Peter Leibert's Page

SOME EXPERIENCES AS A BUS DRIVER by Peter J. Leibert 

During 1989, two of my sons were driving tour buses for a Whittier company.  It appeared to me that they were being worked long hours and every day - seven days a week.  I think they did not mind the long hours and they probably liked the money.  Their hourly rate wasn’t that good, but they got good tips. 

I made a mistake one day by telling son Craig that he ought to insist on some days off.  His response was, “They don’t have enough drivers to cover the work they have now”.  “Come on,” I tell him.  “If they wanted to they could hire a dozen drivers today.”  “Yes,” he says, “but they are unable to find drivers that are good in working with passengers.”  Next time, I will keep my mouth shut. 

Craig came right back and started telling his Dad what a great bus driver that I would make.  By the end of that day Craig had made an appointment for me with the big boss - John Hartley.  I made my second mistake by keeping that appointment and the next thing I knew I was on my way to being a part time bus driver.  But I let John know that I wasn’t interested in the weeklong trips, or in working every day.  As time went on, I added to my list of “don’t want” trips. 

A new tour bus driver doesn’t happen overnight.  First there is a physical to take.  After that you have to study the regulation book(s) written by the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Highway Patrol.  Then you would have to spend a lot of time with a trainer learning all about the bus and the unique things you might have to know about driving a 40-foot vehicle. 

Probably the thing that took the most practice with the bus was learning to shift gears without grinding off a few teeth in the transmission.  I never got really good at that timing with the double clutching.  Making turns was also interesting.  You don’t turn before you get to the corner.  If you do, your rear wheels will run up over the curb.  You actually are ideally supposed to start your turn when the bus front axle is passing the centerline of the street’s curb.  On some bus models, the front axle wheels might be 8 or 10 feet behind the front bumper.  

So I learned how to drive their buses, passed my physical, and then I had to take a written DMV test and separately get an appointment to come back another day and take a DMV driving test.  That was accomplished with few problems, but next came my unique CHP written test and my equally unique CHP driving test.  There are a few differences between the DMV and CHP requirements, but I had been alerted to look out for some of them.  For example, DMV allows one passenger more in a van than the CHP allows for school aged students. 

So about six weeks after I had opened my mouth with son Craig, I had my green medical card, my temporary DMV class B-Passenger license, my temporary CHP SPAB license, my fingerprints had been taken, and I was finally ready to go to work.  Oh, one more thing, I had to take a checkout drive with my supervisor.   

“We’ll take bus 530,” he tells me.  “Go check it out.”  Whoops!  Bus number 530 was a brand new model that had just come in.  I had been exposed to the short MC-5 (our training bus), the MC-7, the MC-8, and one of the MC-9s.  The new one was a MC-10 and the body of these buses was six-inches wider than our previous MCI buses.  Also their transmission and electrical controls are completely different from the older models.  You may not think that is much, but you try it. 

The supervisor, Bruce, started out by driving and showed me the basics of operating this model of bus.  He gave me a few pointers about what to be concerned with when driving the wider bus and what to do when you have problems.  Then he turned it over to me.  I had just pulled away from the curb when we received a call on the radio from the base asking if we could go to Redlands and replace a bus that had broken down.   

Bruce acknowledged the request and told me to get on the Interstate 10 freeway and head east.  This was no problem, but then you find yourself on a freeway driving at 65 mph in the fast lane in a 40-foot long and 8 ½-foot wide vehicle when you are still used to driving 8-foot long and 5-foot wide small car.  That bus seemed huge.  I actually had worked up a sweat by the time we arrived at the designated place.   

The bus that was having problems was the good old 39-passenger number 505 - our trainer bus.  It just didn’t have the power to make it up highway 38 into the San Bernardino Mountains.  So we traded buses and I got to drive 505 back to the base in Whittier.  It was really nice to be driving a short (35 foot) narrow (8 foot) bus like number 505.  Sure it didn’t have normal power, so, I just had to drive it home doing about 45 miles per hour in the right hand lane. 

