Posted by admin on May 30, 2009 in
Bus / Coach First… I forgot to post a trip I took Saturday night the 24th.
I had 803 again, one of the newer / nicer Setra’s… had to get into the shop at Midnight to get the bus, then had to drive the 4 hours for a pickup at 0430 in Machias, ME (far east coast of Maine), then did a driver swap in Topsham where that driver took the crew to Fenway for a Redsox game. a third driver swapped again in Topsham to take them back. Nothing much to report on the trip… other than that’s a long boring-ass trip to the left edge of Maine!
Had another run today… Auburn Middle School.. pickup at 0830 yesterday morning going to North Andover, MA (I495) so they could some band concert thing, then 20 minutes up the road (and I93) into Salem, NH to hit Canobie Lake Park until 2100 hours. Brought them back to Auburn for a 2330 drop off, back to the shop to post-trip the bus and finish paperwork. Just getting home now… by the way.. this is a 5 speed MANUAL bus!
This was MY office for the day:
As I was saying… got back without incident. She’s an older standard transmission bus, with no pull left in her… but once you wind her up and get to rolling, she’ll hum along sweetly as long as you please!
Gonna be gone all this coming week… have a trip to DC starting tonight (Sat 31st)… will be gone until Friday night… I should have internet from the hotels we stay at, so hopefully I’ll keep you posted as we go. Two busses of students doing the whole visit DC thing… lots of moves and waits…but might give Mr. Wong a chance to rear his ugly head!
Posted by admin on May 19, 2009 in
Bus / Coach Had a nice run last night. I say last night because it didn’t start until 1700hrs. Had to drive up to Waterville (about an hour + North) to get roughly 400 Colby College graduates and take them down to Portland into the Old Port for a pub crawl. There were 8 busses total and I have to say I had a pretty good night. Had yet another unit I’d never driven before (pictures below). One of the newer Setra’s and man did she drive nice!
I had done up a “party mix” CD before I left, and we cranked the tunes on the way down with literally the whole bus singing along! We dropped them off in the Old Port just about 2100hrs, then the boss (owner of Northeast) who was driving last night as well, decided to take us all out to dinner at Texas Steakhouse in Scarborough. Had an awesome meal of Prime Rib and steak fries and we had a roucus good time!
Got done with the meal and headed back to the Old Port… we were supposed to start picking them up at 2330 as they got ready to leave / filling busses as needed, but it was 0100 before they even called for the first bus. I ended up being second in line to fill, and had to immediately call the boss for backup as I filled up in about 2 minutes flat with easily another 2 busses worth of people waiting at the pick-up point.
Drive them back to Waterville… only had two “poppers”… one at least made it into the provided air sickness bags! The other one… well not so luckily for the cleaning crew this morning! ROFLMAO
Got back to the barn at 0400 this morning from a pleasant uneventful run… even on the way back the drunks….err college graduates were singing and in good spirits / not causing any problems!
Posted by admin on May 14, 2009 in
Bus / Coach Had a load of Senior Degenerates today… picked them up in Lewiston, took them to Wrentham, MA… about a 3 hour trip. They were going to some “Four Aces” big band type of luncheon / concernt. The nice thing was that all of us drivers (about a dozen from different charter companies) were given our own table and treated to a very nice meal along with the “guests”. I had the stuffed chicken breast with mashed and green beans (no I DIDN’T eat them 😛 ). Good cup of coffee and wonderful slice of Black Forest cake for desert.
All in all, it was a good trip… had a couple of “Senior Degenerates” on the bus that liked to cause trouble, but generally they were just having a great time and thier tip from the group was nice enough. Not enough to pay the bills mind you, but nice none-the-less. Certainly the 12.5hrs of straight time today doesn’t hurt either!
Got to drive a different unit again today.. the Ford mini-bus. Pretty nice ride, drove about like a one-ton pickup with a load in it, so not bad. Of course fuel mileage sucked big time, had to do my first on-the-road fueling. Not a big deal.
Here’s what I had for an “office” today:
Might have another run lining up for Saturday… DO have one lined up for Monday NIGHT… should be interesting… Colby College pub crawl in the Old Port!