Terror on the high seas...
There are not words to describe the kind of day I had yesterday.
We knew the field trip would not end well. Three buses, 120 students, twelve hours, copper mine (we aren’t mining engineers for a reason!), an assignment, all for a course we’re taking next semester.
The buses leave school at 7 am. Immediately we begin driving south, when the mine is northeast. We meander through Vancouver and Burnaby, before picking up more students at a second pick-up point. We were to pick them up at 7:30. Time of arrival? 8:05. We weren’t even on the highway yet, and we were significantly behind schedule.
Our bus was in the lead, and we kept having to pull off on the highway so that the second bus could catch up. We never saw the third bus at all, until we were almost at the mine and heard (via radio) that it had got lost entirely. We sat on the shoulder at length, and ate lunch.
Our bus arrived at the mine at 12:15, where as we were scheduled to arrive by 11. A mine person got on the bus, to give us a tour as we drove around. He read esoteric details to us and couldn’t answer our questions. This is the biggest copper mine in the country. They have one civil engineer on staff. The purpose of our trip was what, again?
The mine was dusty. Silty and sandy and I’m allergic. We saw some pretty impressive pits-there are two, some 800 metres deep and a kilometre across. We took photographs of enormous tires. They turned the ventilation off in the bus because of the dust, and it was stifling. It was dusty anyways, and I coughed and sneezed ad nauseum.
We did see about 20 wild horses, and a very large earthen dam. We left at 4:30 (departure scheduled for 3 pm) and drove into Logan Lake, a one-horse town near the mine. On the way in, we’d seen a ramshackle motel/restaurant structure, and a friend commented, “Maybe we’re having supper there!”
We did. And they decided to reorganize the buses, so about a dozen of us got kicked off our bus, and we had to wait for the third bus, which was clear on the other side of the mine, some 15 kilometres of gravel road away. We sat on the curb outside of the Logan Lake Motor Inn with our bags and hardhats and ate sandwiches out of brown paper bags.
The bus driver of the third bus was terrible. He’d hit the gas, and let go. Hit the gas and let go. Repeatedly. Every five seconds or so. The bus shook back and forth and from side to side, and we all got carsick. The driver did, however, stop at a cold beer and wine store in Logan Lake and I bet it got more business than it’s seen in years. Although it added time to our trip, we were pretty thankful, because by then, we needed a drink.
At the tollbooth on the Coquihalla, at 7 pm, when we were scheduled to arrive back at school, we pulled over to use the restrooms, but there was a bathroom on the bus, and we realized that, actually, we were pulling over so the driver could smoke. Most of us took advantage of the facilities, because a person couldn’t walk down the aisle of our bus without clutching at seats and other people and looking like they were drunk (even before the beer), because the bus jerked around so terribly much. So we huddled on the side of the road in the dark and shivered.
We’d thought the driver was bad on the highway. On city streets in Vancouver, with actual traffic to contend with, he was worse. We moaned and held our stomachs. We jerked to and fro, and a few times, he hit the brakes so hard, we nearly went through the seats in front of us. I have a rather large bruise on my right knee because of that.
People began requesting to be let out at various places along Broadway. We simply could not deal with this any longer. The bus arrived at school at 9:40… the earlier buses arrived at 9 pm.
Needless to say, I did not watch Supernatural last night. But I have a TV schedule for today: 4 pm, hockey (we did get a game update yesterday at the liquor store and heard that the Canucks were up 3-0), and at 7 pm, Supernatural on the Space channel.
We knew the field trip would not end well. Three buses, 120 students, twelve hours, copper mine (we aren’t mining engineers for a reason!), an assignment, all for a course we’re taking next semester.
The buses leave school at 7 am. Immediately we begin driving south, when the mine is northeast. We meander through Vancouver and Burnaby, before picking up more students at a second pick-up point. We were to pick them up at 7:30. Time of arrival? 8:05. We weren’t even on the highway yet, and we were significantly behind schedule.
Our bus was in the lead, and we kept having to pull off on the highway so that the second bus could catch up. We never saw the third bus at all, until we were almost at the mine and heard (via radio) that it had got lost entirely. We sat on the shoulder at length, and ate lunch.
Our bus arrived at the mine at 12:15, where as we were scheduled to arrive by 11. A mine person got on the bus, to give us a tour as we drove around. He read esoteric details to us and couldn’t answer our questions. This is the biggest copper mine in the country. They have one civil engineer on staff. The purpose of our trip was what, again?
The mine was dusty. Silty and sandy and I’m allergic. We saw some pretty impressive pits-there are two, some 800 metres deep and a kilometre across. We took photographs of enormous tires. They turned the ventilation off in the bus because of the dust, and it was stifling. It was dusty anyways, and I coughed and sneezed ad nauseum.
We did see about 20 wild horses, and a very large earthen dam. We left at 4:30 (departure scheduled for 3 pm) and drove into Logan Lake, a one-horse town near the mine. On the way in, we’d seen a ramshackle motel/restaurant structure, and a friend commented, “Maybe we’re having supper there!”
We did. And they decided to reorganize the buses, so about a dozen of us got kicked off our bus, and we had to wait for the third bus, which was clear on the other side of the mine, some 15 kilometres of gravel road away. We sat on the curb outside of the Logan Lake Motor Inn with our bags and hardhats and ate sandwiches out of brown paper bags.
The bus driver of the third bus was terrible. He’d hit the gas, and let go. Hit the gas and let go. Repeatedly. Every five seconds or so. The bus shook back and forth and from side to side, and we all got carsick. The driver did, however, stop at a cold beer and wine store in Logan Lake and I bet it got more business than it’s seen in years. Although it added time to our trip, we were pretty thankful, because by then, we needed a drink.
At the tollbooth on the Coquihalla, at 7 pm, when we were scheduled to arrive back at school, we pulled over to use the restrooms, but there was a bathroom on the bus, and we realized that, actually, we were pulling over so the driver could smoke. Most of us took advantage of the facilities, because a person couldn’t walk down the aisle of our bus without clutching at seats and other people and looking like they were drunk (even before the beer), because the bus jerked around so terribly much. So we huddled on the side of the road in the dark and shivered.
We’d thought the driver was bad on the highway. On city streets in Vancouver, with actual traffic to contend with, he was worse. We moaned and held our stomachs. We jerked to and fro, and a few times, he hit the brakes so hard, we nearly went through the seats in front of us. I have a rather large bruise on my right knee because of that.
People began requesting to be let out at various places along Broadway. We simply could not deal with this any longer. The bus arrived at school at 9:40… the earlier buses arrived at 9 pm.
Needless to say, I did not watch Supernatural last night. But I have a TV schedule for today: 4 pm, hockey (we did get a game update yesterday at the liquor store and heard that the Canucks were up 3-0), and at 7 pm, Supernatural on the Space channel.