My First Trip

I must have done all right because the next day I was assigned to my first real trip.  I was to take bus number 507 (our second oldest bus) and pick up a group at the Catalina Ferry Terminal and take them to some location in the San Gabriel Valley.  So I looked up the “Catalina Ferry Terminal” in the index of my new Thomas Guide and found one listing for the Catalina Ferry Terminal.  So I checked out the bus and headed for San Pedro.  By asking a few questions there, I learned that buses pick up passengers right in front of the ferry terminal right under the Vincent Thomas Bridge.  So I parked there.   About 15 minutes before my departure time, I went into the terminal and asked if the ferry was on time.  No, it would be ten minutes late today.  So I returned to my bus, sat down and waited, listening to the music on some radio station.   

About the time when the ferry should have been arriving, I got a call on the bus radio from Hot Dogger base.  “Bus 507, where are you?”  I picked up the microphone and responded, “This is bus 507 and I am parked right in front of the Catalina Ferry Terminal.”  “Roger 507” was the response and I sat down again to listen to the music.  About five minutes later, I get a second call from base.  “Just exactly where are you parked?”  “About 20 feet straight out from the front door of the terminal.” 

Another pause.  “In front of what terminal?”  “The Catalina Ferry Terminal right under the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro.”  There was another longer pause.   “Pete, you are at the wrong terminal.  You are supposed to be at the Long Beach Ferry Terminal.”  Well, I was off to a good start, and to top things off, the rear wheels of my bus took off some material from the wood pilings surrounding the parking lot as I tore out of there on my way to Long Beach.  Well, I was only 30 minutes late in picking up my first group, and I learned later that was average for new drivers. 

By the time that I got past this point of my new career one of my sons had already decided that there were greener pastures elsewhere, so Steve took a new job with the carpet industry.  Craig was still with Hot Dogger mostly doing one-week or two-week trips.  This was not the best thing to be doing when you are a relatively new married man.   

During my early days, I was often getting assigned to airport/hotel transfers, or to a city tour.  I remember having a group heading for LA International when Craig called me on the radio and asked where I was.  He had just returned from an eleven-day Canada trip and was dropping part of his group off at LAX, the place where I was heading.  And two or three minutes later coming down Prairie Boulevard is HDT number 527, Craig’s assigned bus.  Everybody on his bus had their face glued to a window and was waving up a storm.  They wanted to see their driver’s Dad as we drove by. 

That is the way of the tour bus driver business.  After being with the same group of people for more than a week, you become old friends - friendships that last a long time. 

The Driver’s Typical Day

I soon learned a lot about the surrounding area that I had never known before.  For city tours you must be able to fill in the tourists all about the area so I had some studying to do.  Did you know that there are almost 3 million residents in Los Angeles city, 9 million in Los Angeles County and about 15 million within the Los Angeles basin?   

There are hundreds of buildings in the LA area that are taller than the Los Angeles City Hall, which was the tallest when I was a kid.  There are thousands of building that are unique or historical, and there must be 10,000 movie or TV studios.  Almost every one of those buildings in LA County has something in common - they don’t have adequate parking for the big tour buses. 

Museums!  Before I started driving tour buses, I probably could only name 5 or 6 museums that I knew about in LA.  According to the Thomas Map Guide - our bible - there are 61 museums in LA County listed.  One other brilliant bit of data.  There are over 40,000 different streets listed in the LA County Thomas Guide. 

My driving experiences were not limited to the LA basin.  There are a lot of things to do and see during a day trip.  Skiing, rafting, sightseeing, gambling, athletic events just to give you a hint of the possibilities.  Many of these trips included a meal for the driver, some kept you out real late, or some got you up at 2 or 3 in the morning.  Most of these trips were interesting to the driver.  Some resulted in experiences you would rather have not had.  Others were fantastic. 

