Highlights of the Week

Bus No. 6 provides some lighthearted blogging at the end of a long week. This week, Mr. Bus Driver, the "cranky old codger who’s been driving a school bus since '92" warns that there are three things a driver should never trust: kids, the weatherman and the gauges. On gauges he warns:

When my bus is running on fumes, my fuel gauge reads only half empty. If I were to trust my fuel gauge, I'd end up out of fuel in the cow pasture with a bus load of little ones, surrounded by a herd of cows "taking care of business." And every one of those little ones would be covering their noses and begging to walk home -- even if their homes were just around the corner, which they never are. I ran out of fuel once that way, and I'll never let it happen again. When the odometer reads that I've gone 350 miles, I start thinking about adding fuel.

We'd argue (or say the techs might want to take a look take a look at those gauges) but Mr. Driver says these are lessons learned by "experience, trial and error, getting up at 5 and grabbing the bus by the horns and teaching it who's boss!"

Last week, we heard one driver gripe about the sticky, icky candy that always ends up on her bus around Valentines Day. Turns out, Friday the 13th was no horror. "For those wondering, my Valentine's "Friday the 13th" was quite pleasurable," she wrote us. "The kids were remarkably well behaved and very well mannered."

One driver wasn't so lucky. What started as candy hearts being thrown on a Frederick, Md., school bus wound up with a turn back to school, a punched window, a stolen iPod, an asthma attack, an upset parent and a call to police.

Finally, seat belt bills in Colorado and Wyoming moved forward this week. More on both soon.