| 7/27 | ||
| I'm tired. I had 4:00 am call this morning and yesterday morning. I'll get to work about 4:45 tomorrow morning. | ||
| I drove the 18 yesterday. It's one of my favorite routes. It went pretty well. I got angry on one trip, though. A 45ish man got on the bus and started talking about people who don't speak English, etc. etc. He wasn't talking to me, but to the whole bus. I think he'd been drinking, maybe all night. He shut up pretty quickly and I thought nothing of it until he got off the bus. On his way out, he stared down an Eastern African woman the whole way out the door. She got off on the next block, looked over her shoulder to where he may have been and ran a few steps up the street. She was obviously rattled. That's when I wondered whether I had missed some stuff that was going on. | ||
| So yeah, I get mad at anyone making bigoted remarks. But this man was a black man. I could probably write a few pages about this, after reading all kinds of commentary and research. But I'll leave it at that I was really saddened and angered that that man, who undoubtedly has been on the other end of bigotry plenty of times in his life, had no empathy for the outsiders and instead thought it was worth his effort to make someone who he perceived as socially lower than he is miserable. As I said, there are probably a lot more points that I could make and/or clarify, but I'm way too tired for that right now. Simply put, I'm with those who believe that an asshole is an asshole. | ||
| I just got back from the first part of a bachelor party for Wayne and Gary, a couple guys I hang out with every once in a while. Six of us played 18 holes of best ball (I guess it was technically a scramble). It was fun, but I'm not anywhere near figuring out what's wrong with my driving. I have to get up early tomorrow (sleeping in until 3:30!) so I had to leave after golf. | ||
| I'm going to visit my grandparents and cousin in Wausau, WI tomorrow. I'll be gone for a couple days. | ||
| 7/24 | ||
| I got up really early again today. I don't think there's much night work on the extra board at Heywood. (I could look at it and find out for sure, I guess.) It's fine, but there just isn't a lot going on at 6:00 in the morning. | ||
| I missed a turn today. Fortunately, it was 6:00 in the morning and there wasn't a lot going on. Also fortunate was that I was on a four-lane street with a median. The u-turn went very well, thank you. | ||
| Wyatt, my dad and I golfed again yesterday. We joined Marvin, who was 79 years old. I think Marvin beat us handily. Well, my dad played rather well. I continued my slide into full-on hackdom. | ||
| Hey, we killed Saddam's sons, then proudly displayed the photos of their messy corpses to the world. Remember when we had a hissy fit because the Iraqis had the nerve to do that very same thing with bodies of our soldiers? Oh, well, Dandy Don Rumsfeld assured us that we had all kinds of good reasons to do it. Well, guess what? By their logic, so did the Iraqis. Do as we say, not as we do, right? | ||
| 7/22 | ||
| Today is the first day of my weekend. For much of the day, I ran errands with my mom. She got a cell phone. And I found out that I need a new one. Well, I sort of suspected it. I'm going to get one with a camera on it. Because, as I explained to the guy at the store, I don't talk on the phone much and I don't need anything with too many bells and whistles... | ||
| Dr. Amy Cordes, my parents' neighbor, died. She was my principal when I was in kindergarten. Then she retired. My dad took care of her lawn. When he was out of town, I mowed it. |  (this is a thumbnail) |
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| Hey, my old friend Ann from the neighborhood emailed me a picture. That's it over there. I hope it's cool that I put it up. That's my mom with me on her lap, and Ann on the right with her two sisters. Mostly I just wanted to show off my mom's cool 1970 hair. | ||
| I had another uneventful day on the bus yesterday. Oh, except that my brother Corey's godson Jaxon's mother rode my bus. That was cool. It was another very early day, so I got out of there around 12:30. I came home and took a nap, then went to Wyatt and Tina's for the Twins game and dinner. | ||
| I was thinking about going to see Eels at First Avenue this evening, but I just didn't feel like it. Instead, I enjoyed a card game with my parents. (I destroyed 'em.) This must be what it's like to get old. | ||
| 7/20 | ||
