Bus driving definitely not an office job
Everyone has “one of those days” at work from time to time and driving a motorcoach with more than 50 seats can present its own set of challenges in that regard. The day described below topped my list of bus driving adventures.
In an office job of whatever type (such as I had during my entire career path prior to the semi-retirement pursuit of directing a 17.5-tonne piece of machinery through traffic), bad days can involve anything from management issues to angry clients to technological breakdowns. However, when a person chooses to be a professional driver, one has to depend on this massive piece of machinery doing its part as well. Needless to say, it doesn’t always co-operate, and that makes for days that can be indescribably challenging.
A blower that wasn’t blowing
One day this past July was one of those. I was driving a 13-year-old motorcoach, so it was bound to have some issues, as each of our busses travels many thousands of kilometres every year. Add to that an undetected defect that would normally be brought to the urgent attention of the maintenance department, and you have the recipe for what was to become a true bus driving adventure. Long story short: the blower on the driver’s side wasn’t working, which meant that there was no direct ventilation for the driver. I could live with this, but it also meant that the defroster wasn’t working on that side either. I was certainly aware that this could turn into a much bigger issue.
Undoubtedly, your first thought is that it’s July, so what difference would that make? The answer is that it had been raining on and off, so fog-up with a busload of chatty, breathing kids eager to get to camp was indeed quite possible.
In any event, the maintenance shop was open already, so I took the bus over to the head mechanic, who confirmed that the blower motor was definitely not working. After conferring with him, I made the decision that I would chance driving it anyway, as time was already short and I had a long trip to central Nova Scotia ahead of me.
Off to camp in Nova Scotia
Off I went for a few blocks in Moncton to pick up my excited group of youngsters. So far, so good regarding fog-up (bus driving adventure #1). However, it wasn’t long until bus driving adventure #2 arose in that the driver’s one USB port wasn’t working. This meant that I wouldn’t be able to plug in my phone and use Google Maps (which takes a lot of a phone’s juice), to counter-check the GPS I use. (The GPS plugs into a working round “cigarette-lighter”-type outlet)
Eventually, I managed to get everyone on board and drove two whole blocks before bus driving adventure #3 presented itself. The bus I was driving is one of the fleet’s wheelchair-accessible busses, although this doesn’t mean that there would be passengers with wheelchairs on board – it’s a question of vehicle availability. In any event, the group leaders couldn’t lower some of the seats from wheelchair mode. I therefore had to stop and try to address this so that my young passengers would be properly strapped in.
No success, as I’d never driven a wheelchair-accessible bus before, so I drove back to the shop (more or less on the way, luckily) and asked our extremely accommodating mechanics to show me how to put the seats into place. They did so, and this time for sure we were on our way. The rain was coming down pretty steadily by that point, but still no foggy windshield, so that was encouraging.
Bus driving adventure #4: small window, big problem
The encouragement didn’t last long. There is a small driver-side window that I kept open in the first half-hour of the trip in order to maximize ventilation and thereby (hopefully) minimize fog-up. I had a carrying case in which I would place my regular glasses when I’m wearing my sunglasses, as well as my in-ear Bluetooth, and I thought I had made sure to keep this case well out of the way of the little window. I was wrong. Somewhere around Memramcook (about 20 minutes outside of Moncton), I changed lanes to the outside lane as I went around a curve and, sure enough, the case containing my glasses and Bluetooth went flying out the little window into the vegetation on the median.
There was no way I could spare the time to stop and scour the median for my lost item, nor was it even safe to do so. I honestly could have thrown up at that point. I made some very broad mental notes about where I was when the case flew, with the idea that I would return at the end of the day and search for the case. Note that I did go back (with my own vehicle), but this was truly one of those needle-in-a-haystack situations that would have required a miracle to be successful, so no happy ending with this particular bus driving adventure.
The fog returns
Then, as we drove the 15 or so minutes from Memramcook to Sackville in the rain, the inevitable window fogging began to occur (is this bus driving adventure #5 or a redux of adventure #1? – it’s hard to keep track at this point). I thought I could perhaps work through it, but I realized by Sackville, when I could barely make out some type of machinery on the shoulder not far in front of me, that I would be jeopardizing the safety of all those kids if I were to continue. The opportunity to park safely at the Irving 24 in Aulac was just too good to pass up, so I pulled in there, called Dispatch, and waited for a mechanic to come meet me with a replacement bus. I was thankful that he was not long in arriving.
The next leg
With the mechanic’s help, we got everything moved over to the replacement bus, but the joy of this particular bus driving adventure didn’t stop there. I was back on the highway, just a short distance from the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border, when I realized that neither the cruise control nor the engine brake were working. Moreover, the bus was emitting some type of low-grade but annoying intermittent beep, the source of which was an absolutely mystery. I pushed every button that I thought might help, but nothing did. This was in addition to the Tire Pressure Monitoring System message that appears continuously but erroneously on some of these MCI units. Let’s call this combination of challenges “bus driving adventure #6”.
I kept driving all the way to Thorburn, NS, grateful for the mercy that I at least had both Google Maps and my GPS working, as the latter itself would have taken me nowhere near my actual destination. I manually downshifted the transmission when I needed to control my downhill speed – not as convenient as the engine brake, but I knew it would do the job in a pinch.
The return trip
Eventually, we found the camp and managed to unload all our excited (and very patient, I might add, in the face of all the delays) young passengers so that they could make their way to the cabins that would be their homes for the next week.
Then more actual good news after unloading the passengers in that the bus re-start enabled both the cruise control and the engine brake to begin working properly on my trip back to Moncton. However (there’s always a “however”), a much louder and more distracting occasional alarm sound for God only knows what reason (no error message anywhere) replaced that annoying low-grade intermittent alarm that I described earlier. At this point, I couldn’t wait to get back to Moncton, pull into the yard, update my log, and call it a day before going back with my truck to scour the highway near Memramcook for my glasses case.
One more bus driving adventure
But, because the bus driving adventure gods were not through with me quite yet, the log app hadn’t tracked the driving I’d done with the replacement bus that day. Trying to fix that manually so that I would be onside legally engendered, shall we say, “mixed results” (although I did eventually get it fixed).
I was ready to cry at that point but, hey, maybe I would find my glasses, so I threw the two bags of garbage I collected from the bus into the back of my truck with the idea that I would deposit them into the bin at the bus garage. I then headed out to the highway to do some looking. No results there, as noted, so I commenced the 1.5-hour drive home, where I could put this ridiculous series of bus driving adventures behind me.
When I arrived home, I realized that the garbage bags were still on the back of my truck – a fitting end to an otherwise very forgettable day!
After a year’s-worth of bus driving experiences, I decided to leave the driving profession and devote my energies to writing.