February 2014 – Bus Driver Jim

Orange Soda

I was standing in the middle of a shopping mall transit plaza holding a six-pack of orange soda cans watching some guy drive off with my bus loaded with people who weren’t supposed to be on it in the first place. I’d been trying to get rid of the passengers all morning but everytime I stopped, more people got on.

I kept explaining to them that it was an on-demand service but they weren’t listening and if I kicked them all off, the long legged blond in the short jean cutoffs would also go, so I kept driving.

And then my bus gets stolen! The bag next to my seat held my cell phone and my wallet so all I had left was six cans of orange soda, which I can’t stand. Then I woke up. I’ll take this as a warning on this snowy Friday and lock my bus up today.

Mango Chunks

Daves Ladder

Kendal asked me yesterday if I liked David Grey, his favorite singer and in particular, the White Ladder album which he wished he owned. Now I’m not a big CD guy, I probably own less than twenty, and I hardly ever listen to them in this digital age but I told him I thought I had that one.

Sure enough I found it in my stack this morning, threw it in my bag and rocked the gang out to it on the way to their school. My little Chevy has a killer sound system and Kendal was ecstatic.

As I pulled away from the Community school this afternoon every seat was filled with kids and I decided to play them some music. I’m pretty sure they’ve never heard of David Grey and I never crank the sound system up but halfway to Driggs they were smiling and singing along. Not with Davids lyrics, but from a song they sing at school, matched to the beat. Very cool :-)

When I took the gang home afterwards I gave Kendal the CD.

Btw: this picture was taken next to my bus at the base today and has absolutely nothing to do with this post, I just like it.

Also, here’s David on video if you’re interested.

Tucker Terra

Spotted this very cool Sno-Cat in the Broulims parking lot today. It was strapped down to a trailer and hooked up to a tricked out truck with a U.S. Government license plate.

Along with the trailer, this thing weighs in under 10K which means the driver doesn’t need a CDL. The web site also touts No road too steep, no snow too deep! I believe it.

I’m thinking Homeland Security but it could be just local Search and Rescue.

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Stupid People

A recent survey by the National Science Foundation asked the question: Does the Earth revolve around the Sun, or does the Sun revolve around the Earth?

A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that question! Are you kidding me? One out of four people in this country are idiots! Man, that sure explains our current political situation. Here’s an idea, before you can vote in any election you have to show a valid ID and answer that question correctly, in English.

btw: here’s the science behind the question.

Heavy Deck

It’s a beautiful Saturday here in the Valley, 21° and lightly snowing. I was thinking about soaking up some rays on the deck but I couldn’t find any rays, much less the deck.

Followers

Here Ye, Here Ye, let it be known throughout the land that the great Pinner known as Bus Driver Jim has achieved the noble goal of one thousand Followers upon the great board in the cloud known as Pinterest on this day of Feb 20, 2014.

Moose Run

Steph rode with me to work this morning due to the storm that was starting to dump on us. We spotted something down the road and concluded it was either a jogger or a moose. Turned out to not be a jogger and I scrambled for my camera.

Snow hit the lens as I stuck it out the window, which affected the results somewhat, but overall a fun little video of a moose running down Ski Hill Road in the morning.

Little Ski

It was Kindergarten Ski Day today. Yea, let that sink in for a second… So, what winter sport were you doing at the age of five? It’s great how the kids take advantage of our resort. Last Saturday at Targhee I witnessed some amazing skiing by the little people.

Mr. Gogh

I think next Halloween I’ll dress up as a Vincent Willem van Gogh painting. Mr. Gogh and I share a spiritual connection that was made aware to me back in the nineties when I was hunkered down in a cheap hotel in Renton, WA. recovering from a crushed ankle.

The room was as tiny as my income, which consisted of a small contract fee for a numerology program written in C+ aimed at the early Windows platform. As the rain poured down through the air-duct by my window on a cold winter night I clicked the button that would process my numbers against a database of famous people, comparing the six primary numerological characteristics.

I literally fell over backwards in that old funky chair as all six numbers lined up exactly with Vincent Van Gogh. I’ve always had a fascination with this Dutch painter because we share two distinguishing traits: both a bit crazy, and our art was unappreciated during our lifetime. The current main difference is, I still have both ears, but who knows…

Colored Soap

The kids drove us down to Rexburg for supplies today and they took their spanky road crusty new Kia through Clair & Dee’s carwash. Steph thought this was the one that shot out psychedelic soap but nothing but white soap was happening.

All of a sudden a blast of color hit the front windshield. I scrambled for my camera as the soap jet started working around the drivers side. These side window shots were taken from my position in the backseat. I have to admit the effect was pretty cool.

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Ski Day

Riley and Jess drove all the way from the Pacific Northwest to hang out with us for the weekend, and for Riley to huck the gnarley pow up at Targhee. My niece and nephew joined him on the hill and they’re still up there as I write this post.

The girls and I took the shuttle back down after enjoying some coffee and the crowd because we don’t ski, we don’t snowboard, and we don’t huck pow.

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While I was there I stood around looking cool with my GoPro strapped to my head. It was encased in the waterproof housing for some downhill action so the video is a bit blurred, and no sound, but it still gives you a sense of the hill…

Slush

That loose wet crap known as slush is the enemy of our buses. This is my 8th winter driving professionally around here and I know of which I speak. Cold, packed snow side-roads are normally a pleasure to drive but when a major storm drops fresh powder on them and the weather warms up, they go to hell.

The packed snow roads are actually several inches of snow that have been plowed and driven on. They’re thick, and heat breaks them apart which allows heavy vehicles to bottom out down to the original road. Our rear duals are very close together and the slush gets jammed up between them and can bring our buses to a grinding halt.

I started down one of those roads today and after about fifty feet I said to myself “nope, ain’t happening”! I managed to back out to the main road and called my client, telling her to get her teenaged daughter to start moving my way if she wanted a ride. Poor kid, her goat had just died giving birth and I made her drive their four wheeler to my bus.

As the day wound down our other driver called me and said she was stuck. Drove right into a patch of slush…

Hacked

My Pinterest account was hacked last week. The description and website were replaced with some crap over in France and a new board was added with a couple of pins that more than likely pointed to some spyware. Pinterest must be aware of this issue, but seem to be conveniently ignoring it.

My bad-ass self, being the attempted master of everything I do online, corrected the issue. What a convoluted digital world we live in. Good luck in your online adventures…

The Letter H

I’ve been on an insane programming rip the last few months. I don’t really understand it actually, it’s like an obsession. I’ve been taking words that are considered profane by contemporary standards and recreating them with less effect, by adding the letter h.

I’ve then purchased the domain name! It’s amazing that I’ve been able to snag some great short letter .com domains by adding an inflection to an otherwise obscene word.

Once I bought a name, I needed some substance to justify the existence of the site, so I’ve been creating new HTML5 Responsive code like crazy to justify the $12 for each purchase. It’s also funny how robots scanning for new, possibly hot domain names are emailing me asking if I’d like some site development to go with that new name.

Ah, no thanks :-) Here’s my list of new websites, descending order, current to oldest:

Buhlshit(www.buhlshit.com)
Rahton(www.rahton.com)
Shiht(www.shiht.com)
Suhck(www.suhck.com)
Wishpy(www.wishpy.com)
Fahck(www.fahck.com)

Quite a collection of code and some interesting domain names. I assume that if the names offend you, as opposed to making you smile, well then you can just go off and watch some Little House on the Prairie reruns…