| I got up early and drove the 16 yesterday. It's a local (vs. express) route that goes between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. It has the potential to be pretty exciting. But I was out there too early for a whole lot to be going on. Although sometimes, early weekend mornings can be interesting. It's always fun to pick up people who have been out all night and are trying to get home. | ||
| A transit cop rode with me a couple miles into downtown St. Paul. An older guy got on, saw him, and said, "You make me nervous." I thought to myself that he had no reason to be nervous. He was just out running errands, he paid, he wasn't drunk or anything. | ||
| But he was black. | ||
| There are 23 full-time and 146 part-time transit cops. I think most of the part-timers are employed by various city police departments. The Minneapolis city cops have a pretty bad reputation among the local bus riders. Stories of cops shaking them down for their money and otherwise hassling them are pretty common. Take that with a grain of salt if you want (I often do), but hear something enough and one starts to think there's something to it. So maybe that guy did have something to be nervous about... | ||
| Mark and I went to Pirates of the Caribbean last night. I liked it. (And it's not that scary, Holly.) As you probably know, it's based on the popular Disney attraction. We saw a preview for a Disney movie in which Eddie Murphy and his family move into... the Haunted Mansion, another Disney attraction. I can't wait for the Carousel of Progress movie to come out. | ||
| 7/18 | ||
 here's Cayden... |
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| 7/16 | ||
| I drove the 9 the other day. It was one of my favorite routes at Nicollet. It was like an old friend had come to visit. | ||
| Yesterday I was on call at 6:15 in the morning. I had been out until 10:17 the night before. I didn't get much sleep and I was tired. | ||
| And Oz got on my bus. I've been seeing a lot of him lately. Well, he was on some kind of lovefest yesterday. He was happy about everything. For one thing, he had actually applied for a job! Oh, I hope he gets it. He talked at me for about an hour, about all kinds of things. Unfortunately, much of the time, I'm not sure what he's talking about. He wasn't messed up or anything, but sometimes I think I get in on his conversations about midway through the entire thought process involved with expressing something. So I have to ask a lot of questions to get background information. Sometimes that doesn't even help. He was talking about avoiding people who he gets messed up with. He kept saying that this time he was going to do the right thing for Oz. (And, as Mark noted, who was he doing it for before?) And he wants to visit his mother. She's in Gary, Indiana, I think. But whatever, he was in good spirits. I really hope something pans out. Unfortunately, I've seen him like this before. |  Me and my dad, Warren |
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| Wyatt, Eric, my dad and I went golfing today. We went to Theodore Wirth, a Minneapolis course. It's a really pretty course. I didn't do very well, score-wise, but I did hit the ball better today. Except my drives. My dad played the front nine with us, then went to work. The back nine was grueling. Up and down, then up and down a lot of really big hills. I'm pretty wiped out. Next time, that's a cart course. | ||
| I have to go to work tomorrow, then I have Friday off. | ||
| 7/14 | ||
| Hey, Cayden Michael Camp came out to play last night at 11:51 Oregon time! He weighed 7 lbs. 7 oz. and was 20½ inches long. Congratulations, Corey and Tara! | ||
| I'm an uncle. My parents are grandparents. | ||
 This isn't Cayden. This is Isaiah. He's just a stand-in until the pictures of Cayden arrive... |
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| 7/12 | ||
| I didn't get lost yesterday, but it was kind of stressful. I drove three routes that I just learned and I didn't remember ever being in most of the places I went. | ||
| I drove another b-o-r-i-n-g shuttle. On the plus side, I was driving a short bus. On the minus side, I had five passengers in nine-and-a-third trips. On her way out the door, one lady stopped and said, "I think I'm gonna... just do some painting this weekend." | ||
| Today I drove the 10 again. It went pretty well. | ||
| I had a talker sit down next to me. He talked and talked and talked. He told me that he's been diabetic for about ten years. He told me that once his girlfriend made him pancakes with Golden Griddle syrup and he went into the bedroom and died. He said he was floating around the room, then he came back to life. His blood sugar was at 900 mg/dl (normal is 60-120). | ||
