Before Putting Mouth In Motion…0712hrs

There’s an old adage;  “Before putting your mouth in motion, make sure your brain is in gear”.  Well for a bus driver, that saying is a little different; “Before putting your mouth in motion, make sure your bus will go INTO gear!”

Grabbed my bus for the run from PWM to Colby college yesterday… it wasn’t a “short-bus” in the classic sense, but one of the shorter big busses (Setra 215 for those inquisitive minds)… drove it down to Portland, got off the highway at PWM… and the transmission is stuck in first gear, won’t shift!

I was planning on stopping at the near-by Citgo for a soda, and I was running about 15 – 20 minutes early anyways, so I pulled in and shut her off.  This has happened to me before with this particular bus, and you just have to shut the bus off.

So I did the usual shut-down routine and go get my soda… come back out.  Nut-uh, she won’t go back into gear once started!  Try the “reboot” a couple more times with just as much (lack of) success.  Call the garage, they send another bus and the trip continued as normal without incident… I even made it back to the garage at the regularly scheduled time!

Today I’m playing the part of a brain surgeon.  Well, no, but I AM going to a Holiday Inn Express!  Got a Corporate Retreat group I’m picking up in Lewiston and taking down to the Express in Saco for the day, then back.  Nice “9 – 5” run for today!

Got a repeat / reverse run for tomorrow… Colby to PWM.  More on that later…