible to shock me” and thats true. I’ve seen the worst society has to offer robberies, beatings and two lives taken in front of me.  I’ve stared down the barrel of a pistol ( without pissing myself) and had a knife pulled on me, I’ve witnessed public acts of lewdness and sex. I’ve watched people use the bus as a toilet and prostitutes turn it into a rolling whorehouse.  I once saw a gang banger choose to jump out the emergency window at 30 MPH because he felt his odds were better surviving that fall than staying alive on the bus with the two rival bangers who just got on. I saw a drive by shooting from a bike and seen a car try to take on a train.  I came up on the murder scene of Compton Police officers Kevin Burrell and James McDonald on Rosecrans as the first responders just rolled onto the scene.  All of this is bad but it’s not the worst part. The worst part is none of this shocks me anymore. What suprises me now are acts of kindness and generosity. I started 19 years ago as an Ideological kid who thought people were “generally” good and have been changed over time to a hardened cynic who thinks the world is full of losers.  That’s the worst part.

As I reflect back on my career, I’ve also reflected back on my post here on the blog; sometimes I forget what I’ve written. This blog isn’t just a journal of my driving it’s the story of my human journey.   I’m no saint, I’m not better than anyone else driving a bus. I’m no modern day Sir Galahad. I like that I’ve shared moments of joy with you all but it’s also equally important to remember the post where I’m not so perfect.  It’s important for me to state “I AM NOT THE HERO OF THIS BLOG!!!”  I’m just a driver trying to make sense of it all.I’m trying to survive  the last 1460 days till retirement by any means possible.

Know it alls!!!!

I have to warn you. Usually I take a little break from the world between driving and the rest of my day, to decompress but today I didn’t. I decided to run home and type in hopes my rage and annoyance naturally spews onto the screen. ( wow almost typed pages, how archaic would that of sounded?)

You ever run into “Those” people? You know the ones who act as if they know it all. Yep “Those” people and do you ever notice those people don’t know what the fuck they are talking about?  There are lots of ” Those” people on the bus. I think they like to act in charge on the bus because they are totally unqualified to  be in charge anywhere. There is a slight problem with “Those” people.  THEY ANNOY THE CRAP OUTTA ME!!!!!

My particular  one of “Those” people got onboard during my last trip.  He starts off by announcing all the stops and the line on those stops and possible destinations around those stops. That sounds helpful right? No that irritates me to no end.  He’s loud, he is bossy and he is annoying not only me but everyone else. Also he acts bossy at my expense, trying to make me look like a lousy driver in the process.  ” Oh, I can’t believe the driver isn’t calling the stops out, so I’ll do it”   Hey loser, there is an automated announcer. you don’t need to add color to his play by play.

The bigger problem is people actually listen to him!!!  As if he has any clue.  His only qualification is a disabled bus pass and a dependence on the big orange bus. When A guy ask me how to get someplace today and he butted in, Thats when I lost it.  ” Look if you wanna play like your in charge, fine, just as long as you realize This is my bus and I’m paid to be here. So shut the heck up and let me talk to this guy.” that didn’t sit well with him ” Well, I’m just trying to help and I know so and so, your boss”  Those kinda of people always know somebody.  I don’t think he appreciated the irony when I told him that so and so could lick a certain part of my anatomy..   But I enjoyed it.    And really I could care less if someone wants to listen to him; buyer beware.  It just baffles me how someone would listen to him and not ask the person being paid for help?

I don’t tell my doctor how to cure me. I don’t give advice to my butcher on how to chop meat.  I don’t tell the pilot on my planes how to land. So why the hell do people feel this incessant need to tell bus drivers how to do there job?  Oh yeah I forgot. Ralph Kramden….  Fuck you Jackie Gleason and thanks again for the stereotype…..