lx_tech

Ah, the day off after a travel day. I had quite the travel experience this week as the guy who takes care of monitoring the bus for our tour coordinator. We don't usually arrange for our own buses and flights because we have a separate department at the corporate offices that deals with this sort of thing and they will sometimes go through a sightseeing company to get the arrangements made. This week the third party sightseeing company arranged for two bus companies to pick us up at the same location in College Station, TX to bring us to Laredo, TX. This is the first time in two years that I've seen this particular problem, but one of the bus drivers who arrived said he's seen in a lot before through the company that we were using. So, we made some phone calls and the travel company told us which bus they would like us to use.

The start to my load out travel day before the bus included a different miscommunication about septic dumps for the living trailers. I thought I'd seen a company come through earlier in the week and take care of things, but I was mistaken. So, I went to work thinking my trailer had been skipped and I was talking to our lead truck driver about how I wanted to meet the driver for my trailer this week and coordinate dumping my septic at the on site dump station, which is not something we usually have around. As I was talking to him we saw the guy who arranges all of the septic and he had assumed that someone else had already talked to our driver earlier in the week about dumping all of the living trailers as they left the lot, which they had not talked to anyone about. So, I was lucky enough that none of the septic had gotten dumped and the guy in charge of it was going to stay around until all of the trailers left and had to dump all of the black water tanks. I was very happy not to have get my gloves out and deal with that stinky mess from my bathroom.

So, the next miscommunication was the two buses arriving. Once we got everyone on board the bus I always take a head count and look around to confirm that everyone I'm supposed to have on the bus is present. I came up with 14 heads, which is a little under average, but some people had already talked to me about alternate transportation. I arranged for the bus to make a stop for dinner in town at an Outback Steakhouse and because the houses were late leaving and they can only travel 60mph or less down the highway we had some time to waste. I usually give everyone one hour to get dinner, but we stretched it out to a possible hour and a half. I got back to the bus around an hour and 15 minutes and I did a head count. I got 13 heads and the occupied light was on at the bus bathroom, so I counted one person in the bathroom without checking to see if they were in there.

The bus left the parking lot and about 10 miles down the road I noticed that the occupied light was still lit and nobody had gone in or come out of the bathroom, which is quite unusual. As I was headed to the back of the bus to check things out, someone else stopped me and asked where one of the guys was and I told them I was checking on if he was in the bathroom. It turns out that he wasn't in the bathroom at all and we had to turn the bus around. When we arrived back at the restaurant we were just in time to see him crossing the street with a six pack in his hand and he headed into a hotel. He had assumed that he had been left behind and he was prepared to stay the night and figure it out in the morning because he is one of the few that doesn't have a cell phone on the show. Some of the guys are now going to buy him a prepaid phone for this type of occasion even though it's the first time in 2 years that I've left anyone behind it is still a good idea to have these sorts of things.

The bus we had this week had more than just a problem with the bathroom occupied light. The driver was from Laredo, TX and barely spoke any english, but luckily we had someone who speaks a little bit more of english than the driver and was able to translate. The front two windows had broken seals on the double pane windows, which meant that they looked all foggy and dirty from the inside because of rain water. I heard the next day that some of the guys in the back had discovered another window in the back that has water IN the window that was sloshing around because it had a lead as well. I think I also remember the front windshield having some minor cracks as well and the front door sounded like it had some noise leaks because the road noise in the front was really loud.

Our bus trip lasted from about 9PM until 5AM with a long stop for dinner and a short stop to stretch and let everyone buy some drinks and snacks. We watched The Blood of Beasts, I think it was, which turned out to be a version of beauty and the beast set in a viking village. It was a pretty entertaining low budget B rate fantasy type film from the mid to late 90's. I got some broken sleep on the bus and once we arrived and I got my trailer set-up and cooled down I crawled into bed for a couple hours before my phone woke me up because the fuel delivery for our generator had arrived and I needed to coordinate that and sign for the first delivery. I then proceeded to go back to my trailer and fall asleep for a little while longer, but I felt like a bum and pretty useless all day long.

So, today is the day after our morning arrival and I had a good night's sleep last night, but I'm not sure what to do when the temperatures outside are up over 100 degrees by 9am and it won't drop lower until around 9 or 10PM tonight. I have work tomorrow, so I won't go out too late tonight, but maybe I'll go out a little bit later if others are willing to brave the heat with me. I hope everyone is having a good start to their week as I wrap up my sort of weekend.