Nervous Desk Jockey Pilots His 1st Bus

The first thing Armand Parada did was run his bus up on the curb.

“I was a little nervous,” conceded the Metropolitan Transportation Authority telecommunications analyst. “All of a sudden, I lost it.”

Parada usually drives a shiny red Porsche. He wears three-piece suits to work, and carefully combs his shoulder-length black hair into a dapper ponytail. The physical demands of his job go no further than lifting a heavy report off his desk. In his office, people rarely talk with exclamation points.

But on Thursday, as the MTA struggled to put a skeleton fleet of buses on the road during the first transit strike in 12 years, Parada was behind the wheel of the No. 180, shuttling between Hollywood and Pasadena. He was among 129 other mostly white-collar supervisors rushed through bus-driving school and thrust into emergency service.

“The biggest thing I ever drove is a sports car,” said Parada, 51.

But a 40-foot, seven-ton behemoth?

“It’s such a wide monster,” said Parada, his voice hushed with awe and respect. “I never dreamed I would do this.”

When the MTA drew up strike contingency plans last month, officials dispatched 70 non-union employees to attend an intensive four-week driving course at its El Monte depot. While none were forced to attend the program, most felt that they had no choice. Accountants, engineers and others such as Parada, who never imagined piloting a bus, found themselves worrying about how far they stopped from the curb and whether a fire extinguisher was beneath the driver’s seat.

Parada was among the second class of student drivers to graduate. Wearing jeans and a work shirt, unbuttoned to reveal his gold Porsche medallion, he took his bus license test Wednesday. When he pulled into the El Monte bus yard, strikers, screaming “Scab!” threw a soda can into the bus, splashing cola all over his instructor.

“It’s not like we volunteered to do this,” said Parada, visibly upset.

But 12 hours later, having passed the test, he was behind the wheel again, this time preparing to pick up passengers at the beginning of Line 180. Parada had already checked and rechecked his bus--a process that took 35 minutes. His six mirrors were adjusted properly. Fuel? Sufficient. Brakes? Adequate. Coin box? Working.

“Pass signal? What is that? “ Parada asked in horror, realizing that he had an unfamiliar switch on the cockpit-like dashboard of MTA bus No. 2627.

“That’s for the passengers’ bell cord,” said instructor Jerry Woodson, trying to calm his rattled charge.

“Passengers? Oh, right,” Parada said. “It’s like football--there was spring practice and now we’ve got the game. This is for real. The more I think about it, the scarier it is.”

Taking a deep breath as he headed toward his first stop, Parada turned his unwieldy bus at Mentor Avenue and Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. Maneuvered too tightly, the bus jumped the curb just as Woodson ordered: “Watch your right side!”

Too late.

It was the first time Parada had hit the curb in three weeks. Like a coach reviewing a failed play, Woodson analyzed the turn, walking outside the parked bus and discussing where Parada went wrong.

Then they clambered back aboard.

At 10:05 a.m., bus No. 2627 lurched forward. No one waited at the first stop on Line 180.

“Darn, it would have been nice to get it over with,” Parada muttered, anxious to pick up his first passenger. Two blocks later, Parada’s wish came true as Luetta Webb slowly climbed aboard the bus.

“Good morning!” Parada sang out. Webb eyed him with the caution of a passenger unaccustomed to such friendliness and sat down. Three stops later, she folded her newspaper and rang the bell. “You’re doing good,” she told Parada.

“And here I worried that you’d be mad at the new drivers,” Parada said.

“All I want is a ride,” Webb replied.

Parada wended his way along Colorado, picking up passengers. He apologized to Woodson for running a yellow light. He pulled into stops at a crooked angle. And when a young woman asked him if he stopped at the Glendale Galleria, he looked at her blankly, until Woodson signaled him to say that yes, he did go there.

When passenger Deborah Laws learned that the bus driver was a rookie, she was initially alarmed.

“Did he just go to training school this week?” said the 30-year-old nurse, looking for the passenger bell cord. Reassured, she settled back in her seat and analyzed Parada’s driving.

“He must be a natural. He hasn’t hit a curb or anything,” said Laws, lucky to have boarded after Parada’s first run-in with sidewalk.

As the bus passed through Los Feliz, the streets became narrow and clogged with cars. Then the route turned south, continuing west on Hollywood Boulevard. Outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre, tourists spilled into the street.

“Oh, this is a really good line to give a rookie,” said Parada, hitting the brakes. At 11:26 a.m., about 90 minutes after he had begun, Parada reached the end of the line. He leaned on his steering wheel, looking fatigued.

“With passengers aboard, it’s a lot of responsibility. My primary object this morning was not to kill anybody,” he joked. “I don’t think I want to do this eight hours a day.”

He and Woodson discussed the first run. His turns were too early. His stops were too far from the curb. He had trouble seeing the bus stop signs hidden in the trees. Then Woodson directed him to start up the bus again for the return trip.

Asked Parada: “Do we have to go back the same way?”