MONDAY

I awoke this morning thinking that it was going to be a good day. I was getting ready and heard my phone ringing. It was 6:45 to early for normal conversation, it could only be trouble in the form of bus trouble. It was Rhett, he was driving to Park City as usual in bus #5 and was not even to Lamb's Canyon when he heard a noise kind of like an explosion in the back of the bus. He immediately found a place to pull off on the freeway and called me.

The only option at this point for him was to drive back down the canyon with much caution, to get another bus. Allen who drives the other Park City bus but picks up the little kids continued up the canyon to start picking up all students at all stops until Rhett could get the other bus and start back up the canyon again. Rhett coasted back to campus and I was so grateful that he made it safely.

Because the bus is only 2 months old we were told to bring it in to have it fixed. Rhett tried driving it and it had barely enough power to go 12 miles an hour so he turned around and came back to the school. Once at the school and parked I noticed some pools of oil under the bus on the left rear. Rhett kept saying I don't know if those belong to this bus. He started the engine up again, and I immediately found a broken clamp to the exhaust which made the exhaust hose blacker than black. So we figured that was the problem. In the back of my mind I kept thinking that oil has to be this bus it was just to fresh of oil. So I got under the bus and looked for a trail of oil and the picture above is what I found. The source of our problem!

Ron came out during the day and fixed both problems so we thought...

At 3:55 Rhett was yet again making his way up the canyon, with 44 students this time when the explosion happened. Luckily he was not as far up the canyon as he was this morning. He called me with the news and I awaited his arrival at the school to switch buses again. I checked under the bus yet again and found the same hose out but worse this time. 44 teenagers were a bit freaked out and making phone calls to parents about what was going on.

Needless to say Ron was called and he showed up 40 minutes later to fix the same problem. 20 minutes later he promised me that it was fixed. Rhett took it for a test run up the canyon with no problems, and we are going to take a chance and use it tomorrow morning.

I didn't get home until 7:00 tonight which made for a very long day, but by the end of the day it was worth the stay. The most important thing is that all students are safe and I'm praying tonight for a safe drive tomorrow!