Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507310072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
For Jim Higham, the question was not his long ball, but his left turn. Not the outfield fly, but the offset street.
Navigating these obstacles in his 40-foot Flxible without knocking down bright orange cones is a serious matter for this 26-year-old lawn-maintenance operator. He's Blacksburg's champion bus driver.
Bus driver?
You got it. Saturday and today, bus drivers from around the state are getting together for an event formally called the 1995 Virginia Operations and Maintenance Roadeo, held this year at Blacksburg Transit headquarters in the Blacksburg Industrial Park. It's a gathering of the tribe, so to speak, where people can compare life cruising college lanes with life gunning interstate lanes, debate the merits of a 35-foot bus against a 40-foot bus, or simply consider the nuances of making wide turns.
"Some people enjoy that first whiff of diesel exhaust in the morning," said Mike Connelly, who came to Blacksburg to launch BT in 1982. "It just gets you started."
Saturday was practice for the weekend competition. T-shirt-clad drivers sipped soft drinks, swapped transit company pins and waited for a chance to try the course. Drivers compete in 35-foot buses and 40-foot buses, while mechanics have a competition of their own.
Aboard a Valley Metro, the official model for this year's 35-foot competition, three-time state champ J.L. Johnson took the wheel. Bus roadeo guru Milton Woodhouse, transportation manager for Johnson's company, Tidewater Regional Transit, rode shotgun. During Saturday's practice, drivers were allowed some coaching.
Johnson honked his horn, then backed up between two rows of cones with six inches to spare on either side. Jean Sill, one of the dispatchers, twisted around to look out the window and see how close he had come to a back cone.
"Perfect," she whispered.
Maybe he'll give a repeat performance today, when it gets serious: Bus drivers arise, don official bus-driving uniforms and spend the day seeing who's the best bus driver in the state.
The winner takes home a gleaming gold trophy with a bus perched on top, plus a trip to San Antonio, Texas, for the international competition in October.
"That's serious," said Higham, in his official white polo-style BT shirt. "You're up against New York City, the union guys with patches all down [their sleeves]. It's intimidating for us little guys."
But the "little guys" - the college-town drivers from Blacksburg and Charlottesville who drive buses for extra school money - were in fine form Saturday. The "big guys" - the drivers from Tidewater Regional Transit or the Pentran in Newport News - have been at it for years.
Like Johnson. He can halt a 35-footer going 20 mph just six inches from a cone. No sweat.
Whether from a large metro transit conglomerate or a small-town bus company, one thing these people have in common: They really like buses.
"If you have buses in your blood, diesel molecules in your blood, you get into it. As a child, I rode buses to school," said Connelly, explaining his career choice.
"I am a bus junkie," declared Leonard McCants, who grew up in Washington, D.C. "My grandmother would take me on a bus, and we would go to G Street Fabrics, or Woodie's downtown.
"I would sit behind the bus driver and watch him open the door," said McCants, a University of Virginia student driving Saturday for University Transit of Charlottesville.
Like the Blacksburg system - a joint Virginia Tech-town venture - the Charlottesville bus system claims many student drivers.
"I like to drive on a pretty day," McCants said. "Like today. It's a way to make money and procrastinate at the same time."
College-town drivers also find it's a social statement.
"If you go out with a couple of bus drivers to a bar, people will come up to you and say, 'Hey. You're the bus driver,''' Higham said.
Or they'll offer suggestions.
```Hey, the Tom's Creek route would be better if you moved the stop up a block,' they'll tell you," Connelly said.
For the truly devoted, it's also a state of mind. Connelly calls it "the Zen of Bus Driving." That's how you win roadeos.
"It's all in your head ... It depends on what you ate for breakfast. You become one with the bus, so the bus is an extension of who you are, right then," Connelly said.
"You see, once you reach Zen Bus Driving, you can take that right mirror and just break it off. I know where that back right tire is," Higham said.
McCants listened intently, but he had to be candid.
"I don't know if I'm there," he said.
by CNB