The Jammer Confidential Chronicles have begun. Life changing. For you.

Got the call from Glacier Transportation – Mr. Dave Eglsaer himself.  Master Jammer and boss-man for the last 20 years plus. AND I heard he won a random Jammers Olympic event in the late1990s. Yep, offered me the job of a 2022 Red Bus Driver.  Sounded like a slam dunk.  But nothing is that easy.  It actually was a little touch and go.

Xanterra, the concession that runs the park, is all about having you sign a contract with inflexible start/end dates.   It’s been done that way for a hundred years in the NP seasonal work biz.  But my availability is tied to the school year.  That’s a mid-June to Labor Day schedule, which is not optimal for the powers that be.

All FIRST YEAR Red Bus folks have a mandatory two-week training period.  One five-day week of onboarding and HR and keeping it all legal stuff.  A second 5-day week of getting your Class C Montana CDL (for vehicle over 10k lbs.), driving up and down that scary road with someone who will keep you from crashing a half-million-dollar vintage bus, and getting your tour down. 

You have to be kidding me.  I can’t make the early June training window, or I’d miss the last two weeks of school (I couldn’t be that big of a dick to my fellow school drivers regardless of pandemic labor shortages).  The late June training window is a no-go, unless I agree to work thru the end of September. Isn’t going to happen.

I’m so

ed

As deep sorrow and sadness began to slowly wash over me, like an old man lowering himself into a hot bath, Dave said “Hey, what if….”   So, say I bail out of the SECOND to the last week of school for the first half of training.  Considering I have my Class B CDL (26,500 lb. and up), gave him 10k of shuttle miles last summer, and did ‘drive the wall’ successfully (rite of passage, first time over the Sun Road in a Jammer), I can skip the second week.  Finish up the LAST week of school for the summer, then come up to speed over next weekend and hit the Glacier tour circuit running.

Trying to comprehend all of this complex math gave me an instant nosebleed.  Liked I just solved cold fusion. But yes, yes it will work.  The paperwork is in the mail.  I’ll be based on the east side, which is a hiker’s paradise.  The campground Xanterra bought there in 2019 is a palace compared to where I stayed last summer (ah, the Coram RV Park, which makes a Calcutta slum feel like an all-inclusive Sandals).  And it has GREAT views.  Hard to believe they pay the king’s ransom of twelve bucks and hour (only ten bones last year – the pandemic works!).