‘We just lost the moon’ (Part 3) Because of a school bus? No!

Actually, I did pull a total Apollo 13 this time.

I knew going into the summer that I would have to take off two days and return home before my contract ended. Why? Because our school district has a mandatory In-Service day for all school bus drivers. It normally falls around the last week of August. I lose a big-mile hiking day.

And since we are going back to standard routes versus last year’s covid routes, I need to dry run my new stops and wash, gas, check chains and make sure no one cannibalized anything from my bus that I haven’t driven for the last year and a half. I lose another big-mile hiking day.

These are two key-late season days in Glacier Park. Why, because with the sunny late-August weather in the park, this would have given my hard-skinny finely-tune sinuous-grisly hiking machine of a body the trail hours needed to reach the 500-mile mark. Ah, but not to be. Instead, Glacier-Dave does school bus miles instead of trail miles. Just not the same. Expect I did them alone (sniffle) like everything else this summer.

As I run my route, I swing thru a parking lot (on the way) to say Hi to my son Mitch while he is at work as a cook. His manager came out and asked me if I was a school bus driver. No, I just stole this thing for fun. And I’m car-jacking an 80s Volvo station wagon this afternoon if you want to tag along. Dummy.

A little local place in the Spokane Valley. https://www.yelp.com/biz/boomers-classic-rock-bar-and-grill-spokane-valley

At the end of the day (or rather, two days), I felt like was back to a ‘normal’ life. But the seasonal blood was still pulsing thru my veins. I have another 50 to 80 miles in me yet. It was kind of like coming home on R&R leave when you are on the front lines of a world war. OK, nothing like that. Ah, but something.

I guess what I’m trying to say, it made me ask myself what the ‘real’ world was. These couple of months with total strangers, drinking in life one day at a time thru a firehose? Or that feeling like you are living off the slow drip of an IV, just waiting to die?

Hmm. that came out even worse. But look how the bright color of National School Bus Glossy Yellow (yes, it is an actual paint code), pops against the green of the European Mountain Ash and and Blue Alpine Fir in my front yard! Go team Wing! Plus blocking the driveway of our house, just to make the neighbors talk.