In Front Of The Yellow Line

                    By Shawn Wells
                       Award Season

In the spirit of the title I've chosen, I'd like to dedicate my current wave of historical blogs (I've already decided it'll be a trilogy) to 2 people. One whom I've never met, one whom I knew years ago and only recently reconnected with on Facebook. (Ah, the power of the interwebs.) During my time reconnecting, I was asked by this old friend "Did you used to write a blog?" From there I discovered that she has a University Professor friend who enjoys my writing and even uses my humble little ramblings as an example in her classes. I'm part of a syllabus, y'all! So, Amie and Farra... Thank you for inspiring me to write again. Flattered doesn't even begin to describe how this makes me feel. And now the highly anticipated sequel to my recent post:

Historical Blog 2: Blog Harder.

July 24, 2018

Well, would you look at that. Who wants to take a ride with an award winning bus driver? If you ride my bus, you've come to the right place for just that. Today, I got presented with not one, but two trophies. This is no time for modesty... I'm pretty awesome.

Let me set the stage by saying, it was totally unexpected to win ANY awards, much less 2. (Even as 2019 Shawn, I'm still blown away by it.) However, I suppose if I wasn't hoping for a prize, I wouldn't have put myself in a competitive situation.

In the past, I wrote a blog post talking about the "Transit Skills Competition" or "Roadeo" (spelling error intentional) as it is also known. It's a friendly competition among drivers to see who can complete some of the most challenging turns and skills you would ever attempt in a bus. All this done on a controlled course with pylons marking the path, many of them inevitably squished by our buses. You may say "How hard can a right turn be?" This is to the extreme. Short answer: Pretty difficult. On top of the actual driving, I'm also judged on the professionalism and completeness of my uniform, my ability to find all the intentional "mistakes" on a modified bus during a pre-trip check and I have to take a driver's written test (a mixture of government issued exam questions and operations manual policy knowledge.)

Well all this competition and day of fun happened about a month ago. Shortly after that the results came in and turns out, good ol' Shawn came in third. Third! Missed second by just a few points. I was stunned. Although I compete, I never actually thought I'd crack the top 3. There are some very talented guys out there. Just to put it into perspective, I've been driving a bus for 5 years (6 now, says 2019 Shawn) and the 2 people that did better than me have both been driving buses for 25 and 30 years. Both of them have been on top of the leaderboard before... Old pro's at it. And here I am, the newbie, sitting with rather elite company.

Well, now it's banquet day, everyone gets their trophies and I of course have been invited. It's taking place I'm in a banquet room at the local football stadium and down on the field the team is practicing. A very special behind the scenes perspective that makes me feel, not gonna lie, a little like a VIP. Members of the training team and management team are here, including the big cheese, the branch manager for all of my city's transit. (A little disappointed, I have to admit, because I was led to believe the mayor would also be at this event.) Definitely getting the right people (for future promotions) to know my name and for all the right reasons.

But wait a minute Shawn, didn't you mention 2 awards. Absolutely, I sure did. I am in fact at this banquet to receive both of them. As exciting as my standings for the Roadeo were to discover, the other award is almost more exciting. Maybe. I don't know. It's tough to say. No one can seem to give me a very clear answer to what this award is actually for. I get vague responses. It appears there's no official mission statement for it. But I won!

Best that I can gather, is it's basically an outstanding employee award. Named after the first female bus driver in our city (as usual, I try to maintain a little anonymity because my views in no way reflect those of my employer and I'll refrain from naming the award... Maybe I'll just refer to it as the Jane Doe award.) this award is kind of a Roadeo MVP award. Someone who expresses themselves professionally, received a high score and embodies the values of our city's transit. And right now anybody who knows me is going "Um... That doesn't sound like the right person." Well, this year it is.

So what does this mean for me going forward? Really, very little. For both awards, I got a trophies to put on display at home. More people at work know my name now (bus driver life is so solitary that unless you put in a social effort, which I don't, your name is generally not known.) My name is now forever etched for posterity on the official "Jane Doe Award" plaque which is in the lobby trophy case. And I got something new to put on my resume if I ever switch departments in my organization (and frankly, instructor is what I want to be one day so a third place finish in the skills looks pretty damn good.) Other than that, I'm back to driving a bus as usual tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll mount the trophies on my dashboard and show off to my passengers. (2019 Shawn here... I didn't.)

I guess the only way to top this is to get first place next year and win the trip to the national championships. Or at least go for a repeat performance. Hopefully it wasn't just a fluke.

"It was" says 2019 Shawn.

From in front of the yellow line, that's how I see it.