- Joined
- Jul 27, 2010
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I received this question from an honor society club to which I belong, and so I gave this long winded answer. I have almost nothing in common with the member there except maybe grade point averages. Football is not discussed and I feel like everyone is so careful in how they interact and network with each other, and I'm just the booger head who snuck in through the back door...lol.
I was a tour bus driver for many years before returning to college decades after high school. I used to specialize in cross country tours starting in New York City and ending on the Santa Monica Pier in California.
What did I learn?
I learned that driving in eastern big cities like New York, you have to be aggressive if you need to get in the correct lane headed for the Lincoln tunnel. You have to ignore years of defensive driving learned in the West, and just start moving over without a turn signal. Turn signals are treated as a weakness on freeways like those near New York City, and the other drivers will speed up to prevent you from getting in front of them, which is especially true if you are driving a large vehicle. Contrasting Seattle with NYC, I have been in a fast lane (I-5) in tight traffic with my turn signal on and I was effortlessly allowed over 5 lanes to make an exit within a mile from when I first realized the need. There is a lesson here which I will leave my gentle readers to consider.
I've learned that interacting with my foreign passengers was more meaningful than maybe even visiting their home cities. I have been a tourist in Canada, Mexico, Germany, and the Republic of Georgia and have found that it's hard to break through in big cities to common people unless in unique circumstances, like staying in a friends home instead of a hotel. I used to drive summertime cross country tours, composed of passengers from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia and we shared the experience over the length of the tour (23 days). I remember dropping off my passengers at the World War II Memorial in Washington DC and having an elderly passenger from Scotland who wouldn't get off to see the memorial. She thought they were the foolishness of a young country and would rather stay in her cushioned seat. She said "if we had a memorial in our country for every war, there would be no room for anything else!" It was an amusing perspective of which I had never considered.
I remember receiving a hard time from my New Zealand passengers when I made the faux pau of saying that their country was located "just off the African coast." I received a map of the world at the end of the tour, with New Zealand highlighted (lol).
When I drove LDS history tours in Vermont, New York and Pennsylvania, I saw the humor and humanity of a mysterious religious group (to me) in those first tours, which was gratifying. One particular guy espied my drinking a fully caffienated diet Dr Pepper, who negotiated one of them from me on the sly. It was like we were doing a drug deal, because LDS doctrine proscribes the consumption of caffienated beverages. Considering that it was a LDS tour of seminary teachers, it was especially humorous to me. Knowing these people away from the image of bicycle riding missionaries in black dress slacks, white shirts and ties was interesting, as I found most of them to be the salt of the earth.
I was involved with the evacuation of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of tour bus drivers slept in their idling tour buses, waiting for the chance to evacuate the Super Dome. Ten of us got the call and we lined up behind the escort national guard vehicles. We were told to keep tightly bunched behind the lead vehicle, and so we drove through deserted suburban streets, past storm damaged buildings and dead traffic signals at speeds of up to 60 mph. We slowed while approaching the bridge crossing the Mississippi river from the south, and saw soldiers dressed in battle fatigues, guarding the approach with M-16's. We crossed the bridge and saw the hurricane battered Super Dome as the dominate feature of the city, with a blacked roof without its gleaming tiles. We drove toward it and exited just before the overpass where civilians wandered and died for lack of food and water. It was eerie entering the city, driving in streets with a foot of water and people wandering aimlessly with the possessions they carried while holding the leashes of beloved pets. We pulled around, and positioned our buses in a line and then waited for our turn. In this line of buses, a mother and her child were wandering within twenty yards of the line and then she helped her daughter urinate within sight of us all. There is little modesty in such situations and I felt so bad for them both. When it was my turn, I pulled the bus up to the spot and opened my doors. National Guard troops brought boxes of MRE and packs of bottled water and placed them on the front seats, throwing cardboard boxes and plastic packaging in the water....floating down the street. The people came from the darkness of the Dome and had to walk through a foot of nasty water in order to board my bus, as I welcomed them aboard with a smile, an MRE and a bottle of water (first food and water in 24 hours, because they had to stay in line to get out). In my mind, I would treat them as well as any passenger I had every transported.
They had the first air conditioning since the storm and I provided movies for them to watch as we drove toward Texas. We left the city in groups of five buses without knowing where we were going, until a transfer point in the care of the Louisiana State Highway Patrol. Many on the bus assumed we were headed for Houston because that is where weakened family members had gone the day before. I was told to not stop my bus at any time and to keep in formation...as we headed for Dallas (oh my). We made it across the Texas border and were guided into the first Texas Rest Area more than five hours later. I was never so proud of my country as I was then, as the Rest Area was set up with food stands from various restaurants and a triage tent for those who were sick or injured. As I helped at the bus door, giving a hand to the weakened passengers, I received the best compliment in a 17 year driving career: "You know how to treat people." It was from a poor elderly African American man with whom I held almost nothing in common. I am as proud with that moment as any award I ever received, including graduating Summa Cum Laude from Emporia State University last December.