| He also told me about a dream he had. His girlfriend was going to choose between him, her ex-boyfriend and another guy. She chose him and signaled her choice by giving him a waffle. | ||
| But by far the most interesting thing that happened this evening did not involve any passengers. | ||
| I don't know if it was yesterday's stress, the curry I had for lunch or the fries and malt vinegar for dinner, but I got to the Leamington Ramp at the south end of my route and I needed to get to the restroom. The Leamington is usually very quiet on the weekends. I rarely see anyone else there. There is a drivers' room downstairs with two very small restrooms (the open room kind). Surprisingly, the men's room door was locked, so I went to the women's room, locked the door and took care of business. Just as I was getting ready to get out of there, I heard someone come into the drivers' room. Then the women's restroom door opened. Surprise! Guess I hadn't locked it. It was Janie, a street supervisor. I first met her last year at the Great Minnesota Get Together. She apologized. I got out of there, apologized, told her why I was in there, and had a nice conversation with her before I had to get out to my bus. ha. | ||
| 7/10 | ||
| I went to Charlie's Angels: Full of Explosions and Crazy Stunts this evening. I liked it pretty well, I guess. I had to get past a lot of silliness, though. | ||
| The Amazing Paul Ripple is in town. He was my second college roommate, the second semester of my freshman year. I had already scared off my first semester roommate. Paul didn't last more than a semester, either. | ||
| So he and Kevin and Holly and I went to Charlie's Angels in Blaine! After that, we went to Applebee's (in Blaine!) and clinked glasses with people we don't even know. (It's that fun there.) And I hadn't planned to leave the house. | ||
| Probably my favorite story about Paul is this: I don't think I knew him very well yet, and one night when I wasn't quite asleep, I heard him get out of his bed and come over to my side of the room. I opened my eyes to see him applying my cola-flavored Vaseline lip balm to his lips. Totally busted. He was pretty embarrassed. | ||
| Eric, Wyatt and I went golfing yesterday. I need lessons. We went 18 holes. It was a good time in spite of my terrible play. Then Wyatt went to work at Cafe Havana and Eric, Mark and I went to play at Cafe Havana. | ||
| No word from Corey and Tara today. If she doesn't crank out that kid by this weekend, they're going to induce labor. | ||
| I go back to work tomorrow. I have to do a route that I was worried about when I learned it. That is, I don't think I learned it very well. I might have an interesting day tomorrow. | ||
| 7/8 | ||
| I got up at 3:50 this morning. Yeah, this schedule gets a little old. But I wasn't too tired. Some Belgian monks helped me get to sleep at a relatively early hour last night. | ||
| Someone on the next street over has a big boat. They had it parked on the street at the top of a hill. When I pulled into that street from the alley on my way to work, I saw it. But it was on my left, instead of its usual place on my right. It had rolled a couple hundred feet down the hill backwards, hit a tree and stopped at the curb. I drove by it again in the light and it didn't look too damaged. | ||
| I had two pieces of work today in a split ten-hour shift. For the first, the 676, I drove out to Mound and back twice. That piece of work had a 42-minute pullout. Is that self-explanatory? It took 42 minutes to get from the garage to Mound, where I started in service. Some pullouts take 3 minutes. Anyway, I saw the sun rise over Lake Minnetonka. It was a great way to start the day. And I didn't miss any turns or anything, which was nice. They abandoned the numbers and alphabets grid of Minneapolis out there, so getting lost can really suck. | ||
| I came home and took a nap, then went back to do the 716. | ||
| The 716 is as mind-numbing as it gets. Twenty-minute trips back and forth on a shuttle from Robbinsdale to, I don't know, Crystal or somewhere. I did ten trips. A train crossed the road in front of me on four of those trips. | ||
| And for as easy as that route is, I managed to screw it up. Three times. I missed a turn on the pullout. That was easily fixed. I left a terminal four minutes early. We'll see if I fixed that or if I get called in to talk to my manager on Friday. And I missed another turn and had to turn around in a parking lot of an apartment complex. | ||
| A passenger on that route noticed how cool I am. "This bus driver's cool. Hey bus driver! You're cool, aren't you?" (What do you say to that?) "Uh, yeah, that's what I hear. Did you know that I throw up if I see someone brushing their teeth?" | ||
| 7/7 | ||
| I drove the 94, an express route between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, last night. | ||
| My day got off to a shaky start. I had a little bit of a stomach ache and I wasn't feeling well. As a result, my patience quickly wore thin with a woman who got on and started talking at me and she didn't know what she was talking about. At all. About anything. | ||
| My stomach ache went away after a couple hours and I enjoyed the rest of the night. | ||
| Halfway into my night (4 hours, 15 minutes), I realized that I had driven six of the ten trips on my paddleboard (schedule). And that can only mean long layovers. I had two forty-minute layovers in downtown Minneapolis. So I walked around. | ||
| On my way to the terminal for the
second of my two long layovers, I saw that there was a band playing the 7th Street Entry
(at First Avenue). I figured I could catch 25 minutes of a show if I wanted to. So I
booked over there, but I didn't go in. Three reasons: 1) the show was sponsored by Drive 105, the local McAlternative station, owned by Mickey Mouse 2) I watched some Birkenstocks go in there (yeah, sue me...) 3) I could hear the band covering "Roll Over Beethoven," fine for the Beatles 'cause it's what they had, you know? |
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| 7/6 | ||
| I made some additions to the photos page this afternoon. It's still pretty random. | ||
| 7/6 12:17 am | ||
| Chicago vs. Texas: The Showdown Where: Bus 749, 10 Line When: Saturday Night, July 5 What: Five Young Men Yelling at Each Other What Else: Fearing Violence, I Called the Cops And: I Thought I Would Probably Get Hit Fortunately: I Did Not Get Hit |
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| So far, I like the 10. I was on call at 2:00, but I didn't go out until about 3:45. I had to make relief downtown on the Nicollet Mall, so I caught a 5 outside the garage and rode that to Nicollet. Then I drove the 10 until 11:30. It was fun. | ||
| I talked to quite a few people, including a pro kayaker who claimed to be #3 in the world at what he does (I think he rides waterfalls) and who power washes sidewalks when he's not kayaking. And I met a kid who's a host at Pepito's, a decent Mexican restaurant in south Mpls. Oh, and Steve, who announced to the whole bus as he was getting off that it was his 24th birthday. I'm guessing it was his 42nd. I took his picture. | ||
| God help us, the Shriners are in town. I saw bus detour notices that indicated that there will be a parade or two this week. Do you think they'll have anything besides the little cars? I'd make an effort to see an all-little car Shriner parade. |  |
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| I saw Oz three times today. He said he wasn't doing too well, but he looked like he was doing fine. I gave him a couple bucks and a couple transfers. | ||
| 7/5 | ||
| Well, I'm not an uncle yet. I called Tara yesterday and tried to scare the baby out of her, but it didn't work. I guess he just wasn't meant to be Yankee Doodle Cayden. | ||
| I went to some guy's farm (acreage?) in Red Wing, MN last night for one of the more interesting Independence Day celebrations I've experienced. It wasn't really all that out of control or anything. But one guy brought a little cannon. He fired it three times, once with a projectile, the other two times with just the powder and some newspaper. It was rather loud. Also loud: the open-ended pipe bomb. And the owner of the place, who must've spent at least a grand on fireworks, brought out his AK. But he didn't even have to use it. I gotta say it was a good day. | ||
| I was on call yesterday at 5:00 am. I drove one round trip on the 675, which was probably the most difficult route to learn. But I'm pleased to report that I didn't get lost. | ||
| I'm on call this afternoon at 2:00. Unfortunately, that means I'll probably miss the New Pornographers at First Avenue tonight. | ||
| 7/2 | ||
| I went golfing with Eric today. I didn't play very well, but it went much better than the last time I was out, in part because we went to Hiawatha, where we usually play. I got a swell new hat. I don't wear headgear too often, but I wore one the last time I went out and my nose didn't get sunburned, which was nice... |  |
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| The Duke of Duke doesn't seem to be eating too much. So it follows that he's not really the Duke of Duke this time around. |