Pensioner’s Meeting

Yesterday (Thursday, September 4, 2008) I attended an important meeting of Transit retirees.
This is a different crowd from the “Alumni” retirees, although it’s all people that were Amalgamated Transit Union Local 282 (“What’s ‘ah-two’”).
Many in attendance were not members of the Alumni, yet like the Alumni they were union retirees collecting a union pension.
Most, like me, were once lazy no-good layabouts who did nothing, except -a) not get shot, and -b) keep nine tons of hurtling steel between the lines in all kinds of weather.
A security-breech has occurred. A vendor for the Boston bank that processed our pension payments had computer equipment stolen.
That ‘pyooter equipment had names and addresses and Social-Security information of 45,000 pensioners, 250 of which were Transit union retirees.
This was eight months ago.
So far nothing has happened. —No losses that would indicate identity-theft.
Nevertheless our pension-administrator (not the bank) is alarmed.
They want us to sign up for a credit-bureau monitoring-service that would notify us of any activity — like a credit-card added.
They will pay for this for four years, but we have to sign up for it ourselves (it’s the law).
They also will pay for identity-theft insurance for two years, which we can add to existing insurance, if available; or get it elsewhere (arrangements were made).
So a meeting of all union pensioners was arranged.
The pension-administrator’s local representative also attended to relate the gravity of the situation.
All union pensioners received a letter a while ago, but I shoved it into my pending-pile.
I figured if our credit went wonky I could react — I have before.
Someone got our credit-card number years ago and purchased computer equipment.
The bank called us. Apparently they got monitoring software that flags activity that doesn’t match our patterns.
The union-prez mentioned he’d had his identity stolen, and it took eight months to straighten things out.
Credit-cards he didn’t authorize were being opened under his Social-Security number.
Stuff like this is what the pension-administrator is worried about, although nothing’s happened yet.
I rode up there on the dreaded Banana — it’s looking like I’m gonna burn a complete tank of gas this summer; probably more.
It’s about a 45-minute ride.
Nothing dramatical happened, except an encounter with a large furniture-delivery truck.
Main St. in Rochester is under construction — always is. One whole side of the street was torn up, so traffic was shoved to the other side.
The two eastbound lanes had been divided using traffic-cones into one lane each, eastbound and westbound.
So I placidly motored west into the westbound lane, but the furniture-truck turned off a left-side side-street heading east.
It was a large truck, and needed a huge swing; so he ended up heading east in my westbound lane — right toward me..
Well okay, the poor guy probably thought he was in the kerreck lane, so I quickly pulled off to the side, unable to downshift.
But suddenly the truck switched lanes, but I’m still stopped in second or third gear.
I make two starting attempts, but stall each time. A glowering-intimidator is behind me in a gigantical 4WD RAM dually pickup, angrily thumping his steering-wheel.
I’m off to the side to restart, but RAM-man doesn’t pass.
Through various tricks I know, I got the little dear into first and continued on.
Outside the meeting I saw only one other motorbike: a gigantical Harley-Davidson GeezerGlide, probably ridden there by Bob Ross; a retired bus-mechanic.
“How in the wide, wide world canya ride that thing? It’s a crotch-rocket; you’re supposed to be old.”
“Well I am, but I still can ride it, I guess. Got up here, didn’t I?”
Two people I haven’t seen in years were in attendance: namely Pedro Colazzo (“Pete Koh-LAH-zo”) and Nelson Kiske (“KISS-key”).
Colazzo is now 70, and of course retired, but when I started driving buses in 1977 he was a Road-Supervisor.
He eventually switched back to bus-driving, as many Road-Supervisors do, since bus-driving is the least frustrating job at Transit.
Colazzo is Puerto-Rican, and by now his hair is gray. But he looks pretty good for 70.
“Hey Pedro,” I yelled, still in my helmet.
We jawed for a long time; “My feet hurt,” Pedro was telling me.
“It ain’t circulation, I hope?” I asked.
“Nope. My doctor says that’s all okay. Nobody knows why my feet hurt.”
“Kiske” (nickname was “Bud”) was another one of my mentors.
“What I remember most was 1508 — or was it ‘06’ or ‘07?’”
“You picked that 10-hour Kodak charter, leaving 1508 for me; which I picked.”
“I used to call it the ‘Latta Road Merry-go-round.’”
“I’d deadhead out to Latta Road, and then around and around we went — I might get six passengers the whole afternoon over three trips.”
At this point, Kiske rendered the old waazoo he always said when I told him 1508 was so easy: “We don’t get paid by the ton — we get paid by the hour.”
I sat with Gary Colvin, one of my dreaded Ne’er-do-Wells.
“Does this make any sense?” he asked.
“Any questions?” the pension-administrator lady asked.
At his point Frito Bandito (that’s his actual name) got up, and started fulminating.
“My name is Frito Bandito; and I can’t hear or understand that well.”
Uh-oh; here we go. The same Frito Bandito that got management all bent outta shape, because he could make a lotta noise without making sense.
“A lot of good people were working, yet couldn’t read or write. And they couldn’t make any sense of this here high-finance stuff,” Frito said.
“So they gave all their hard-earned money to the town priest; and then that guy got roped in for stealing.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bandito,” the poor girl said, eying the floor.
Is it any wonder Transit management always threw up their hands, and shooed Frito out of their offices?
Outside I met “Smokestack Merkel,” (“MERR-kul”) puffing a cigarette on the landing. The Hall inside is “no-smoking.”
If yaz remember, Merkel was the guy without teeth, so that when he smiled all ya saw was gums.
Merkel was one of our most-valued activists, joined us to survey the Buffalo light-rail system (a subway boondoggle that’s little-used), and got laughed out of a Transit-Authority meeting when he presented his heavy-rail proposal for Rochester.
Merkel is a railfan, and suggested I ride some railroad tourist-line steam excursion in Texas.
“Well, I don’t know, Merkel,” I said. “I keep feeling like I gotta limit what I try, but usually I can do more than I think. Take this thing......” I said, pointing at my motorbike.
Riding home there were various challenges; I hit Victor to try to buy reservations for a train-excursion.
Doing so meant using I-490 — I saw 78 mph once.
(No reservations yet.)
The second challenge was freshly stoned pavement on a rural road I used. I usually try to avoid freshly stoned pavement, but can do it if need be.

