http://www.busdriverjim.com
Contrary to popular folklore, Hoar Frost is not a brothel in Alaska, it’s just frozen fog that settles in on our valley a couple of times every year.
I may by unfond of snow since I don’t play in the crap, but I’ve always marveled how freezing fog can turn this place into a winter wonderland overnight.
Click the photo below for more hoar:
I have a confession to make, sometimes I don’t know the names of the kids that I transport from the Community School in Victor to Barrels and Bins in Driggs. I know all of my regulars but sometimes a smiley little face climbs on board, checked off the list by teacher Melissa, and I assume if they don’t pay when they get on that I’ll get paid by the parent when I arrive.
Melissa told me yesterday that one little guy may have slipped through the system recently. His dad wanted to make sure he was dropping his two dollars into the farebox, and not spending it on candy later. She pointed the boy out and I told her yes, he had paid. It was only two minutes earlier, so I remembered.
As I was doing my post trip last night I looked in my lost and found box with disgust at the coat that’s been sitting there for almost a month. I grabbed it, threw it in the back of my truck, and drove home, not sure what I was going to do with it. Steph spotted the coat and went through the pockets, finding a $.94 cent receipt for candy, and one dollar.
And my old brain went, what? It looks like I may be able to reunite the coat with it’s little boy owner after all :-)
Update: The candy kid‘s dad pulled up to my window at the school and asked if his boy was putting money in the farebox, and I asked him about the coat. It’s not his! sigh…
One of my headlights blew out on the way to work yesterday. I knew I had to fix it immediately because there’s no way I’m going to be one of those guys. I picked up a couple of headlights at lunch time (might as well do both) and headed home to do the job. I’m not a good mechanic so I didn’t look forward to it.
My truck requires you to remove a front panel to get to the lights and I had a couple of questions so I called my auto body guy Riley who happens to not only be my son, but the former owner of the truck.
Later on in the evening I sent him a smart-ass text, and here’s the result:
Poor Pipes, she just endures winter. She’s a lot like me, she doesn’t ski and she hates snow, but she will venture out occasionally, looking for a dry strip of deck.
She doesn’t last out there very long…
These shots were taken from inside our warm cozy kitchen.
Ok Piper, if you want to hang out on Stephs clothes, who am I to mess with you. Backing off now…
Winters really tough on our local roads, and my bus. I just got it serviced today and my mechanic pointed out abnormal wear on a front tire due to a busted shock.
Like most things in life, what’s bad for one entity is often good for others, like these little birds bathing in a pothole full of melted snow. Ahhh…
I noticed a crowd forming around Wildlife Brewing in Victor today as I took the gang home. On the way back into town I had a couple of minutes before my last pickup of the day so I parked the bus and took this shot.
This is the brewery’s new beer canner and it had just arrived. The owners were begining to unpack it and move it inside. This is a big step for our local boys and I wish them well!
Our poor backup bus, 844, has been riding the winter out dead to the world. I’m sure glad nothings hit the fan, because this old girl wouldn’t be there. There’s issues with her front end and she can’t keep a charge…
A new bus has recently shown up here in the Driggs Public Works lot, the venerable Community Center bus, which doesn’t operate in the winter.
I was struck today by the similarities in the meltage pattern on both buses. I think it’s due to the driver side getting a little bit of extra sunshine when the sun sets to the West.
I got a call from my son Riley today that I’ve sort of been waiting for. He said guess who I had lunch with today? and I knew immediately that he had hooked up with my grand-daughter Shelby. She and her boyfriend were traveling through Seattle and they were up at SeaTac airport today heading out.
Shelby is now 23 and the last time Riley saw her was twelve years ago on the summer vacation trip we took down to California. Today they reunited and Shelby met Riley’s wife Jessica.
Riley texted me a photo later. The first thing I noticed is how pale my Shelby looks, heck she’s a Florida girl, where’s the tan? The second thing I realized is that I now had a photo on my smartphone text messaging that I wanted to grab and post here on the blog. What I ended up doing is buying an app ($5) from the Google Play Store that sends entire text sessions, with photos as attachments, to my email. It worked great!
Here’s a shot he just emailed me:
And here’s some photos from the past…
The girls stayed up late last night watching movies and Annie finally packed up her sled today for the trip back home. She asked me if I would take a picture of her leaving and put it on her blog. Ahh, nope, I’ve got my own blog to take care of! :-)
Click the photo below to watch Annie go home…
Our niece Anika is spending the night with us. Actually, all she had to do is walk down the road about a hundred yards, and she was here. She came with three large bags of stuff that I’m sure are critical to a successful sleepover.
The last time Annie was in the house she mentioned in passing that she would like to have her own blog. A lot of things slide past this old brain of mine, never to be recalled, but simple statements like this sometimes plant a dagger in my head…
So, this morning I purchased Anikas Blog (anikasblog.com) and installed a complete WordPress blogging application on it. I’m not sure where this is headed but I sure wish I had a blog at her age, and an internet connection…
So, how come we’re the coldest place in the U.S. today?
I’m starting the New Year out, with something old. Mack was a few days shy of 100 years when I took this shot. He used to wear this great hat that said Old as Dirt, which he was. I would drive him into Driggs for Senior Meals and he walked up the bus steps like a real man. No wheelchair or walker for this good old Teton Valley boy!