Since I was a part time driver, I would sometimes get a phone call to come in and take a bus and trade it with one that had broken down.  One such call was to take a bus to Victorville and switch it with a bus from another company that had broken down.  I was told that I would then have to wait there with the other bus.  After a mechanic arrived and repaired it, I was to then drive the repaired bus back to the HDT bus yard.   

I got to the bus, which was by the side of the freeway, and their driver told me that we would be transferring his passengers to my bus and then I was to take them to Vegas for the weekend.  Oops!  So I radioed back to the base and dispatch told me that I would have to do that.  But I had no spare clothes, very little money, no toothbrush or anything.  I did have my credit card and one personal check.  So I was soon off to Vegas for my first time as a bus driver.  I had no idea about where I was to go.  I used the company’s 800 number a lot that weekend. 

Snow Trips

The types of trips that I did not appreciate were those that went to snow country.  Something always seemed to go wrong - like the time I took a busload of skiers up to Snow Summit - or at least tried to take a group to Snow Summit.  When there is snow somewhere in the mountains, the CHP sets up a roadblock and has all vehicles put on tire chains.  No problem.  I had practiced it on buses at the bus yard a couple of times and this time would be no different.   

After I had the chains on the rear tires, I got back in the bus and worked my way into the line of cars heading up the hill.  Bumper to bumper, start and stop.  After a few minutes of that, suddenly something went BANG in the back of the bus.  A glance in my left mirror disclosed a lot of black smoke drifting away from the rear of my vehicle.  And my engine had stalled.  What a place to stall! 

So I put on the emergency brakes, and went to the rear to check out the engine.  I tried to start it again from the engine compartment - nothing.  So I got a few volunteers to block traffic so I could coast back to the wide spot in the road where I had put on the tire chains.  Well that is a lot harder to do than to say.   

Eventually we were successful in rolling back and getting off the road.  I got out and started putting out the emergency flares and reflectors.  When I turned my attention back to the bus I discovered that half of the passengers had gotten their skis and were attempting to get a ride up to the ski area.   

Finally some guy drove up and inquired if I needed some help.  He offered me a phone to call my base.  This was in the days when cell phones were real new.  I even had to have him dial the number, but in a few moments I was talking to my dispatcher.  A miracle!  The bus dispatcher would be contacting Willie, our chief mechanic, and would get me some help.  About an hour later up drove Willie, and in less than ten minutes he had the bus engine working again.  The pin that held the engine blower onto the blower-drive shaft had sheared. 

Another trip up to snow country also introduced me to an unusual experience that might be worthy of note.  On the way back down the hill after dark, one of my passengers came up to me and excitedly told me to stop at that building up there for just a second.  It was snowing at the time and very dark in that area so I was quite concerned about where I could stop.  He assured me that I could just pull off to the right and park next to the road, as he would only be a second.   

Against my better judgment I did stop, and when I opened the door about a dozen guys dashed off the bus and ran over to what turned out to be a convenience store.  It only took me a second to realize two things.  I was totally blocking all the traffic behind me but now what could I do.   Second, I was sure that those guys would not be back onto my bus for quite a while.  That one-second stop took about 30 minutes.  I never stopped at that store or any like it ever again - even in broad daylight. 

Ever Gotten Lost

Now that I am talking about experiences up in the mountains, there was this time when I picked up a senior group from Lake Arrowhead and took them down the hill to attend some event.  We returned about 4:30 pm to drop them off.  By the time I got the group offloaded and was ready to start back down the hill, it was getting dark.   

The group leader gave me some instructions about how to take a short cut on the way back.  So I headed out.  I took the road that I thought she referred to and it was not long before I was getting concerned about whether I was correct or not.  By this time it was really dark, no streetlights, no street signs, and no house lights - just a lot of big dark trees.  The only thing moving around there was this one bus driving down this narrow, twisting, winding road.   