I'm sorry to be so long winded.
I was a tour bus driver for many years before returning to college decades after high school. I used to specialize in cross country tours starting in New York City and ending on the Santa Monica Pier in California.
What did I learn?
I learned that driving in eastern big cities like New York, you have to be aggressive if you need to get in the correct lane headed for the Lincoln tunnel. You have to ignore years of defensive driving learned in the West, and just start moving over without a turn signal. Turn signals are treated as a weakness on freeways like those near New York City, and the other drivers will speed up to prevent you from getting in front of them, which is especially true if you are driving a large vehicle. Contrasting Seattle with NYC, I have been in a fast lane (I-5) in tight traffic with my turn signal on and I was effortlessly allowed over 5 lanes to make an exit within a mile from when I first realized the need. There is a lesson here which I will leave my gentle readers to consider.
I've learned that interacting with my foreign passengers was more meaningful than maybe even visiting their home cities. I have been a tourist in Canada, Mexico, Germany, and the Republic of Georgia and have found that it's hard to break through in big cities to common people unless in unique circumstances, like staying in a friends home instead of a hotel. I used to drive summertime cross country tours, composed of passengers from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia and we shared the experience over the length of the tour (23 days). I remember dropping off my passengers at the World War II Memorial in Washington DC and having an elderly passenger from Scotland who wouldn't get off to see the memorial. She thought they were the foolishness of a young country and would rather stay in her cushioned seat. She said "if we had a memorial in our country for every war, there would be no room for anything else!" It was an amusing perspective of which I had never considered.
I remember receiving a hard time from my New Zealand passengers when I made the faux pau of saying that their country was located "just off the African coast." I received a map of the world at the end of the tour, with New Zealand highlighted (lol).
When I drove LDS history tours in Vermont, New York and Pennsylvania, I saw the humor and humanity of a mysterious religious group (to me) in those first tours, which was gratifying. One particular guy espied my drinking a fully caffienated diet Dr Pepper, who negotiated one of them from me on the sly. It was like we were doing a drug deal, because LDS doctrine proscribes the consumption of caffienated beverages. Considering that it was a LDS tour of seminary teachers, it was especially humorous to me. Knowing these people away from the image of bicycle riding missionaries in black dress slacks, white shirts and ties was interesting, as I found most of them to be the salt of the earth.
I was involved with the evacuation of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of tour bus drivers slept in their idling tour buses, waiting for the chance to evacuate the Super Dome. Ten of us got the call and we lined up behind the escort national guard vehicles. We were told to keep tightly bunched behind the lead vehicle, and so we drove through deserted suburban streets, past storm damaged buildings and dead traffic signals at speeds of up to 60 mph. We slowed while approaching the bridge crossing the Mississippi river from the south, and saw soldiers dressed in battle fatigues, guarding the approach with M-16's. We crossed the bridge and saw the hurricane battered Super Dome as the dominate feature of the city, with a blacked roof without its gleaming tiles. We drove toward it and exited just before the overpass where civilians wandered and died for lack of food and water. It was eerie entering the city, driving in streets with a foot of water and people wandering aimlessly with the possessions they carried while holding the leashes of beloved pets. We pulled around, and positioned our buses in a line and then waited for our turn. In this line of buses, a mother and her child were wandering within twenty yards of the line and then she helped her daughter urinate within sight of us all. There is little modesty in such situations and I felt so bad for them both. When it was my turn, I pulled the bus up to the spot and opened my doors. National Guard troops brought boxes of MRE and packs of bottled water and placed them on the front seats, throwing cardboard boxes and plastic packaging in the water....floating down the street. The people came from the darkness of the Dome and had to walk through a foot of nasty water in order to board my bus, as I welcomed them aboard with a smile, an MRE and a bottle of water (first food and water in 24 hours, because they had to stay in line to get out). In my mind, I would treat them as well as any passenger I had every transported.
They had the first air conditioning since the storm and I provided movies for them to watch as we drove toward Texas. We left the city in groups of five buses without knowing where we were going, until a transfer point in the care of the Louisiana State Highway Patrol. Many on the bus assumed we were headed for Houston because that is where weakened family members had gone the day before. I was told to not stop my bus at any time and to keep in formation...as we headed for Dallas (oh my). We made it across the Texas border and were guided into the first Texas Rest Area more than five hours later. I was never so proud of my country as I was then, as the Rest Area was set up with food stands from various restaurants and a triage tent for those who were sick or injured. As I helped at the bus door, giving a hand to the weakened passengers, I received the best compliment in a 17 year driving career: "You know how to treat people." It was from a poor elderly African American man with whom I held almost nothing in common. I am as proud with that moment as any award I ever received, including graduating Summa Cum Laude from Emporia State University last December.
I'm sorry to be so long winded.
