The Green Tortoise Part XIV

My hair is finally clean. My skin refreshed. Being clean never felt so good. I turn my head quickly and get whiffs of grapefruit and rosewood leaving a lingering trail from my dark brown locks. Ah, such luxury in the wilderness. How refreshing.

Across the parking lot, the wounded vehicle stands alone in the distance. She is broken. A giant red tool box sits open at her tail, parts spread out ready to be handed to the tour bus driver and now, mechanic , Driver Dave. His white legs stick out from the back of the bus as Rory, a blond haired blue-eyed nineteen year old British guy squats down handing tools as requested. Cassie is pacing. She walks thirty-six feet south to the end of the bus then stops, pivots on her right foot and walks the same distance back as she talks on her cell phone.

Driver Dave has been a professional driver with the Green Tortoise for more than ten years. Next month he turns forty and has decided this will be his last season on the road. Come the fall, he will be working out of the main office for the company trouble-shooting phone calls from drivers like Cassie. This is the last summer where he will be underneath a 26,000 pound vehicle in the parking lot of the Grand Teton's National Park.

The giant silver and green bus is really leaning to one side now. The passenger side is much higher than the driver's side. Driver Dave has propped a spare tire underneath the bus near where he is working to prevent it from crushing him.

I shake my head laughing to myself as I return to the bus. God, this bus is just like the Malibu Stacey Funtime Camper; unreliable.

As one of the first passengers to return to the bus, I am assigned the task to keep everyone off the bus as they return from the showers. Cassie put the phone down for a second and tell us to start pulling luggage out of the cargo bay.

"This is not a good sign." I say to Val and she nods in agreement as we extract over-sized backpacks and duffel bags tossing them like professional airport baggage handlers to the side of the road.

A cluster of cumulonimbus clouds gathers in the west. I recognize them from white water rafting. It is the same storm we left behind in Idaho and it seems to be following us. The clouds are thick and heavy with chilling rain drops. As I lift and throw seventy-five pound bags, I ask God, out loud, why I decided to take this trip. This is a question I ask myself many times during the remaining ten days.

"There are worse places to be broken down, Linda." Donna says as she organizes the bags we toss out of the bay. She is a happy person by nature and the children mirror her cheery disposition. Although it is not enough to lift the mood to those of us who dread the thought of being broken down on the side of the road.

Most of the passengers have finished with their showers and are returning to the bus asking for information.

"Hey, what's happening?" Joe asks in his thick New York accent.

"The bus is broken, but I'm sure it isn't serious." Donna says confidently. "These buses have great mechanics in San Francisco and are well looked after." She explains to the children working to keep the spreading anxiety of the adults away from the children. She's been on six Green Tortoise trips so sshe has the experience to back-up her comments.

As Driver Dave emerges from below the bus, another tour bus, The Adventure Bus, pulls into the parking lot and slows down to a crawl as they drive by, staring at us like a side-show attraction. Driver Dave and Cassie sneer at the drivers of the Adventure Bus.

"Those guys think they're so cool." Cassie says. "Well, they're not."

Adventure Bus was started in 1997 by a group of former Green Tortoise bus drivers. Their tour bus interior is identical in design to the Green Tortoise but they are different. Unlike the Green Tortoise which pushes to have full capacity trips, the Adventure Bus limit on the number of passengers allowed on the bus, which is much lower than the Green Tortoise. The Adventure bus averages fifteen to twenty passengers per trip where as the Green Tortoise pushes for thirty-six passengers and has been known to regularly over-book trips. Carol shared a horror story about one trip she was on that had forty-four passengers!

Oh sweet Jesus! I felt crammed on this tour and our group was only twenty-seven. Forty-four people all on this one little bus? I asked where they all slept and Carol said t hey doubled up on the bunks above and were much tighter in the big bed.

Yikes!

To be continued...
So much love,
All the way from....you know where...
Linda