A bus adventure in Charleston…
18 minute read
September 10, 2024, 3:36 PM
Recently, Elyse and I, along with our friend Kyle, made a trip to Charleston, South Carolina on something of a bus adventure.
However, before I get into the actual story, I have some updates for you, since it’s been a while since anything was discussed about the bus situation. Remember back in October, when Elyse, Montigue, and I went down to Charleston in the HR-V in order to pick up former CARTA bus 3426, a 1996 New Flyer D35HF, which we were then going to swap with Trevor Logan for an Orion V? Since then, things have changed quite a bit. First, the New Flyer needed a lot of work in order to be healthy, including a new transmission, which was more than Trevor was willing to commit to, and so he ultimately discontinued his efforts in restoring the bus. That made all of us sad, because we all wanted to see that bus restored and preserved, and didn’t want to see such a unique model go to scrap. Additionally, at the same time, I was having problems getting insurance for the Orion V, which was former Westchester County Bee-Line bus 700. That was a 2006 model, which was too recent to qualify for historic vehicle insurance (i.e. Hagerty), plus most of the other insurance companies balked at giving me insurance because of the two recent accidents that I was involved in with the old HR-V and with the new HR-V. I really resented that, because in both of those cases, I was ruled to not be at fault, i.e. I am a very safe driver, but they were holding it against me anyway, like it’s my fault that some idiot in a Nissan Pathfinder ran a red light at high speed and plowed into me. In any event, that problem with insurance caused delays in my taking possession of the bus, since I really couldn’t do anything with it until I was able to get it insured. So that’s where things stood for a while.
Then in April, when Elyse and I made our pleasure trip to Charleston, recall that the first thing that we did upon arrival in the Charleston area was to check up on 3426 at General Diesel‘s facility. We were pleased to see that it was still there, and at that time, I remarked, “The estimates have come back in, and while everything wrong with it can be fixed, it’s going to cost a big chunk of change to do. Whether that happens, however, is not up to me. But we at least wanted to say hello.” That was the end of our bus involvement for that trip, because other than Elyse’s riding around on various CARTA routes, there were no bus activities planned. But that visit set off a light bulb in my head. I knew roughly how much it would cost to repair 3426. I also knew that I could afford to have those repairs made. Because of all of the hassle with insurance and whatnot regarding the Orion V, I had also soured a bit on that bus, since I was facing roadblocks to even get into the game. By comparison, insurance for an historic vehicle would have been a snap. To qualify as historic requires that the vehicle be 25 or more model years old, and a 2006 Orion V wouldn’t hit that threshold until 2031, which, for our planning purposes, might as well be forever. So the idea was, why don’t we undo our trade, and let Trevor keep the Orion V, which was former Bee-Line 700, and I would take over former CARTA 3426?
Continue reading…
Categories: CFW, New Flyer D35HF, North Carolina, South Carolina, Travel
Flying over the Shenandoah Valley with a drone…
10 minute read
October 25, 2020, 10:45 PM
Elyse and I recently made a trip down to Augusta County to see my parents, and we both photographed a bunch of stuff with my drone while we were down there. So all in all, we had a pretty productive time. I have gotten pretty proficient in flying my drone around things, and I’ve gotten some nice photos. The goal of the drone photography this time was to duplicate a lot of what I did in my earlier entry about the area in Microsoft Flight Simulator, but in real life. All in all, I had a good time, and I liked the results, as I flew around Staunton, Waynesboro, Afton Mountain, and Stuarts Draft.
In Staunton, I first got aerials of the old DeJarnette Center, which is an abandoned children’s mental hospital that closed around 1996 in favor of a newer, more modern facility nearby. If this place sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve photographed it before. So here it is:
Categories: Afton Mountain, CFW, Family, Howard Johnson's, Photography, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Walmart, Waynesboro, Woomy
A few career anniversaries in the next month…
7 minute read
March 23, 2017, 2:04 AM
The next month contains no less than three career anniversaries of mine. March 31 marks ten years since I was fired from Walmart, April 15 marks the 15th anniversary of when CFW Information Services (then Telegate USA) closed and I was laid off, and then April 18 marks ten years from the day that I was hired at Food & Water Watch. Rememberances of jobs past, I suppose.
The anniversary that still gets me is the CFW one. I can’t believe that it’s been fifteen years. That was my first job, which I started at age 16, in June 1997. It was a call center job, processing inbound calls for customers seeking directory assistance services in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, DC, Delaware, and New Jersey. Then Pennsylvania got added to the mix. Then we started doing two national services – one used by bill collectors doing skiptracing, and a wholesale service for the public through a variety of different providers. When the national services came online, I mostly did the bill collector service. That was a good job. The dress code was casual (after all, who saw you?) and you worked at a computer all day.
