A big hand

I’m told people enjoy my bus-stories, so here goes:
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 environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
I was driving bus #417 down Rochester’s Eastern Expressway. It was snowy, but I could do about 40.
I was driving toward East Rochester and Fairport. 417 was a Park-and-Ride bus. Our 400s looked like fishbowl city buses, but had a V8 motor and three-speed over-the-road transmission. They weren’t speed-governed. A good one could boom-and-zoom.
I was on my second of two trips; the one that took the expressway — the first didn’t.
In fact, I’m not sure the first trip was to Fairport. Quite often they weren’t.
Which was fine with me. Multiple trips to the same end-point could be boring, plus I had to get on the expressway at least once per day. Driving bus was no fun unless you could get a roll on — 60-65 in the passing-lane. —Plus I’m sure I was doing a school-trip too.
The first trip might have been to Suburban Plaza out in Henrietta south of the city. East Rochester and Fairport were east.
Driving was dicy, but not impossible. The buses were so heavy they were fairly sure-footed.
I negotiated the infamous Can-of-Worms, then continued out the Eastern Expressway. I would get off at the Fairport Road exit.
Bopping along, I signaled for the exit.
All-of-a-sudden all four corners of the bus were sliding.
I started sawing furiously at the wheel.
Oh my golly! We’re going straight into the boonies, a bouncing roller-coaster ride over open hill-and-dale. At least it wasn’t woods.
But then a big hand dropped from the sky and guided my bus around the curve.
Now I was on a straight part, but another curve was up ahead. I needed to slow down.
Uh-ohhh...... Not slow enough; all four corners were sliding again. It may look nice on a race-track, but not in a bus carrying 40 passengers.
Again the big hand dropped from the sky and guided my bus around the curve.
“WHEW!” I said to no one in particular once we merged onto Fairport Road.
A regular who always rode shotgun wondered why I said that.
“I didn’t know anything was wrong,” she said.

• The “Eastern Expressway” is Interstate-490; it goes all the way to the Thruway, which doesn’t access Rochester.
• East Rochester and Fairport are both suburbs east of Rochester, Fairport ritzier that East Rochester. East Rochester was once New York Central railroad’s car-shops, and a piano factory, so is lower class than Fairport. Fairport was on the Erie Canal.
• “Park-and-Rides” were trips from suburban or rural end-points, usually through Park-and-Ride parking-lots, where passengers would park their cars, for a bus-ride to work in Rochester.
• The Can-of-Worms (so-called) was an old expressway interchange southeast of Rochester, built in the ‘60s. It was difficult to get through. The “Can” was reconfigured a while ago (Old Can and New Can), taking out little-used railroad trackage, making it much easier to negotiate. There were various tricks to “shooting the Can” with a bus. Most difficult was a lane change smack in the middle of the Old Can.