For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.

“Local 282” was the Rochester local of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union.

“What’s ‘ah-two?’” is something my mother asked seeing my ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) button.

The “Alumni” is a special club of Local 282 (ATU) Transit retirees. You have to join.

RE: “Lazy no-good layabouts who did nothing......” —My all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, loudly insists bus-driving is nothing; that as a bus-driver I was a freeloader.

“‘Pyooter” is computer.

“Banana” is my 2003 Honda 600cc CBR/RR crotch-rocket motorcycle. My loudmouthed brother-in-Boston, a macho Harley-guy, seeing it was yellow, pronounced it a “Banana.”

RE: “It’s looking like I’m gonna burn a complete tank of gas this summer.....” —Being retired, I don’t have much reason to ride my motorcycle any more.

A “glowering intimidator” is a tailgater, named after Dale Earnhardt, deceased, the so-called “intimidator” of NASCAR fame, who used to tailgate race-leaders and bump them at speed until they let him pass.

A “RAM dually pickup” is a full-size Dodge RAM pickup with four wheels on its rear axle — two wheels per side. (They can haul heavy bed-connected trailers; that is, trailers with hookups in the pickup bed. But their large size is also used to project machoness.)

“GeezerGlide” is what I call all Harley Davidson ElectraGlide cruiser-bikes. My loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston has a very laid back Harley Davidson cruiser-bike, and, like many Harley Davidson riders, is over 50 (51). So I call it his GeezerGlide.

A Transit “Road-Supervisor” was a person who rode around in a car to field bus-problems.

“1508” was a bus run. All bus-runs had numbers like that.

RE: “10-hour Kodak charter......” —Kodak had chartered 10 hours of RTS bus-service in its huge Rochester Kodak-Park facility, during improvements that put their regular bus-service out-of-service.

The “Ne’er-do-Wells” are an e-mail list of everyone I e-mail my stuff to.

Regional Transit System (RTS) was run by the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA), an independent state authority of local fat-cats.

“Freshly stoned pavement” is small granite chip-stones in tar. Local highway authorities often do this on little-used roads instead of repaving. It’s also called “chip-sealing.” The loose stones can toss a motorcycle.