A Day in the Life

I'm sure you are all just a-flutter with wonder at what it is Caitlyn and I do all day, everyday. Well, climb aboard and I'll give you the inside tour.

This morning our start time in 6:30, which means we take the 6:00 shuttle into work - which is a rockin' 14 passenger van.

Once we clock in we begin with...PAPERWORK!

That's our 7 day log book, our graphing log (because we're working over 12.25 hours today), our DVIR (that's daily vehicle inspection report), and our insurance and fuel log binder.

Next come the vehicle inspection, 50+ points need to be checked as"OK" before we leave the yard.

Today we're driving 1207 which is a NICE bus! A/C works, great turning radius, air pressure builds quickly, and the PA system is clear. 

The driver area is looking great.

Thats 53 seats for those of you counting at home. 

Now that our coach is ready we head to the docks. Our first tour is off of CT (cruise-ship terminal), which is the worst dock. There's hardly any space and they're all pull through lanes, which means the coach in front of you has to leave before you can. This means we stage (bus term for waiting) in the Tram parking lot until the stars align and we can get a lane in CT.

That's CT in the mirror.

We wait.

We wait a little longer.

We finally get called over to the dock!

Now we pick up our passengers. Today we're doing a Grand Tour, and each tour is different, well, the tour isn't different, but the passengers are all different, which makes the tour feel different. Today our passengers are nice, but quite. They're not asking questions, but they laugh at the appropriate times and we can't ask for much more then that. 

We take them to the Mendenhall Glacier, here they have 70 minutes to hike and go to the visitor center. Meanwhile, we stage in the parking lot! 

This is when we hang out with the other drivers, eat, listen to music, call mom, or read. 

Once we pick our guests back up (hopefully they're all there, but it's not that uncommon to have to leave guests at the glacier), and head to Glacier Gardens. We love going here. We get a free drink, it's calming, and the guests always leave happy. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we didn't take any pictures!

Next we head to the Salmon Hatchery.
Here guests learn how salmon are spawned and because the salmon run started in July all those salmon are swimming upstream to return to the hatchery.

Yep, those are hundreds of salmon. They look disgusting because once they move from salt water to fresh water they begin to rot while they're still alive. Yum! 

Here we do a little more waiting. 

Then we load up and take our guests back to their ship! But our day's not done yet. We head back to the yard where we post-trip 1207 and pre-trip 7701, because we're doing half a day of Era Dogs. Era is a helicopter tour company, so we drive people back and forth for their tours. 

7701 is an RE (don't know what that stands for), and they look like hookey space buses. 

So many toggles. 

Era isn't very exciting for us because we spend so much time waiting for passengers, but we have no time to connect with them. And that's one of the most entertaining parts of the job, joking around with the guest who you've gotten to know after your 4.5 hours together. 

Another one of those dam Holland America ships (this is funny because all the HA ships end in -dam, so we call them our dam passengers, on our dam tours, at the dam dock, and everyone laughs).

Well, I hope you had fun on our tour today. If you have any questions feel free to ask me outside the bus and I'll do my best to answer. If you enjoyed it, my name is Amanda; and, if you didn't enjoy it, my name is Amy.