Oh-dark-thirty

Our clock-radio came on at 4:50 a.m. this morning (Thursday, December 2, 2010) tuned to Dubya-Hex-Hex-Hi, the classical-music public-radio station in Rochester we listen to.
An all-night national broadcast feed, not local.
We had an 8 a.m. medical appointment at Strong Hospital in Rochester.
It takes 45 minutes to an hour to get there, so we’d have to leave at 7 a.m. — still dark, but dawning.
It’s parrying NASCAR rush-hour, when anything can go wrong, and usually does.
It also had snowed, which renders the possibility of traffic-jams.
4:50 a.m. is almost the good old days of Regional Transit Service (RTS), where I’d have to get up about then, or earlier, to pull out a bus at 6 or so.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for RTS, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Back then I wasn’t doing all the processing I do now, about a half-hour or more. Emptying our dishwasher, setting up supper, etc.
The idea was to put on my bus-driving uniform, and eat breakfast; about an hour or more.
After we moved out here to West Bloomfield from Rochester, I had to add about 40 minutes of travel-time.
In Rochester I was about five minutes from the Barns.
4:50 is early for us old codgers.
But it can be done.

• “Dubya-Hex-Hex-Hi” is WXXI FM 91.5.
• “Strong Hospital” is a large hospital in the southern part of Rochester.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• “The Barns” are at 1372 East Main St. in Rochester, somewhat from downtown. The Barns were large sheds the buses were parked inside. Regional Transit’s operations were conducted in buildings adjacent to the Barns. (We Transit-employees always said we worked outta “the Barns.”)
• RE: “Us old codgers.........” — We’re both 66.