I stopped and looked at my map for a while in an attempt to figure out where I was and became even more confused.  I even tried to call the Hot Dogger base on the radio, but no one answered.  So I started driving again.  After 20 or 30 minutes, I finally spotted a jogger with a flashlight running down the left side of the road and I stopped to ask her where I was and how to get to highway 18.  She said, “it’s right over there” pointing off to right side of the road.  “Go about 100 feet to the stop sign, then turn right, go about 200 feet, turn right and you will be heading west on highway 18.”  “Thank you,” I said, and headed for the stop sign.      

Need Any Help?

As a bus driver, I actually had quite a wide variety of trips.  They weren’t all to the mountains.  I grouped them together in this story but they probably occurred months or even years apart.  Another type of trip was day trips or overnighters to Las Vegas.  When you write about unusual events, most of what you remember are the things that became some sort of a problem like the time I had a senior group scheduled to spend a couple of days with me gambling in Vegas.   

That particular day, as I was driving up the long hill east of Baker, I came upon two white colored Hot Dogger buses.  That color usually meant that the buses were both relatively new and had not yet been painted with the company colors.  These two buses were both driving on the extreme right side of the road and only doing about 25 miles per hour.  So as I approached, I gave them a call on the radio inquiring whether they had any problem that I could help them with.  It turned out that it was a two-bus move to eastern Nevada and one of their buses was overheating.  They were trying to reach a rest stop that was only a few miles ahead and told me to go on. 

So an hour later when I got to the hotel in Vegas, I gave Whittier base a call and asked if they knew about the bus with the overheat problem.  They said yes, and they needed me to drive back to that rest stop and trade buses with number 551 (our newest bus) and wait there until a Hot Dogger mechanic came and fixed it.  So I drove back to where I had seen them last and we traded buses.  It turned out that the group riding on those buses was from the city of Torrance.  During the previous two months, I had taken two different overnighters with that group.  They had actually listed me as one of the HDT drivers they would prefer for that trip. 

Another hour or so and up drove our maintenance truck.  The mechanic opened up the engine compartment and asked me to watch the position of door louvers and the fans, and let him know what happened.  He started the engine and after a few moments one of the fans started and one of the louvers opened.  Evidently what I had indicated to him was all he needed to know as he shut down the bus and started working on the engine.  I finally got him to tell me what he thought the problem was.   

It seems that these were MCI’s latest bus models and MCI had installed a new engine cooling system that involved two fans and two louvers.  He had just recently discovered that the factory was installing them backwards - the right louver control was actually controlling the left louver and vice versa.  The engine would still operate okay, but in this case, the clutch on one of the fan motors burnt out as a result of it getting too hot on a very hot day.  To fix the control problem it took the mechanic 30 seconds.  To replace the fan motor and check the system out again took him about 2 hours.    

Vegas Again!

I got assigned to a number of trips to Vegas or Laughlin and most of these trips were relatively uneventful.  But there were a few I might tell you about.  There was this one, a weekender with a group of teamsters from the cargo handler company - Maersk, located in San Pedro.  These dockworkers were evidently interested in a having a great time.  The first thing that happened was that three or four groups of them wanted to be dropped off at unusual places, like strip joints and the like.  Before I let the first group off, I told all of them that I would be picking them up at their hotel, Circus Circus, at exactly 1 pm on Sunday afternoon and to be there on time.  At 1 pm Sunday, I was in the Circus Circus parking lot.  By 4 pm, I finally left and headed back with less than half of the guys that had rode up with me.  I hope the rest got back okay.  That was the only time that I lost any passenger. 

No!  It’s Not Vegas This Time

Some trips to or through the Vegas area were actually legs of longer trips and would involve more than one driver, like a ski trip to Colorado or Utah.  Usually it would be a group of our buses traveling to the same location, sometimes as many as a dozen.  Other drivers would meet their assigned bus at Vegas, at Cedar City, Utah, or at Beaver, Utah depending upon how far away they were to travel.  Then the original drivers would ride back to Whittier in a van.  The reverse was also true.  We would ride in the van to the changeover point, check into a hotel, and get some sleep.  When our assigned bus arrived, its driver would refuel the vehicle and then awaken his replacement driver.  This new-refreshed driver would then take the bus the rest of the way home.  Most of these trips got back to the Los Angeles area about 5 or 6 am on a Monday morning.    

