Road Trip?

On Saturday, Tim and I took a different kind of road trip. We both have our commercial drivers licenses now, and Holland America wants us to get more practice time on the coaches, so they told us to take one out on a little trip, for about five hours. It was great fun! We took one of the Explorer models, which were brand new last year I believe. They are very nice. They are bigger than the regular "ghetto" motor coaches, but they hold fewer people because of the enormous amount of legroom at every seat. We drove one of those, #1803, the whale bus, first over to Karen's house. There we picked up her piano, because it would not fit in Rachelle's car, and we also picked her up. We just ran her up to the Marriott Center, where she had to work. She got chauffeured in a 45 foot limo basically. It was fun. After we left the Marriott Center, we drove up Provo Canyon to Heber, and then on to Park City. There was not a lot to see in Park City, but we switched drivers there, and we fixed the mirror. It seemed that the arm had come loose, and so the whole thing would slowly wobble away from the side of the bus, making the mirrors completely useless on the right side. That is bad in a bus!

In Park City, we changed drivers, and I drove from there to Morgan. Tim passed out for the hour. Canyons are kind of interesting in coaches, because even though the posted truck speed may be 55 mph, it is a lot more comfortable to take the turns at 45mph. So the canyons are a bit slow. The bus is capable of taking turns faster, but passengers get angry if the ride is too rough, so we practice doing everything as smooth as humanly possible.

Morgan is a fairly small town. They are proud to not have any traffic lights. Needless to say, a vehicle as big as a motor coach was a little unusual in that town. Well we drove across town, and over to the Brooks's place. I came in from the other side, so I did not recognize the house, and we drove all the way to the end of the street and had to turn the bus around. Luckily we found an intersection we could use. We drove back, and the kids were out in the driveway, but I don't think they recognized us. We turned around again, and parked the bus in front of their house, and then got out. The kids wanted to see inside, so we let them come aboard. Sister Brooks came with them, and they all looked at everything inside the bus. The examined everything, including the bathroom and the arm and foot rests, the reclining seats, and even the controls at the driver's seat. They all got a chance to blow the horn, and let all the neighbors know that there was a bus out front, for those who had not already seen us drive by. After their tour of the coach, we shut it down, and went inside. A few minutes later, Chet came home, and he also wanted to see the coach, so we opened it back up. This time, the kids were the tour guides for Chet! They showed him everything they had discovered on their previous look inside. Then the question that I had almost been waiting for came. I was expecting one of the boys to ask, but it was actually Chet who said, "Is it possible for us to go for a ride?" Tim and I decided that a short trip around the block would be okay, and we fired the bus back up and took them on a short trip. Tim drove, and I answered questions. Once around the block, we parked the bus in front of the house again, and shut it back down. We went back inside to visit a bit.

Inside we sat down and ate a little dinner, and talked with the kids. They thought it was great that there was a bus at their house. They couldn't stop talking abou it! As we ate, some of the neighbors, especially their kids, started to wander over to the house to see what was going on with the bus. We slowly had a lot of people asking us questions. That was the most popular house in town that afternoon! When we finished eating, once again, the question was asked, "can we go for a ride?" We decided to do one more trip around the block, and all the kids seemed to follow us to the bus. We fired it back up and got everyone on board. Once everyone was seated, we got underway, and took the same short trip around the block as we had previously done. The kids thought it was great again. It was a lot of fun. When we got back to the house, we stayed around for a few more minutes, but it came time to head out. From there, we drove back to Provo. Time drove us to West Jordan, where I took over for the remainder of the trip to Provo. It was an enjoyable Saturday afternoon. We will be doing another trip next weekend, but I think we are going to go to Manti this time.