This is P3058, the "P" representing propane, the fuel that powered this bus for the estimated 50,000 miles I drove it. I was first handed the keys to this half-BlueBird, half-GMC hybrid over a decade ago. And I drove it around the planet twice. That thought staggers me.
Good ole bus, though. Did zero to forty faster than any bus I've ever driven. Was very reliable, was seldom in the shop. She never, ever stranded me with 50 sugar-crazed middle-schoolers. She always waited until I was alone, like the time I was doing 45 down Scyene on a Friday afternoon, gleefully headed home for the weekend, when she dropped the transmission. Uh, I was late getting home that day.
She witnessed numerous fights in her time, nearly all of them in the morning on the way to school. Stuff would get started between a couple of kids long before I arrived at the bus stop, only to escalate to a main event after the combatants had boarded.
She also saw the scariest thing I've ever seen...a student sailing through the air after being hit by someone who ignored my alternating red flashers...knocked him out of his shoes to an LZ 50 feet away. He survived only through the grace of God, but the video still runs through my head with startling clarity.
Alas, I betrayed 3058 before she betrayed me. I got a chance in 2004 to upgrade to an air-conditioned bus, and I jumped on it big-time. Tomorrow, I tell you the story of D305.
3 comments:
I waited a week for that? Sometimes the older the bus, the more reliable it is. At DC we have 4 buses and the reliable ones are the ones from the 1980s
I was able to board bus 222, the bus I rode all summer, on Saturday for my field trip. Why do I continually get bus 222?
Brooke: This was the bus I drove to DC to pick you up a couple of times. For some reason, you were embarrassed.
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