That job did, however, have a turning point. In June 2000, parent company CFW Communications made a major change to its corporate structure, merging with another regional telecommunications company in Virginia to form nTelos. As part of that same deal, Information Services was out. Our division would not become part of the new nTelos, as we were sold to Telegate, a company based in Munich, Germany. I remember watching this company, which had thrived under CFW ownership, be slowly destroyed under Telegate ownership. If I recall, Telegate acquired our company with the intention of gaining a foothold in the US marketplace, with the desire to eventually launch a “11880” style service in the US like they did in Germany. The “11880” style service never happened, and things basically stayed the same. Meanwhile, for a company with three Virginia call centers (Clifton Forge, Waynesboro, and Winchester), their choice of a headquarters location was surprising: Plano, Texas. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The management in Texas also seemed to come and go on a fairly regular basis, as one after the other either abruptly quit or was dismissed. It was no surprise when Telegate started closing call centers as the business started to drop off (probably due to the hideous management of the company), as Clifton Forge, Waynesboro, and Winchester all closed within about 6-7 months of each other. I was away at college at the time that my center closed, and never received any official notification from Telegate of the center’s closing, but rather, was notified by some of my soon-to-be-former coworkers. It just so happened that I would be in town the weekend before the closing, and so I stopped by to pick up my belongings and turn in my equipment. And that was the end of my first job.
I told some coworkers about a dream I had, and I had another one!
2 minute read
March 21, 2005, 6:11 AM
I told two coworkers at Wal-Mart who had also worked with me at CFW/Telegate (though only one was from the Telegate era) about the dream that I had that I told you about in my March 5 Journal entry entitled “Six days in the house thus far…” And after telling them about the dream, now last night I had another weird Telegate dream! And this one is a real doozie.
I don’t know if this dream satisfies some internal urge for getting revenge on Telegate for closing our call center and costing us all a job or something, but this was a weird one.
In this dream, a number of us were working for Telegate. Then we found out that our call center was closing. This was due to the company mismanaging all sorts of whatever. And in this dream, the “company” was basically one man who owned the place and was also our boss. And the whole focus of the dream was that if we were going down due to the closure of the center, that we were taking him down with us. Since in this dream, you see, this man was not exactly without sin. He was raising large amounts of strange, genetically modified, mutant rodents in his office. Now notwithstanding any legal or ethical standards in the real world, in my dream, this practice was highly illegal, and we knew it was and were going to report the guy, as well as on the way he mismanaged the call center (it was never revealed how it was mismanaged in the dream, but it cost us our jobs, and it was also criminal, whatever it was). After taking our last calls, a number of us stormed the guy’s office for something or other. But we confronted him, basically to the extent of either getting the center back up and running or he was going down. The man showed us out of the building via the employee entrance. We went right back in via the main entrance, saying it wasn’t going to be so easy to get rid of us.
And then I woke up. Always when we get to the good part, too. And when that happens, it’s like poof. The dream is gone. And I even tried to go back to sleep so I could pick up again where I left off in a naïve attempt to return to the dream.
Strange dream, indeed. That’s two Telegate-related dreams in one month. One hopeful, and the other one vengeful. Weird.
Six days in the house thus far…
2 minute read
March 5, 2005, 6:34 PM
Yes, this is day #6… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday. I have been at home recovering from this procedure. And according to Mom, it’s slowly but surely healing up. I have to ask, because the wound is not somewhere that I can see myself.
Meanwhile, it’s Spring Break at Virginia Tech, and my sister is in Europe! Her boyfriend Chris is doing a study abroad program this semester, and so Sis is going to visit him. Of course, the trip nearly didn’t happen, as there was a small snafu with the passport, as we didn’t realize that since she was under a certain age that it expired sooner than the rest of ours did. But with some scrambling, a phone call to the office of our Congressman, Bob Goodlatte, and an unexpected trip to Washington DC (vs. just Dulles Airport, where the flight was), my father managed to get the whole situation straightened out, and she’s over in Europe now. So I hope she has fun.
Meanwhile, the TV is showing nothing but wall-to-wall Martha Stewart. My exact thought is, who cares? She just happens to be a celebrity that went to jail, instead of someone less-known.
Categories: CFW, Dreams, Family, Personal health, Walmart
We moved the bed, and one last section to go.
4 minute read
February 21, 2004, 12:50 AM
Look!
The bed is in its new home! Mom said I was nuts putting the bed against two outside walls. Of course, how convenient that she forgets that Sis’s room is already done up that way, with her bed against two outside walls. But still, I like it. I have yet to sleep in the bed in this orientation, but it looks good. Plus I’m glad to see some furniture against a gray wall for a change. It looks GOOD. I also put outlet covers on the plugs that are next to the bed’s location (they sell those in infants, not hardware, to my surprise). This way, I don’t accidentally get my butt zapped, which I think is important.
Categories: Bedroom remodel, CFW
One more thing…
< 1 minute read
February 13, 2004, 10:03 PM
I had this dream last night that CFW Information Services (later Telegate USA) was reopening, and I was going back there to work. Of course, it was a dream, but it was amusing nonetheless, because while it was a good job while it lasted, I’m kind of glad I don’t work there anymore.
What’s amusing about it, though, is that I had this dream last night, and then today at work ran into no less than six former coworkers from CFW who were shopping. Found out that the building where we all used to work will actually be reopening, with the new tenant being Dupont Credit Union. My guess is that they use it as a call center, when you consider that the building was designed as a call center, but you never know. It could be used for offices, since our main operations room was a BIG room. Could house a lot of cubicle-dwellers in there.
Still, interesting, but I’m glad I work at Wal-Mart, and not at CFW anymore.