Round and Round

So, we were on the bus. For those that have not been forced to give back to the community in lieu of serving jail time, there are wheels on the bus. They go round and round. Round and round. I kinda get where Ratt got the idea for the song now.

The bus cruises down the freeway. We still have no idea where we are going as I stare out the barred windows trying to get my bearings in case there is some type of riot and I have to find my way home. It's me. It could happen. It's a ragtag bunch of dudes. There are dudes with tattoos of stars behind their ears, the dudes who can't speak a lick of English with what looks like their kids' backpacks because they are obviously too small and feature cartoon characters, and the club kids who look like they just got on the bus from gettin' down up in da club. A dead give away to these dudes is the crooked army cap.

We are so South of San Jose by the time the bus pulls off the freeway that we could be in Fresno. Ahhh, Fuck. It's Fresno. We're not really in Fresno, but the only landmark that I can pick up is a Golfland about a quarter of a mile before we turn into the yard of the Santa Clara Valley Water Authority. We file off the bus and start milling about waiting for direction.

There are a couple of folding tables set up end-to-end that are employed as backpack storage. Kid backpack storage in some cases. Just backpacks full of bag lunches and in one case a Cup O' Noodles (sounds Irish). Brilliant planning in that guy's case. Expecting a microwave or tea kettle, dude?

This dude in coveralls who is a spitting image of Scatman Crothers in The Shining rolls up to and addresses the crowd as the prison bus dashes out of the yard amidst more milling about by a couple of bulldozers. He lets this group of Noway Laureates know that they will be bagging sand for the rest of the day. Global warming. Drought. This sounded like make work work, but whatever, it's something to do to kill time.

The rules: teams of four will be on the hoppers dispensing sand into the bags. The winners behind them will tie the bags. The winners behind them will place them on palettes. Easy enough, right? Also, we will be issued safety glasses, gloves and respirators. Glasses and vests will be worn at all times even during breaks. There will be no use of outhouses outside of allotted break times.

I took 25% of the hopper crew and started filling bags and passing them behind me. It's actually a really good lat exercise that is not too unlike working with a Swiss ball. So, it was what it was and I really didn't mind it.

After about an hour I kind of caught one of the club kids staring at me every time I passed a bag back. Whatever. Maybe he knew me. I had noticed him on the bus because I didn't think he was properly dressed for work. Also, remember that you are never fully dressed without a smile. Pro tip.

So, there was a period of time that I was waiting for a sand refill in my hopper and dude goes, "So, how do you like it so far?"

"Dude, I fuckin' hate it. Are we supposed to like this?" and I went back to filling bags.

As the day went on dude kept making small conversation during any opportunity. The third conversation set my gaydar off. Well, that and the fact that dude was staring at my ass the whole fucking time. Well, whatever.

Lunch came and went with the rule that you could do whatever you want outside of going horizontal. No laying down.

After lunch I saw these dudes using their keys to slash the bags before passing to the palette guys so that the sand would spill out in the name of entertainment. This would make sense if you didn't have to fuckin' clean it up. This sums up the mentality of these people that were never going to graduate weekend work and who may not have wanted to. This was a peer group to some.

Day ends (sorta) and we clean up our stations and wait for the bus. We jump on the bus and get back to the freezing cold garage at three. We stand there for forty five minutes doing NOTHING. Like fucking nothing unless freezing can be considered a hobby.

The asshole cops line everyone up and do another roll call. I guess they occasionally lose people. They call my name and I walk across the garage to the other side and freeze some more while we wait for them to call everyone's name. Somewhere deep in the annals of public service this is considered a system. It explains a lot.

I get out and go home and sleep with visions of sand in my head. Piles and piles of sand. I imagine that the next day we are going to have to go take all the bags that we filled up and empty them out for the dudes to use the next weekend. Losing faith in the system as the whole thing is a huge fucking waste of time and benefits no one. Perhaps they should let me set up a new system for them, but I have a feeling this is a culture that is adverse to efficiency. It's called my own personal kryptonite.

SPOILER ALERT: I got CalTrans the next morning. More to come.

I Write, You Left.

So. I had my criminal part of Project: Debt To Society last weekend. That now makes my week consist of four DUI related activities a week. There is the weekly group meeting for an hour and a half, a two hour education session that is straight propaganda, and then two days a week of the Weekend Work Furlough Program.

The weekend work is to replace the jail time. You can do three straight days in the hoosegow or nine weekend days from 8 to 4. I chose to knock it out the box and do Saturday and Sunday and it just happened to fall in December which blows donkey balls, however every time I find myself complaining about it I hear a school marmy voice say "You should have thought about that before you drank and drove."

Anyway, here is how it went down for the curious. We can evaluate the DUI education experience in its own episode.

