Finally I Drive a Bus (Oops, it is a Motor Coach not a Bus!)!

A few things have happened since I wrote last. First, I had to take my physical over. When the doctor in  New Jersey filled out the health certificate he overwrote a number, changing a 2 to a 3. That did it. The health certificate was rejected and I had to go to the clinic and get another physical so I could get a new certificate. That threw me behind by a couple of days.
Some of this time was spent learning to do pre-trip inspections. This is an inspection of almost every aspect of the motor coach (buses are for school kids). It is a 312 item list of things to check and requires us to look at everything from the engine to the rest room and the brakes to the lights. It is good because there will be 55 souls on the bus (@%*/# motor coach) that we are responsible for, so we want to make sure all is safe. So we have been outside walking around a bus for a two and a half hour training session, walking on ice and snow, putting your hands on all of these metal things and it is 16 above!
We also had two evening sessions with lecturers from outside the company. One was from the University of Alaska and was an expert in the Boreal Forest. Very interesting stuff, explained a lot about why the ice cap is melting, permafrost, and bugs that attack forests.
The other was by a columnist for the Fairbanks News-Miner (local newspaper) who talked about the history of Fairbanks. For example, did you know that 30% of the houses in Fairbanks do not have running water? (Read no sewage system, no water in the kitchen, no hot water, no washing machines, some have no electricity). If you look in the want ads for houses for rent there will be postings for "dry" cabins or houses. This means no water. Many are out on the fringes of Fairbanks where they have not run utilities, often because the permafrost makes it hard to keep the pipes in the ground, since the ground is frozen, the water in the pipes tends to freeze also.
Both were very interesting.
But today, finally, I got to actually drive a motor coach (some people call them buses). We (my instructor drove) went over to the parking lot of a defunct K-Mart. They have set up what they call a skills course with lots of little red cones around to simulate things like parallel parking, a slolom course, turning corners, backing into simulated alleys...things like that. I got to practice stopping so my front bumper was exactly lined up with a cone, then we did it backing up and making the rear bumper exactly line up with the cone. And we tried the slolom. I never got over 5 miles per hour! The biggest problem of the day is that this parking lot is really an ice rink. And there have been buses (even motor coaches) driving over it so it is even slickerer. Even at 5MPH when you want to turn you slide all over.
But even at 5MPH it was still fun to get behind the wheel of the coach and make it do things, even if it was sliding on the ice. We will be driving in most of the training sessions from now on.
More later.