Earth Day

I was driving a route in St. Paul today when I noticed colors falling out of the sky in my left hand mirror. I was unable to figure out what I was looking at. When I looked in the overhead mirror for a different perspective I noticed a couple of boys looking, too. Then I noticed what I had seen was a couple of pieces of paper. Garbage out the window is not something we can tolerate as its one of the bus offenses that actually violates the law! So I go to the back of the bus and ask whose paper it was. You can count on the other kids to always point them out. I tell him he needs to ride up front now because you littered on EARTH DAY! And the other kids had various reactions to this comment. Some reactions interesting.

We were about to get under way again when I asked the whole bus - "Raise your hand if you care about Earth day". One kid raises his hand. "Raise your hand if you DON'T CARE about Earth Day". Everyone raises their hands and shouted. I applauded them.

I think there is still hope.

Warlord

On my way home from the license bureau I stopped at Half Priced Books to flip through old comics, an activity I find therapeutic. I found 8 old Warlord comics I didn't have!

After entering them into the database I did a run on my comic collection statistics. Warlord is now the title I have the most issues of at 86 (of 133). Nearly 100% of those are purchases from Halfpriced Books or other cheap bins over the last couple of years. Also and a good deal of tracking which issues I already have has helped.

This month DC Comics re-launched the title! They attempted to launch a reboot of the series a few years ago and that was a complete fail. This new relaunch continues the original comic and is written by the same guy who created the book.

Warlord's setting is heavily inspired and pays heavy homage to Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar series which is set in the Hollow Earth. Warlord has more fantasy and science fiction elements than that of Pellucidar. The original comic ran from 1976 till the mid '80s.

In the savage world of Skartaris, life is a constant struggle for survival. Here, beneath an unblinking orb of eternal sunlight, one simple law prevails: If you let down your guard for an instant you will soon be very dead.

—1st Issue Special #8

One man's trash is another's treasure. It's amazing what you can find in those cheap bins.

Air-Brakes

One week ago I returned back to the base having finished some St. Paul School route to discover the cabal of bosses thought I was driving and training people air-brake buses without having an air-brake endorsement on my license.

It appears that the State of Minnesota issued me a license granting me the privilege of driving air-brake commercial vehicles even though I was not trained or tested on them. For the first two years at Monarch Bus Service I correctly did my job having some recall about not having the air-brake endorsement and it wasn't until last August when I joined the training department that anyone even looked at my license. When I was in the process of becoming a trainer I correctly assumed I had to go test, but someone looked and saw that my license stated Restrictions: None meaning that I was OK to drive any school bus. So I figured I was mistaken. Alright then, I guess I am Ok to drove air-brakes.

Well the State's error surfaced and now its on me to correct it. This small fact has made the training schedule complicated as the training needs to be done on a vehicle I can't drive or take trainees out on until the problem is corrected.

I went to the test facility up on 35W and County Rd. I as per my friend/co-worker, Melissa's advice. I sat in the parking lot and read the whole air-brake chapter. Went in and aced the pretrip test and missed 4 of the 25 questions on the air brake test successfully passing that one, too. It felt good lifting that weight off my back.

Now I just have to do the Behind the Wheel test.

Saturday

It was a good Saturday. Jack and Leesha playing in the yard with the neighbor kids today.

It was a good Saturday. Jack and Leesha playing in the yard with the neighbor kids today.

Cara's folks came over so Cara and I could go on a date for dinner. My folks gave us a gift card to a place called Sgt. Pepper's. Great place, OK food, HUGE servings. We don't do that often enough. After dinner we drove around a bit and took a walk in a park down by Battle Creek. It was really nice.