I crashed the bus today… I’m blaming Friday the 13th, or maybe I can blame my dad – he visited yesterday, and showed me how to drive the thing like a pro. No, I suppose I can’t blame anyone but myself!
I was feeling very confident in my bus driving abilities, and decided to take Noelle for a quick drive to show off my new skills. We hop in the bus, I pump the gas once, turned the key – BOOM! The bus lurches forward, slamming into the garage shelving unit. I left the stupid bus in gear and didn’t have the clutch pressed in when I started it up. What a freakin idiot!! I rush to check for damage – we obviously weren’t going at any speed, but I did crunch the plastic shelves pretty good. I enlarged the dent on the front panel a little, and bent one of the headlight rims, but other than that everything else seems ok. After I realized the damage was contained to the front panel that I’m planning on replacing anyway, I felt better – but then the gravity of what could have happened hit me. What if I had been in a parking lot? What if someone had been in front of me? WTF am I thinking?! My confidence was totally shaken, but there is some saying like “get back on the horse” … or something like that – We got back in the bus, and headed out into the parking lot. I shift smoothly now, I am in total control of the steering, braking – we round the second corner – Noelle’s door goes flying open! She’s screaming, I’m screaming, the guy walking his dog is looking at us like – “what are you doing you crazies”. I guess the door didn’t quite latch when we left the garage… either way, we had enough fun for today, time to call it a night!
Lesson learned, and I’m sure this will save me from some tragedy down the road – I will never start the bus without the clutch, and I will PAY ATTENTION – Happy Friday the 13th!
