I know it's been forever and a day since I last blogged. I'm sorry for that, but I'm blogging now.

It's my first day back at work and I was hoping that it would be a chill, relaxing day. Unfortunately god hates me and I can NEVER have a normal day at work.

Anyhow, I'm leaving the terminus; I have an hour and a half left in my shift when suddenly I lose primary air pressure. I'm on the on ramp about to merge onto a six lane street. I pull the bus over, shut it down and wait for it to build air. Nope, god really hates me. I end up losing secondary air pressure. I then call communications. Twenty minutes later they answer the phone. Their response is for me to bleed all the air out of the bus in the hopes that it'll build air from scratch. I tried explaining that the compressor isn't working and regardless of what I do, the bus won't build air pressure. They're adamant. "Just try it, and it'll probably work".

So I block the wheels and bleed the air out. Eventually the brakes dynamite (when you have low enough air pressure the emergency brakes automatically apply. They're spring brakes so unless you have enough air to release them, you're hooped.) I wait six minutes (normally it takes less than three to build the air up to 110 psi) and the air pressure is still 40 psi. At this point I'm half an hour behind schedule and the bus behind me is leaving. I get off my bus and guide him past me. He has about three inches to spare between my bus and the curb but he made it by.

I call communications back saying that the air hasn't built at all and the bus is now stuck. I have about an hour left in my shift, communications replies that they'll send a replacement bus and to run it out. That's bus talk for continuing on and pretending that you're on time.

By the time I get my replacement bus I'm an hour late. I pick up a total of six people. It costs about a thousand bucks to send a replacement bus out, plus they had to pay me the overtime. Was it really worth it? I wasn't the last bus, I wasn't leaving anyone stranded. Sometimes I don't understand the people who are in control. It would have saved them about 1500 bucks if they had sent me home early. And I would have gotten to go home early which is always great.