One trip like this started for me at Cedar City, Utah.  At Las Vegas we were to have a one-hour rest stop.  By the time we arrived there, I had already noticed a couple of the guys continually bickering back and forth.  By the time we reloaded at Vegas and started home, they were no longer just bickering, but were yelling at one another.  After I got onto the freeway, I had a fist-fight on my hands, well, actually in the back of my bus.  I tried using my PA to tell them to break it up and sit down.  When that did not work I pulled over to the side of the freeway and told the two guys to get off the bus.  Well, that got their attention but they didn’t get off the bus.  So I told them that we were not going anywhere “until you two get off this bus.”  

“You can’t put us off the bus,” one of the culprits tells me.  I quietly replied, “Yes, I can, and yes, I will.  After a few moments of a silent face-to-face stand off, a couple of the other passengers stood up and starting urging them to get off and so slowly they did.  I got off behind them and again got blasted with “you can’t do this - it’s against the law”.  I looked at them and told them to sit down and relax.  They finally sat down on the dirt and I just kept looking at them. 

It probably was only a minute, but seemed like an hour.  I then told them that I had asked them two times to stop fighting and sit down.  They hadn’t stopped.  This was inappropriate and unacceptable behavior anywhere, but especially on a bus, and I was not going to put up with it.  After a few more long minutes of silence, one of them said, “You’re right.  Is it okay if I sit in the back and he sit in the front.”  So we all got back on and we returned to the road. 

When we arrived at Cal Poly Pomona to drop the group off, a number of other passengers came up to me, apologized for the behavior of the combatants, and thanked me for the way I handled the situation.  As I was checking my mileage on the wheel, one the culprits came over and told me “I’m sorry for causing you any trouble.  We were wrong.”        

When I arrived back at the bus yard, I immediately went into the dispatch office and told the dispatcher “NO MORE COLLEGE STUDENTS!”  And I never drove for another group from either UCLA, or Cal Poly Pomona.  Too much profanity, too much drinking, too much rudeness.  Out of the dozen or so colleges that I had picked up students from, I always seemed to have trouble with the kids from those two schools.  From then on, I tried to stick with my little old lady groups.  They were almost always nice to each other. 

High School Students

I also was assigned a number of trips that were actually great, but somehow some unusual problem would arise.  Like the time that I was part of a five bus move to take a large group of students to the Model United Nations.  This particular year it was held in Fresno, California, about 250 miles up highway 99, and I had a good group and a very good adult (one of the mothers) as the group leader.   

Soon after I first met Pat Potter, the group leader, I understood exactly where we were to go, where we should stop for a rest, when we would probably get there and a lot of other very important things.  She had done her homework and had thought out a lot of what ifs. 

This little story-ette is about one “what if” that did happened to my bus during this trip.  One thing I discovered during this trip was that high school kids of that time, at least the ones from Huntington Beach, wanted IN and OUT Hamburgers, not those other kinds.  But that is not my “what if.” 

We arrived at our hotel near the highway in Fresno on schedule and the five bus load’s of students were quickly off loaded, their baggage sorted out, and they were heading for their assigned rooms.  About that time I started my bus and was planning to leave the area in order to move the bus nearer to where the drivers would spend the night.  It was during that process when I discovered a shocking thing.  I could not get the manual transmission of my bus to go into reverse.  Simple problem, isn’t it?  But what do I do now.  Get out and push that huge bus?  Yeah, you try it or are you kidding! 

So.  So.  It took at least two so’s before we finally rounded up enough people to push the bus back about ten feet in order to make enough room to get it onto the roadway again.  That solved the immediate problem, but there was to be a tomorrow and then the next day when we take our trip home.  Another thing you do is to call for help from the home base.  I talked to the head mechanic for over an hour and he tried to give me a three-unit course on what to do in order to work around that type of problem.   Yeaaah!  I think I understand.  

