Not the real world

Last night (Thursday, January 20, 2011) I got an e-mail from an old friend, who like me retired from Regional Transit Service.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Like me, he retired because of strokes; in his case two, in my case only one.
Both of us recovered fairly well, although his left side is somewhat inoperative, particularly his left arm.
I, on the other hand, have all my faculties, although speech is slightly compromised, and my balance is wonky.
My friend retired as a Road-Supervisor, me as a bus-driver; although he drove bus at first.
Road-Supervisors drove around in supervisor-cars, supervising bus-drivers and intervening in disputes with passengers.
In other words, he was management.
I probably could have migrated to management myself, but didn’t.
Like most bus-drivers, I was of-the-opinion that the best job at Transit (RTS) was driving bus.
You were pretty much on-your-own all day, free of office-politics.
My friend is married to a current bus-driver who will soon retire.
So he’s privy to what’s going on there.
I’m not. Transit faded from my life after my stroke.
Apparently new red-light cameras in Rochester were triggered by RTS buses running red-lights.
Traffic-lights were always a hairball, approached with great fear and trepidation.
If the light changes, do you keep on going, or slam on your brakes throwing passengers on the floor.
So I always approached traffic-lights slowly, so I could stop if I had to without throwing passengers on the floor.
Driving the same bus-route every day, you got so you could predict a traffic-light.
Beyond that, most city traffic-lights had pedestrian walk-lights.
If a walk-light was on for pedestrians, you could proceed.
If the pedestrian-light was at “don’t walk,” the traffic-light might change on you.
Often the pedestrian-lights had timers counting the seconds until “don’t walk.”
So it’s hard for me to imagine myself triggering a red-light camera.
Except if your schedule is so tight you have to break the law to keep schedule.
This e-mail prompted a dream, actually two of my lucid bus-driving dreams this morning.
I was driving Main St., the dreaded 800-line.
The 800-line was always a killer; the main drag east-to-west through the city.
The eastern end was the worst; stop at every stop, and not enough time to do so.
I always ran late.
Flat-out through the end-of-line layover, and change the sign on-the-fly.
So here I was driving the east end, the first time I had driven bus in years.
East Main was a war-zone; construction everywhere.
With a bus you had to be fully aware of the gigantic size of your vehicle, lest your back-end clip something.
The bridge over the old New York Central railroad-tracks was being rebuilt, and down to only two lanes on one half.
A bus was too wide for opposing traffic; you had to have the bridge to yourself.
Plus you were making sharp curves approaching and leaving.
You had to drive just so; lest your back-end clip the bridge-trusses.
Bus-stops were crowded as they always were on the 800, plus most stops were somewhat unsafe.
In my first dream I found myself “off-route” downtown, trying to get back to Main St.
“Off-route” is grounds for firing, so I didn’t report it.
But I drove into a cul-de-sac — no exit — as I do in most bus-driving dreams.
Cul-de-sacs were the thing you feared most.
I only had it happen once during my career, on a detour through a snowy parking-lot I wasn’t familiar with.
You don’t back a bus out of a cul-de-sac, for fear of blindly backing into something.
You have to call in a Road-Supervisor, who drives out and then loudly excoriates you as stupid.
My parking-lot cul-de-sac looked safely escapable, but no reverse.
A Road-Supervisor had to drive all the way out from downtown to engage my reverse manually.
I was at Lake Ontario, perhaps 10 miles from downtown.
My second dream was not “off-route.”
I managed to get downtown, but the dedicated bus-lane was filled with parked delivery-trucks.
“I’ll have to let you off in the street,” I said to my passengers.
“The bus-stop is blocked. Look both ways before stepping out the door.”
I thereafter looked out for my debarking passengers, so they didn’t step into the path of an oncoming car.
(I had it happen once. A girl got off my bus, walked in front of it, and got brushed by a passing car.
It didn’t injure her; just flipped her into the pavement. She got clipped by the right-side mirror.
But Daddy and an ambulance-chaser went after Transit.
Deep pockets.
Like it was my fault.
Which it wasn’t, of course.
I hadn’t signaled her.
From then on, I looked out for debarking passengers.
Saved a couple kids once.
They were mad as Hell like I had honked at them.
They never even saw the car that woulda run them over, if I had not stopped them.)
Passengers off, I headed west over the stone viaduct over the Genesee River.
It was dark, and the pavement was all torn up — like driving on dirt.
My next bus-stop was also dirt.
Let your passengers off in rock rubble.
“Unsafe,” I said. “Be very careful. This is the best I can do.”
Sure, keep a tight schedule under such conditions.
What is that Scheduling Department doing? A single car on Sunday morning with no passengers?
NOT THE REAL WORLD. Do they have any idea what it’s like out here?

• The “Genesee River” (“jen-uh-SEE”) is a fairly large river that runs south-to-north across Western New York, runs through Rochester, including over falls, and empties into Lake Ontario.