September 2015 – Page 2 – Bus Driver Jim

Wayback

I used to live in a small studio apartment in Kent, WA. It was during the time I was transitioning from the role of burned out computer programmer to a bus driver to a transit supervisor to meeting Steph and ultimately moving to Idaho. During that time, I helped raise my boy Riley who lived with his mom down the road but spent his quality time with me. His high school was across the street and here he is doing homework on my old tower after school. Yes, I slept on the floor and my couch was an old bus seat.

We’ve all come a long way since then…

Jackpine

Drove out to Jackpine Road today, which is NE of Felt. I don’t know why, it was just a nice morning and I felt like it. I also managed to grab a few nice shots along the way that you can see by clicking the sign below.

Almost Fixed

We’re really pleased with the results of using Spurr’s Big Fix on Pipers cat bite wound. (read about it here).

I plan on showing these photos to Pipers veterinarian and maybe he’ll recommend this snake oil in the future. My sister says that medical professionals don’t want to hear about anything outside of their training, and I’ve run into many doctors over the years that have sadly proved that contention, but we’ll see…

Piper’s Wound

Plus

Equals:

Symegry Again

I got a notice today from my web hosting service BlueHost that one of my domain names, symegry.com, was about to expire. Normally I just localize a site so it’s usable and let the domain name fade away, but I had never really done anything with symegry.

Today I whipped up a little HTML5 along with a modded tilley hat image and ported it on up to the server. It still does absolutely nothing but it looks good and scales nicely across all devices from phones to monitors. Click the image below to try it out…

Maybe I’ll re-up the domain name and do something with this site…

Stateline

I had a new customer today, a little old lady that lives off of Stateline Road on the Wyoming side. When she called in the ride, dispatch told her she needs to walk across the road so that we pick her up in Idaho, for insurance purposes. No problem she said…

The pickup was for 1220 and she was going to physical therapy in Driggs. The address was a 3800N number so I figured it would be somewhere between 2500N and 5000N. I arrived at Stateline around noon and pulled over to spin my wheels for a minute, taking the shot below. I didn’t want to rush her.

As I drove down the road I noticed the numbers weren’t following the normal Idaho conventions. When I reached that infamous portion of Stateline that has no bridge over an impassable creek, I said “Oh darn“, or something to that effect.

I ended up having to jog west 5 miles to Hwy 33, north to Hatches Corner and then several more miles east to get back to Stateline on 6000N. With my dispatcher on the phone with her to guide me in, we connected way out in the sticks and the little old lady made her appointment on time. Thanks V!

Spiritual Connection

These are the others items remaining in the box: two of my grandmother King’s God’s Minute, one much older than the other with little notes scattered within the pages, a small bible that belonged to me when I was about 5 years old, the large flag from my grandfather Kings military burial and my daughter Becky’s Easter hat.

I am a spiritual, yet not religious man, so the Christian artifacts have no meaning to me other than they were important to my grandmother, who helped raise me. My grandfather’s flag I waved proudly on 9/11. My daughters hat represents a sad failure and combined with a teddy bear I can’t remember cuddling, the box sums up my past.

I also know I have an amazing guardian angel who has saved my life so many times and perhaps these items hold the key to that spiritual connection…

Update: I just kissed and hugged my teddy bear as I put them all back in the box, and I think I remember…

Teddy

Today is National Teddy Bear Day. In honor of this special day, I’m going to share something with you that, other than Steph, nobody knows that I have.

Over the many years that I have been alive, possessions have floated into and out of my existence like thunder clouds rushing over the Tetons. I have one special box, though, that somehow I’ve managed to hold on to. It contains a few simple treasures from my past, such as Teddy.

This is my teddy bear as an infant and it’s older than I am. Thus, this sweet little one armed bundle of stuffed love is over seventy years old, I would assume…

Planets

There were some planets around the moon this morning when I let Piper out. That’s Mars lower left and Venus upper right.

Little Hands

We walked down the road to Brian, Andrea and Anika’s house for some barbeque this afternoon. It’s great having family next door, my sister dropped by, and little Annie entertained us with some pretty good piano…

Drying Paint

It’s been a productive Labor Day so far. We’ve had paint stored in the garage since we moved in eleven years ago, for internal and external touch-ups, and now they’re down to medium sized mason jars for each color. The old containers have been moved to the back forty to dry out in the sun, for disposal.

That’s the theory at least. I don’t know where this hair-brained technique originated from, but Steph says it’s the thing to do. Ok, besides not cooking, I don’t paint either.

Speaking of cooking, I am cooking today. I’ve got a great lamb stew simmering on the stove and we’ll take it over to next-door nephew Brians this afternoon for a barbecue.

Fire risk significantly reduced…

She’s alright, really!

Emojified

On June 6, 2011 (4 years and 3 months ago) I was in Vegas and decided to start documenting my life. For years, I’d been taking pictures while attempting to convey them to an audience I couldn’t see or even knew existed. I finally had an epiphany and created this WordPress blog and the first post I made to it was this.

1,676 posts, 2,935 comments and 7,835 flickr photos later, here I am, emojified!

Another Fall

I can’t believe it’s September. I stopped working in June for the most part, got sucked into a few routes to cover vacationing drivers, drove to and from Boise and Missoula twice so Steph could fly to Washington and other then that, this was the lamest summer vacation I’ve had in years. Am I losing my sense of adventure?

Now I’m back working, the leaves are falling and snow is right around the corner. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas… I keep telling myself “at least you’re alive” and that’s a real plus, but, snow tires again? Sigh.

We did manage to clean the garage shelf up a bit today. Click below for a few shots I took around the house.

Mike Harris CG

I used the Mike Harris campground off of Hwy 33 to make a u-turn today. A flood of memories came rushing in as I recalled our valleys own transient homeless couple. I used to know their names, but it’s been a few years since they’ve been here and names are a real issue lately.

They were great! They came into the valley during the summer from down south somewhere, used the local services, and camped out at Mike Harris. They were in their fifties, the girl was sweet with an innocent voice and her partner was just a cool old dude. They always stank really bad, but what the hell.

One of the last times I saw them they were leaving the food bank in Driggs with a supply of food. They had just come back into town and told a story of walking many miles without a ride and they were starving. I took them to Broulims, gave the girl some money to get whatever else they needed, and then drove them to Mike Harris.

The very last time I saw them they were hitching out of the valley down to warmer places. The girl came up to me with big wide eyes and said, with the utmost sincerity, are you my guardian angel? I felt love for her at that moment and as one who has a guardian angel I could only smile and tell her the truth that, unfortunately, I was not…

And yes, they encountered bears out there, surviving without weapons or spray!

Bates Hay

A drive along Bates Road this time of year always provides excellent photo-ops. Today was no exception and this stretch of road is so quiet I can just step off the bus, shoot, and continue on. This is an amazing place to live and work.

Sums Me Up

Sometimes you come across an image that wraps your current existence into a weird tight little ball and spits it right back at you. In my case: groveling for work hours from my employer now that I’m back driving, with a hip going south down to Lake Havasu.