First off, I was to try to stay out of situations that might require me to have to back the bus up.  That actually is relatively easy to do with a big bus.  I can remember taking a lot of trips where the only time I had to put the bus into reverse was after I had returned home at the bus yard.  The next morning worked out fine.  But then lunchtime came around.  The five buses loaded up and we headed for another fast food place, probably another In and Out.  As I approach the facility I decided to lay back and let the other buses go in.  Then I asked them on the radio what the situation in the parking area looked like.  I was assured by one of the drivers that there would be no problem.  “Come on in,” he said. 

I did, and was pleased to see a big roomy parking area in the back with lots of places for buses to park.  The time was about 11:30 am.  When it came time to leave, the situation had changed.  By then the parking lot was loaded with cars and every turn was going to be very tight.  So what do you do?  You try to take as wide of a turn as possible and when you can’t make it you stop and wait.  That is okay, but what if those cars blocking you never move.  Well, then you go to step two. 

I radioed the other buses and one of their drivers came back in and offered to help.  I needed someone to go into the rear of the bus compartment with a large screw-driver and pry the transmission lever into reverse as I worked the gear shift up in the front.  Surprise!  This worked and we were able to juggle the bus enough to get it around two impossible turns and out of that parking lot. 

What Do I DO?

There was a category of trips that fall into the “what do you do now” group, like the day I went to the old Primadona for a stateline gambling trip.  As I was preparing to reload my group at the end of the day, a little old lady, perhaps 75, came up to me and asked, “Can you take me home?”  Hmmm!  Well, I gave her the short form of an excuse of why I could not take her with me and turned to continue getting my bus ready.   

A few moments later one of the hotel security guards came to my bus door and wanted to talk to me.  He told me that this lady had been there the previous night when he came on duty.  Evidently, she was with a day trip tour bus that departed without her.  She had a little money with her, but no address information in her purse.  The lady apparently did not know where she lived. 

She actually had slept the night on a bench in the lobby of the hotel.  Security had tried a number of times to contact a phone number that she had given them, but had gotten no answer.   The Clark County sheriff didn’t want to deal with her, and the Primadona security and management didn’t know what to do.  From what they could tell she was telling a truthful story.   

So this soft-hearted driver took out his Los Angeles County Thomas Map Guide, and he and the soft-hearted security guard walked over to the little old lady to see if we could find out more about where she thought she lived.  We talked about where she wanted to go and finally she came up with a street name that we were able to locate on the map.   

By this time some of my group’s passengers had arrived at the bus area and were listening in on the discussion.  “We can’t leave her here,” was their consensus by far.  So against my better judgment, I let her ride along, and I think it turned out okay.  When we got close to where we thought she might live, she started recognizing some places.  I let her off the bus at a RTD bus stop, together with two ladies from the tour group, and the three of them soon walked off down the side street.  I hope she got home okay.   

Don’t Trust A Realtor!

I had a local group of realtors one Saturday that got me into a quandary.  This was a regular weekly tour that this real estate company took to show various homes of the area to their sales people.  After visiting 6 or 8 homes around the Greater Whittier area, all of realtors would spend an hour or so going door-to-door, passing out literature in some selected part of town.  You would think that a group that regularly took these types of trips would know the area really well.   

Well, they probably do, but I still had a few problems with them.  Once, the guy in charge tried to get me to drive up a hill on a very narrow curvy driveway.  It just didn’t look like I could turn around up at the top, so I stopped near the bottom and hiked up all the way to the top.  I came down and told him “no way.”  So, the group of salesmen had to get out of the bus and climb the hill to see that house.  Well, that group leader got back at me a little later in the day.   

We were on this tree lined narrow road heading for another house in a rural setting.  Big Brazilian pepper trees were solid along both sides of the road - nice area, nice homes in horse country.  The house they were to see was near the end of this mile long lane - well, maybe a half mile.  I had no problem driving in, a lot of curves, but nothing real bad.  About half way in I asked the group leader, “Is there a place to turn around in there?”  “Oh yes, I have been in there a number of times,” was his response.  I wish I had recorded it!   

