The gap with no postings. It's been a long time with no entries - two surgeries and a bag stuck to my stomach were the signs of cancer. Fortunately with good doctoring and care, everything has returned to a 'close to normal' state. The cancer has gone, the bag has gone, so life has much that is good to offer. Having got myself back to health, I have extended my work to become the new Driver Trainer for our school - certified by the State of Arizona no less. The lady who undertook all of the training has decided to retire and enjoy life (not that she didn't enjoy her work), and that left an opening which I hope I can adequately fill. This is going to extend the hours that I work outside my regular day, but it is a challenge that I hope will be rewarding. After close to 40 years in the business of transporting people (now across two continents), I think that I might have the 'odd' (very odd?) pearl of wisdom to share. My mind does go back to the earlier years when, first at London Country, then later at other companies, I was involved in training - in the one case I was supposed to be training new drivers how to operate a bus service (as opposed to actually driving). The problem with this was that the new drivers were trained on one vehicle type, and then had to go out in service with a totally different vehicle type. They had different characteristics, and indeed types of gearbox. The result was that passengers got a rather jerky ride. This WAS NOT the trainees fault, but it did mean that for the sake of everyone's comfort, they had to be taught how to drive this new vehicle. The new vehicles coming in were fitted with Leyland's hydrocyclic gearbox which didn't have a clutch pedal, but did have a gearstick about three inches long. The problem was that when you put the gear selector into neutral (ready for the next gear), the gearbox didn't go into neutral for a couple of seconds. By this time the driver had selected the next gear, so the system changed gear with a jerk and a bang, which caused general discomfort all around. The secret was to drive the bus out of gear, i.e. Hold the power on the accelerator for a couple of seconds AFTER selecting neutral, wait another couple of seconds, then select the next gear. Generally speaking, this gave a silky smooth gear change, and relaxed passengers. Most buses now are fully automatic which takes some of the art of smooth driving out of the driver's hands, and into the hands of (usually) a computer. Now this is the antithesis of the saying ' what you put into a computer is what you get out'. Even the gentlest, smoothest driver can give a rough jerky ride if the computer isn't co-operating.