For the first weekend, you have no assignment and are to show up at a parking lot across the street from the jail and the courthouse. You've just got to be there at eight. "We," the collective one, as in me, almost didn't make it. Drank with the soccer team the night before and it got fun as I found someone to call me on my shit and then explored tan bark theory for a little bit. It was fun. It caused me to get to bed too late. It caused me to sleep in past one alarm. It caused me to sleep past another alarm. Finally, a teammate who has saved my ass in countless games saved my ass again by giving me a wakeup call and telling me to get the fuck out of bed and get there.

I jumped up convinced I was fucked and threw a toque, jeans and a sweatshirt on and threw my lunch that I had made the night before into my backpack with my court papers and jammed out the door. I got in the car and realized at this point that I had left my water bottle at the bar (again) and pulled a Diet Coke out of my lunch to pound at 7:45 in the morning. There is something so white trash about morning soda. So, I hit the freeway with about twenty miles to go in fifteen minutes. I'm also painfully aware that if I get popped for speeding a) I'm not going to make it, which means court or a warrant and b)there is a chance of getting breathalyzed in a situation where .02 would get me another DUI as I have no tolerance. It was reckless, but here is a pro tip: There are few risks that are not worth taking when balanced against legal administration. They just cannot figure out how to do shit.

So, I'm in the 80s and my car is shaking furiously because I haven't gotten my tires rotated in forever because I rarely drive anymore and the cigarette perched out my window is shaking like crazy as I barrel down the freeway just asking for it, but I've been good lately and knew I deserved this, so there was a chance.

I got to the exit ramp right at 8:00. At this point, I'm hoping that the cops are not good at setting watches as everything else to do with this program is about extreme punctuality. You CANNOT be even a minute late for things. Luckily, this was not one of those things. I got my car parked and emptied my pockets of "contraband" and ran toward the parking garage where I mulled in with about 25 Mexican dudes. It felt like Christmas, kinda.

I'd like to point out right here that on the program contraband list there are things like knives, cell phones, and lighters, which make sense. There are also things like calculators that don't make a lot of sense. Remember that.

So, I stood in a freezing ass garage for about a half hour before anything happened. This would prove to be a theme for the program - standing with nothing happening. When something finally did happen, they lined us up to be checked in and searched for "contraband." It would be really funny to bring a copy of the supergroup Contraband's CD to this. Okay, that would be fuckin' lame. I got checked in by the most unpleasant man alive. Here's how it went.

"ID, Please."

"Here ya go"

"Empty your pockets and pull them out of your jeans."

"No problem"

"Is this your lighter?"

"Oh crap. I'm sorry about that. I missed it when I cleaned out my pockets in my car."

"Do you have cigarettes?"

"No."

"If I find some in your bag, I'm sending you back to court."

"Sorry, sir. There should be nothing in my bag except for my lunch."

Dude looks through my bag right here and finds a book, The Suitors by Ben Ehrenreich, and pen. He looks at me with a hard look and says, "What is this?! I could send you back to court for this. Didn't you read your list of contraband? Books are contraband."

At this point, I couldn't help it and said "That's very Bradburyian of you."

He looked at me like I was about to be fuckin' tased and I said to him quickly before I was made an example, "Dude, that's not a putdown it's a reference to an author" and to amuse myself just said in my head "Not a strong reader, huh?"

He told me that I could pick up my book at the end of the day which was hilarious. A big fucking clear trashbag full of cell phones, lighters and cigarettes and that one lonely fuckin' book. The woman in charge of the "contraband" asked me what my cellphone looked like at the end of the day and I told her I was there for the book and emphasized that it was the ONLY book. This was not a very literal crowd. I mean, no offense, but all most of them would be into reading would be books by Iceberg Slim.

So, I get checked in and the cop hands me a vest and tells me to go stand against the wall. A small group starts to collect around me like dirt would to a piece of gum on the bottom of your shoe. Then, when it got about 40 deep, a dude came over and got us to line up and get on a bus. We were getting bussed somewhere with no idea where we were going. Honestly, I'm not even going to bother explaining what this imagery was comparable to. We get on the bus with two dudes in the cages to boot and the bus driver fires up the bus and the radio kicks on and what do you fuckin' hear? "I kissed a girl and I liked it. The taste of her cherry chapstick."

It was going to be that kind of day. I'll pick up on that later. Gotta work.

Real Work Conversation #45

Girl1: "Hey. You are never gonna guess who I saw last weekend."

Me: "Who?"

Girl1: "I saw Cheryl in the city."

Me: "Where were you, the Power Exchange(sex club)?"

Girl2: "Oh my god. That place is weird. I've been there once."

Girl1: "Uh, I think he was just kidding."

Me: "You are hella busted."