Brazilian peppers are large trees.  They overhung the road; they overhung the driveway of each of the homes.  My bus was over twice as tall as a standard car.  There was no way I could turn that bus around anywhere on that lane.  I had to back that big 47-passenger bus all the way out to the main road.  It was definitely over a mile on the way out, but I made it all the way without any problem.  I even got applause from the passengers and a nice tip at the end of the day.

My Favorites!

My list of favorite groups must include the University of Washington football team.  We had a contract with a lot of sport teams including most professional sports.  I think the owner actually specialized in sports events as we had a lot of them.  But during my driving days the team from my old alma mater was in the Rose Bowl game on quite a few occasions.  So I was pleased to get to be driving them around the area. 

They usually tied up 12 or more of our buses for 10 days during one of these rose bowl events.  Three buses would handle the team, three more for the band, three more for the alumni, and three more for other visitors from Washington.  Some years we actually would handle both schools, so there was a lot of work due to those games. 

I always would make sure the passengers got to understand that I was a graduate of the University of Washington.  That was where I learned all my bus driving skills. 

Excitement!

I also had some exciting trips, too.  One such trip was to Ojai country up in Ventura County for the day.  I don’t remember anything about what we went to see but I do remember the lunch.  We had stopped at the Golf course in Ojai and were in the middle of our lunch.  I can still remember the setting.  The room had a number of round tables each sitting 10.  I was sitting with my back to the wall.   

I noticed that the man across the table from me had gotten up and seemed to stumble as he headed to the door on my left.  So I got up and was following him when he started to collapse.  I caught him and we both went to the floor.  By then another man was there and he and I picked up the stricken man and seated him on a chair just outside the door.  I saw that he was unable to breath and immediately thought of the Heimlich Maneuver.  We picked the guy up again, and gave him a couple of lifts in the midsection, just like the book says.  Out of his mouth came an awful lot of food.  By that time some one had called the fire department that was located next to the Golf course, so others took over.      

I had only done the Heimlich once before.  Virginia and I attended a CPR party at a neighbor’s home about 10 years before.  As sort of an after thought, they also showed us how to do the Heimlich Maneuver.  But probably what caused me to think about it right then was that I had written about it for my ARC Prevention Newsletter just a few issues before.  But, whatever, it worked.

Check Everything Before You Take A Bus

Then there was the time that I was called into work and told to get a bus over to Palm Springs as soon as possible and replace one that was having some sort of trouble.  I arrived just in time for the other driver to transfer his gear into my bus and then head over to pick up his group that was scheduled to soon be coming out from the Palm Springs Follies. 

The head mechanic from HDT was already there ahead of me and soon he was able to get the bus running.  He told me to drive the bus back home and he would finish checking it out there.  I got behind the wheel and headed out.  Willie, the mechanic, was right behind me in his well-equipped maintenance truck.  As I was starting to pick up speed at the edge of town, I began hearing a strange sound coming from somewhere behind me, apparently inside the bus.  I had just started looking for a place to stop when abruptly the noise got much louder.  I finally sighted a small space by the side of road so I pulled over into it and stopped.  I looked into the rearview mirror and am surprised - no Willie. 

I got off the bus and very soon recognized what had generated that noise I had been hearing.  One of the left windows was missing.  Evidently, when the original driver had been waiting for help to arrive, he had unlatched a few windows in order to get relief from the Palm Springs heat.  When I finally arrived, he was in a hurry to get that bus over to pickup his group.  I had erred by not even doing a basic checkout of the bus that I had inherited. 

To help you understand what this means, windows on buses are designed and built to open easily in case of emergency.  One of the common features is that the entire window assembly is very easy to disconnect from the bus if you unlatch the bottom.   

What happened to Willie?  When he saw the window fly off, he pulled over and recovered the window frame and took some time to sweep the glass off the street.    

\Stories\BusDriver\200404