The first day of school

Why should I care that today was the first day of school for our town? My wife home schools our children. In some sense, they never have a "first day of school" because their schooling never really stops for the summer. So, the first day of our local, public school shouldn't be interesting to me but it is. That's because, as I mentioned in my posts "5,000 miles" and "The joy of taking back roads to work", I often get stuck behind school buses on my way into work. I have to take back roads because my scooter can only go about 40 - 45 miles per hour. So, I face the first day of school with about as much trepidation as some of the kids do. Not our kids but some other kids. This year I even went as far as looking through the bus schedules printed in our local paper a few weeks ago. But I couldn't figure out the method they used to show when a bus would be at a certain stop.

So, I'd planned to leave a little early this morning so I could try to get ahead of the buses. But I didn't want to be too early because I wanted to try to judge how early I really need to leave each morning. Who want to leave extra early if you don't have to? As I've said before, it's easy to say I'm going to leave five minutes early to get ahead of the buses but it's another thing to find those five minutes in a busy morning and do that every work day. I figured if I could get going a little early this morning (say, five minutes early), I might see kids gathering as the stops if I was just ahead of the buses but I'd see very few kids if I was really early. A wise person once said,

"It's easy to say I'm going to leave five minutes early to get ahead of the buses but it's another thing to find those five minutes in a busy morning."

Yeah, well, that's what happened this morning. It takes me about 25 minutes to get to work at 8 AM and I ended up leaving the house right at 7:35 AM. As I rode along, I wondered how bad it would be. Would the buses be even slower than last year? Would the kids be even slower getting on the bus this year? Would there be more stops this year? More buses?

Well, isn't life wonderful? I was ahead of the buses! I knew I was ahead of the buses because the brother and sister who catch the two buses that were my nemesis last year were both waiting in front of there house. I almost waved to them and cheered as I rode by. Then, a little further on, I saw the buses coming up the hill to turn around and pick up those children. Again, I almost waved and cheered but thought better of it. If I look too happy, the bus drivers may decide that they can find an extra five minutes in the morning to start their run.

Surely they were running on time this morning. Surely they weren't running a little late because, maybe, they are new drivers and weren't sure of the route. Surely the buses weren't hard to start after sitting around all summer and they will run earlier tomorrow. I can only hope.