Category: The Bus

I rolled down my window this morning approaching Hatches Corner, actually, sliding towards the Corner and took this shot through crystal clear sub-zero air. I suspect that’s a fence-jumping moose track, but not sure about the track to the left.

Well, here we go again with the Teton Valley Great Snow Fest! This event gets better every year and this time, I’m actually a part of it, as opposed to being just an observer with a blog and a camera.

My employer TRPTA was asked to provide a shuttle service on Saturday the 30th out to the Eukanuba dog sled race at the west end of Packsaddle. Our boss Amanda has been working with Doug Self (Driggs Community Development Director) and now Karen and I will be running the shuttle service out to the races. We’ll start at 8 am and run until 1 pm, starting from the Targhee shuttle pickup spot by the Community Center, out to Packsaddle (W 4000 N) and N 9000 W, and back. We’ll be running two busses with a half hour interval if necessary.

I used my mapping program Juhnk to determine the route and it equates to 12.6 miles (9.35 raven miles) and twenty minutes each way.

Here’s a Google map of the drop:

Here’s a Bing map:

The Eukanuba Stage Stop Sled Dog Race is a big deal and the Driggs Race is an important leg. This event is part of the Great Snow Fest, presented by the Teton Valley Foundation, and will take place over the next couple of weeks.

Here’s Doug’s press release:

Come ride with Karen and I next Saturday! The cost of the ride is on the house…

I am a driver in the county, and I roam the back roads, searching in the snow for another kid to tow. And I need a long vacation, but it don’t look like sun, so bus driver jim, keeps driving around. Da da da da da da da.

Just in case this doesn't make sense, hum Wichita Lineman...

I was going through my normal routine this morning: downing coffee, cayenne pepper and cereal when I took a moment to lay out my day from the schedule sitting in my inbox. There was a new customer on the list, an older gentleman (I inferred from the status codes), going to the hospital and back, around mid-morning. I have lots of mapping utilities at my disposal (all written by me) so I looked his address up.

Cayenne fueled steam began to sizzle from my ears. I recognized this road, I’d been up it before, a few years ago, during the summer. It’s a narrow, steep, winding road up into the eastern foothills from the base of 5000 S. It’s one of the most treacherous roads in the valley.

I tried to visualize taking my bus up there but my mind just stopped me cold. It wasn’t going to happen, this is the dead of winter with lots of snow down, so I called dispatch first thing. They called the client and he said the road had been plowed, but it was steep, and I could turn around in his driveway.

Excuse me! You have to drive up his steep driveway just to get to his tight circular drive. He asked dispatch if I was driving a front-wheel or a four-wheel drive. It’s a large freaking bus for gods sake!

Anyway, he backed off and canceled and said he would come down to 5000 next time if he needed a ride in the future. My position is, if you’re going to build a house on the side of a mountain, high in the Rockies, don’t expect public transportation to come to your door when you get old…

↑ I would have been coming in from the left, which I’m not…

Map link…

I had a new rider today, going from 36 South Main in Driggs to Lupine Drive in Victor, at noon. The pickup address is our lovely little alternative grocery store Barrells and Bins so I grabbed the streetside spot and went inside. The customers name was somewhat ambiguous and I didn’t know what gender to look for so I just hung out inside and stayed warm for a bit.

At noon, I went back to the bus and took note of the Targhee shuttle bus that entered the parking lot. Sure enough, a young guy exited and climbed onboard. He was a great kid, came here from Michigan, lived in Tetonia and worked up on the hill. I drove him to Victor to pick up his vehicle at Teton Valley Auto Repair. Story closed…

Tristen put his daughter on my bus this morning out at Hatches Corner, and copped to being a lurker on my blog. Hey, that’s cool, I appreciate lurkers, that’s why I blog! He said he liked my moose shots and then he made my morning when he said that he tried out my Zyp program.

I consider Tristen a friend, we’ve known each other for a few years now and he said he sensed my frustration that nobody runs my code, so he ran it, and he liked it. He typed in his hometown zip, found his old high school, and discovered they had a website now. Feedback is always great but to get it early in the morning in person as a red sunrise rose over the Tetons, well, it don’t get no better than that.

I shot a moose from my drivers side window today…

She was just mosying around the Gemstone subdivision as I left my base.

The company asked me to stay down in Rexburg after the morning intercity run today, to fill in for another driver. As I was coming into Newdale a large smile began to spread over my face and a shiver went down my spine.

You see, I decided to bring my toys along today and one of the technologies was untested. I grabbed my big old Garmin nüvi 2797LMT GPS from the truck along with my top of the line Uniden BCD436HP scanner and then slipped the new BC-GPSK GPS receiver into my bag of tricks.

The premise behind the receiver is that you can plug it into your scanner and it will find the local frequencies automatically as you drive. I listen to the police and EMS action and knowing what’s going on around me is cool, and practical. I’ve got the Teton Valley frequencies dialed in, but I turned them off this morning, plugged in the little GPS receiver, and took off with my Garmin guiding the way.

I’ve done a lot of research lately on how to set this thing up, it’s not simply plug and play as advertised. As I left Teton County a whole new set of police, EMS and dispatch voices suddenly appeared. I knew instantly that my effort had paid off and that I ruled my tools. I drove around all day listening to the Madison and Jefferson county action, only to have the familiar voices of Teton county return when I arrived back home.

Driving the dry farms in winter is challenging enough, but when the fog hits, the mirrors turn to ice. There’s nothing more fun than rolling down your window in sub-zero weather where the wind is blowing at the 65 mph your traveling, to scrape off some ice. Fortunately, they’re melted off completely by Sugar City.

Shouldn’t we call these the wet farms in winter?

The company asked me to run the inter-city morning route this week, which entails picking up a client in Tetonia, driving her to Rexburg and then head back here to the valley. I pulled up to her house this morning and took this shot from their driveway before they brought her out. The temperature was -15°!

I’ve been dealing with a vehicle computer display issue for weeks now, that my employer seems unable to resolve. The cell towers up here have been reconfigured, I know what the issue is and I’ve offered my assistance to them, but they choose to not take advantage of my knowledge.

I was the point man for the first MDT (mobile data terminal) system installed in the U.S. I was employed by ATC out of Kent, WA as the lead supervisor and worked on the initial install for King County Metro. I drove the Metro bigshots out on the first test of the system, and it worked great.

Note the display in the photo below, it was the first! As the job evolved I had a terminal in my supervisor van that monitored every vehicle in the fleet, but that’s another story…

This is my new morning pause spot: Hatches Corner, halfway between Driggs and Tetonia on Hwy 33. If I’m running a little hot on the way to my first pickup down the road, I pull over here. Once I make that pickup I double back here and wait for a couple of Com school kids, and then head back down south to Driggs and Victor. This was the view from my vehicle seat at 0730 as I pondered my day for a moment…

Here’s a Map.

I sure get some cute customers on my bus somedays. With the daycare crowd there’s too many kids to focus on names, just faces. So, here’s a face for you, name unknown…

I picked up Stateline Lady today and it’s nice to have snow on the ground. I’ve had various customers here in east Tetonia over the years, and it’s always a beautiful and refreshing place to be, on a fine day.

Our backup bus was pretty frozen up when I came to work this morning. I start her up every few days and keep the power going to her block heater, but Rocky Mountain winters show no mercy. Here’s the front grill:

And here’s the passenger side headlight housing: