Training Bus

Before I get to the bus pics I'd like to congratulate Sue of Susan's World for placing 3rd in her local Road-eo! She now gets to compete in the regional competition and I wish her the best of luck. I missed competing the last two years but I'm signed up for this year.

I mentioned in my last post that we had taken the training bus to one of the schools and Edith asked for more information about it. A few of you may remember the earlier pictures and excitement here as the bus was being rebuilt to suit our needs but I really haven't talked much about it in the last year. Since safety training is one of my passions I thought I'd review the history of our bus.

Many years ago we borrowed this bus to teach emergency evacuations to our students. It is owned by a district in another county and always books up fast! Here it was being used at a Safety Fair that I attended. You can see a student being helped out of the roof hatch.
I love this bus because it has railings so drivers and students can actually practice going out the window and roof exits. Being able to do it myself really changed the way I conduct my thrice annual evacuation drills.

Back in 2006 I did very poorly at the regional Road-eo but one of my teammates did well and went on to the state competition. While she was there she saw a bus redesigned to simulate a rollover accident but that could also be used for regular window and roof hatch drills. I don't own a picture of their bus but you can find their pictures here. That district was much too far away to borrow the bus, so she brought back pictures and started talking about building our own. She got drivers together from across the region and we started fund raising. That generated a blog to both thank our sponsors and to update everyone on the progress.

This is what we ended up with. We do not have the safety rails or ladders that the other buses have as the local fire departments expressed an interest in being able to use the bus to train their personnel.


Here you can see the roof hatch on it's side. Right now we use the bus simply to show students what the bus will look like inside if there is a roll over and get them thinking about where they'd end up and what they would need to do to get out. It also allows us to get a dialog going with them about overall bus safety while we really have their attention.

We have mats that we can use but we're still working out how to allow the kids to use the exits without anyone getting hurt. The bus is available for use by any school district in the area.

We also use our everyday rides to teach safety to the kids and their parents. At our annual safety expo in October I do a mirror demonstration where I put the parents in the drivers seat with the kids behind them and ask them what they can see in the mirrors. They are always surprised by how little they can see inside the bus. Meanwhile I have items that a child might drop near the bus scattered around outside along with a car parked up tight to the rear bumper. We also usually have someone teaching safe crossing, we bring a wheel chair bus and chair and one of our volunteer firefighters runs a smoke bus which you see below. That's Mike (a couple of years ago) learning to sit and slide as he goes out the rear door.


I'm looking for ideas that we can use to create another hands on learning experience at our next expo in October and I'd love to hear any ideas you may have!

And if you're curious as to how the bus was cut and flipped, here is the slide show I created back then.

Blues

I can't believe I haven't posted here for two full weeks! I had gotten behind with my letter transcriptions so I worked several days on them. Otherwise I have just had the blues.

Big stress at work. I was one of a very few that knew that we are going to have major route changes and loss of overtime next year. That was a huge weight but we had a meeting on Friday and now everyone knows what's what for next year. As a group they took the news much better than I thought they would. Some of those with the least seniority will be having their hours cut 25%. To keep their hours from being cut even further the senior drivers will be losing some of the overtime that they are used to and count on. I will be loosing my route but I will be keeping my hours. I'll find out next month just exactly what I'll be driving next year. I've worked with most of "my kids" for the last five years so as thankful as I am that I'll keep my paycheck, I'm very sad to be starting over with a new group.

I spent most of the week with a new driver, something I usually enjoy. We don't usually train at this time of year and for some reason it just wore me out everyday. The driver did fine so I don't know why it wore me down.

We took the training bus to the Fun Fair at one of the schools and had a huge turn out. I expected to sit around reading but we were busy the entire time. For many of the kids and their parents this was their first time seeing the bus and we got very favorable feedback. Definitely a bright spot in the week!

Everyone has been posting pictures of their spring flowers while I've continued to watch the snow melt. This was taken yesterday. We finally have more grass than snow but there is more than enough of the white mess left.

Yesterday was warm and sunny so I started on some garden clean-up on the beds that are snow free and John started shoveling off the shade bed in front. He found my wood poppy sending up new shoots under all that snow! He really had to work hard as most of it was ice.

The crocuses started coming up through the snow and started blooming a couple of days after the snow was off of them. I still have one patch that hasn't started blooming yet so I'll get to enjoy flowers longer.

I looks like a normal week coming up so maybe I can drag myself out of this funk I've been in.

Poor Robin

I was very excited to spot a pair of robins in the yard today but I was dumbfounded as to why they'd visit here! The snow is taking it's sweet time melting. It's been quite warm the last couple of days and we do have a couple of spots where we can see the grass in the backyard. We sent the boys out to play yesterday and they thought it was great that we still have so much snow. They especially liked walking along the snow bank in front of the window which made them so tall they were looking down on me sitting inside on the couch.

The moon was pretty last week and I tried to get a couple of pictures, none of which turned out well. There's an annual photo contest for school bus pictures but I think I need to stick to daylight shots. I'm not liking the time change at all.

Hurry Up and Wait

It's been a couple of boring days. Tuesday I had my annual physical and I was assigned a mid morning time which meant time to kill. I went and checked out the new Hobby Lobby store that opened down in Clay. They have very nice stuff - hopefully they'll have very nice sales too. I found lots of things I'd like for the garden and some pretty fabrics. I showed up for my physical right on time and the four ahead of me were still there. So I waited........

We've had several days of heavy rain that have washed away some of the snow. The temperature is supposed to drop until the weekend and we may get some fresh flakes so I'm still waiting for the snow to be gone.




I've enjoyed following the Iditarod but we're at the 24 hour layover, the first of three mandatory rests at a checkpoint. Everyone seems to be stopping at either Takotna or McGrath so more waiting. *Except for Martin Buser! Buser blew through Takotna about three hours ago. Bold move!? Time will tell. During this layover the times will be adjusted to make everyone even from the staggered start, so all but the last musher will spend more than 24 hours.

All at Takotna

• 6th - Jeff King

• 12th - Aliy Zirkle

• 22nd - Ryan Redington

• 23rd - Robert Bundtzen

• 27th - Allen Moore

Best Friends

It's Monday and that means Mom in the morning and kids night. I took Mom to the doctor and that went fine.

PJ had a tire blow out when he was bringing the girls over so John went and got them. I thought this picture was adorable. Mike had to stay late at school for Battle of the Books practice and the girls were watching a movie until the boys could get here.

It was a cold, rainy, miserable day. The warm weather over the weekend melted about 3/4 of the driveway ice so we are moving on to mud. I don't really like mud season much but it does mean the nice weather is coming.

I have another couple of long days coming up. My annual physical for work is tomorrow and I put my name of the list for some OT on Wednesday.

Mush!

The Iditarod begins right about now, with the ceremonial start in Anchorage, Alaska. The mushers and their teams will cruise through the city with an Iditarider in the sled, rather than supplies. Tomorrow the real race begins from Willow.

I will of course be cheering for my cousin's husband, Robert Bundtzen. He is wearing bib # 51.

The economy has affected even the great race so the field is a lot smaller than last year's. I was hoping this year would be the year for Zack Steer but he is sitting this one out. Hopefully the economy will recover and Alaskan tourism will thrive this summer (especially at Sheep Mountain Lodge!) so that we'll see Zack back on the trail next year.

Marianne, at Northview Diary, is a Jeff King fan. Jeff is one of the top mushers but she follows him because of his local connection. Jeff has his own homepage, blog and Youtube channel. He will be wearing bib # 41.

Mike followed Ryan Redington last year as part of a school project and we'll be following him together again this year. He had to scratch last year so we're hoping he has better luck this year. He is wearing bib #13.

I'll also be watching husband - wife team, Allen Moore, bib #6, and Aliy Zirkle, bib #24 because I discovered their kennel's blog, The SP Kennel Dog Log, awhile ago. They have someone that will be updating for them during the race and I'm looking forward to coverage from their perspective. They have some interesting videos and great information on all the work that goes into race preparation.

I'll most likely be updating through out the week but here are some links to check throughout the race.

• Iditarod.com
• Iditablog
• Iditablog Twitter feed
  
• Anchorage Daily News
• flickr - iditarod
• Eye on the Trail
• Picasa - iditarod

If you have any other links please share them!

So who are you cheering for?

Spring has Sprung!

Ann was released from the hospital Wednesday and yesterday John took her back to her GP. She is doing much better. I had a fairly quiet day at work. Sally didn't go to school, her mother was taking her to the doctor but she was out with the other kids in the morning and she looked ok. B had a class for job #2 so the boys were here for dinner and we had a pleasant evening with them, watching some silly cartoon movie.

Today was mostly an ugly day but for me, the best day of the week! I always wave to the drivers that have to stop for me and mouth the words "thank you". Usually about half of them wave back. This morning every single one waved back!!! All of the kids were out and ready and most of them said good morning. I picked up a little craft kit for the Nikki and Liz and gave it to them just before we left on the route and they both said, "Grandma, you're the best!" Most mornings they will barely talk to me. Sally was back and has pictures of her xray. I'm very relieved that she's going to be fine.

We went down to Syracuse to see Mom today and I took a walk around the yard. Here is one of her clumps of daffodils.


Out back she has a few snowdrops blooming! We are usually 2-3 weeks behind her so I'm hopefull I'll have something here soon.


The temperatures here got into the 50's - it's still is the 50's! Let the melting begin. By the end of the weekend we may no longer need ice skates to get across the driveway :-)

Runaways & Emergency

My job is rarely dull but today provided much more excitement than I needed. Despite a cold and snowy start the morning was pleasant and I had no reason to expect the afternoon would be any different.

My first route went ok. The kids were acting a bit goofy but not bad. I picked up my shuttle kids early and headed to my elementary school. I ended up with a new shuttle student who had been on the wrong shuttle. New to the district she wasn't sure of her new address so we got that straightened out just as the little kids started boarding. Nothing went right from then on. My two new kids got on and I assigned them seats. The dispatcher was calling me on the radio but I couldn't hear what she wanted because that kids were so loud. I yelled at them and got them quiet and then found that two of us were both trying to use the radio at once, canceling each other out. Meanwhile one of the girls starts screaming because one of the boys stuck his tongue out at her. Then somebody had to tell on somebody else and I'm still trying to answer the radio call. I breathed a sigh of relief when they released the buses and we started rolling.

I get to the light and go right and the new shuttle kid panics because she lives to the left. I reassured her that I'd be going back that way. Make a stop, another right turn and they're calling me on the radio again - the new kid's mother is calling to find out when I'll have her home. Turn the next corner and at the second stop the two new regular kids get off with a group at one of the sitters on the route. I cross that group and release the kids that aren't crossing and catch a glimpse of the two new kids running back down the street! I've got a full bus, I can't get off and chase them down and I have no idea why they're running away. I rolled up even with the sitter's door and start pulling on the air horn. One of the kids came out and I told them I needed the sitter. She finally came out and I explained that the new kids had taken off. It turns out that they live back that way and their mother was home early so the sitter had yelled to them to just go home, but I never saw her stick her head out the door. So they weren't really runaways but it was a scary couple of minutes for me.

Soooo, I'm in the middle of my next turn, onto a busy street and one of the kids screams that Sally just swallowed a quarter! Then somebody else screamed that she couldn't breath. Several kids were now all yelling at once. I got straightened out and looked up in my mirror. I could see Sally and I thought I heard her crying. Before I could get the bus pulled over another kid confirmed that she was breathing. This all happened in less than ten seconds I guess. I radioed in that a child had swallowed a quarter and that I was going directly to her residence. She was upset but otherwise seemed fine when we got there. Now I had other parents calling in because I had driven right by their stops and they were worried about their kids and dispatch needed to confirm that we did not need the ambulance. Everyone got home safely, if a bit late.

I stayed late to fill out an incident report and other drivers stopped in to share their stories with me. I guess I'm glad it was a quarter rather than a key chain or third of a pencil or any of the other items mentioned and I hope none of my kids ever sticks candy up their nose.


It's only Wednesday........

Brrrrrrr

We're having yet another beautifully sunny day, but it is cold! The windchill at work this morning was well below zero. The nor'easter missed us - yeah! The lake effect it left in it's wake missed us too - yeah!

Despite the snow I am seeing some signs of spring. Almost all of the snow is gone now at Mom's. I walked along her front bed and the tips of her daffodils are just starting to poke through. I never would have even looked for them if Kerri hadn't left a comment that hers were just starting too. The snow here has compacted and shrunk and there was probably even a little bit of melting last week.

Another sign of spring is the two high school girls I picked up this morning wearing flip flops and the middle-schooler who decided a tee-shirt was all that was needed with sub-zero windchill. It is March now after all!

The kids were good yesterday on the bus but I had a co-worker blow up at me and I'm still at a loss as to why. It's not the first time they've blown up at me and probably won't be the last. I guess I need to learn to give what I get rather than just letting myself be upset for the rest of the day week.

Mom was in good spirits yesterday and had completed a rather difficult puzzle and quite pleased with herself. John didn't go with me because his sister, Ann, has been quite ill and he had to take her to the doctor. The doctor sent her to the emergency room and she ended up being admitted for further tests. They don't seem to know yet what is wrong with her and she is having more tests today.

So I had the four eldest grandkids for dinner last night by myself. We've been having some trouble with the oven off and on over the last few months and of course last night it wasn't in the mood to work right so I didn't get dinner on the table until after 6:00. The kids were disappointed that John wasn't here so that they could play on his computers. I could have gotten them out for them but the whole point of kids night is to have them get together and play with each other so I "made" them play UNO with me. It took the younger two a couple of hands to figure out what they needed to do but we all ended up having a good time and we finished up with a game of LCR.

This morning one of the elementary kids was quite upset that another student was "eavesdropping." I guess we need individual compartments on the bus so one pair of 8 year olds can't hear what the pair of 9 year olds is talking about! A first grade boy was hurt when an older student laughed at him for wearing purple gloves. I pointed out that he was smart enough to wear gloves, unlike the older kid and that my son often wears pink which Nikki and Liz agreed with so he was back to his happy self. If that's the worst I have to deal with today it will be a good day!

Technical Difficulties

While we were in Florida I had computer access for just a half hour so I checked my blogs to see if I had any new comments. This blog came up fine however when I tried to look at Apple's Tree all of my posts had disappeared. I chalked it up to a very slow connection. When I was talking to my sister on Sunday she complained that she had been having trouble accessing both blogs.

Yesterday I was blog hopping and came upon this screen. Amanda's posts at A Tale of Two Ancestors were missing just like mine had been last week.


As I continued on through my reader I tried to access Mona's, Itawamba Connections and this time there was an error message. grrrrr


On Blogger's "Known Issues" page I found the following:


I checked just now and the issue is still unresolved. So know that I have been trying to visit and leave comments. Hopefully blogger will have this figured out shortly. I was able to comment this morning but the letters to type for word verification were MIA. This has happened with blogger off and on for as long as I can remember. Simply submit your comment and it will then bring up the letters for verification as if you had typed them wrong the first time.

On a happier note, I am loving the new followers widget. For awhile before, the "follow this blog" link was either broken or missing altogether so now I am able to add myself to blogs I missed before, even if I can't comment!

Birthday Greetings!

Happy Birthday to my brother Dallas and sister Country Girl! I hope you both have a great day. And being the great big sister that I am, I won't tell everyone how old you are ;-)

They are not twins, instead born five years apart. I guess Mom just liked the date :-)

I'd have pictures, if only I were a bit more organized today.