Sunday, July 8, 2012

Training Almost Complete

Had a great 4th of July last week. Watched the fireworks in San Fran with my VIP's. Also had a great work week. Got in some very important driving time during training. I got all of my 20 hours completed now I can finally take my test and go cadet. I'll be taking my test on Tuesday and hopefully that same day ill be out doing revenue with the route 29 to El Cerrito/Calistoga. It's about a 4 1/2 hour route and we have to cadet each route twice before we can drive solo so I want to get the long routes out of the way first.

After we finish cadetting we get a $2 raise so I can't wait to get that. I was told it'll take me about 2 weeks to finish getting each route twice so I'm trying to get the ball rolling ASAP. We won't be able to test tomorrow because CHP will be doing an inspection on the buses tomorrow so we have to wait until Tuesday which is fine I guess. I feel like I'm ready with nothing to worry about I just want to do it as soon as possible. Everyone in my class including my boss knows how eager I am to get out there and get out of training. He even told me yesterday that I've impressed him so much despite my age and my inexperience that he's gonna really hold me accountable when I make mistakes because he feels I know so much. And I'm good with that because when I came into this I wanted to show how serious I was and how much I want this.
I've made my presence felt and I'm happy to say I'm the youngest person they've ever hired. I didn't think I'd like working for napa vine/veolia but I'm prepared to wait however long I need to as long as I'm working now as opposed to sitting on the couch weeks ago.  

My boss tells me everyday how much potential he sees in me and how much I can grow in this company. It's good to hear someone tell me that and I'm excited I really like working for Veolia in my short time but my eyes are still on the big prize which is with AC Transit. I actually talked with someone at AC the other day and they told me I'd miss this second consecutive class that starts tomorrow but I should be in the next one in a few weeks or whenever they have it. But I'm not really worried about it like I was a few weeks ago. I was pretty happy this week I got to drive the 40 foot commuter buses they bought from SamTrans. They use those on the route 29 and school trippers. I also got to drive the 35 and 40 foot New Flyers. It was fun driving the 35 footer. Its a Hybrid bus with Deisel/Electric. The only thing I hated about it was when I take my foot off the gas it completely stops instead of slows down. I drove the 40 footer to Sonoma for our new route 25 that we start tomorrow. The 40 footer was so slow it would only reach 55 miles per hour and I was cruising in that. While one of my classmates was driving to Calistoga the glass to the headsign shattered into pieces. It was crazy we were just driving, didn't hit anything and all you hear is a big pop sound and glass falling in front of us. I cant lie I was scared at first because I didnt know what it was. I thought it was the CNG tank that burst on top of the bus until we stopped. So thats by far the craziest thing I've encountered.