Ohio Schedule It Bus: Fill & Download for Free

Two quickly came to mind. The first was my very first encounter with racial discrimination and the second, which happened a few months later, restored my faith in people.I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in July 1968 and flew to Lackland AFB, Tex., for basic training. It was my first time away from home in Hawaii. After basic training, I was assigned in September to the Defense Information School, Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Ind., for training as a military journalist.Fall was arriving and I was not prepared for the cooling weather. I needed a civilian winter cap for my buzz-cut scalp, so I took a bus into Indianapolis and walked into a department store to purchase something snug and warm.Finding one I liked, I stood in line for the female cashier, who was ringing up a customer. When she finished, the cashier looked at me and motioned to the customer behind me to step up. I was taken aback, but maybe she thought I wasn’t ready to buy, so I patiently waited my turn.Then the cashier did it again. She motioned to the woman behind me, who stepped around me and looked back uncomfortably at me, but nevertheless walked to the counter to pay.Okay, I figured out what was going on. There I was, an Asian teenager with a nearly bald head in a store where every customer and worker was white. I was aware of racial tension, discrimination and riots in the mainland United States. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy just months earlier were shocking events, but such events and circumstances were foreign to me in Hawaii. I had never experienced racial discrimination in my life, and here it happened to me, like a punch in the face.I thought about putting the cap back and returning to the base, but that thought sickened me. So after the customer left the counter, I stepped up and stood in front of the cash register with the cap in one hand and money in the other.The cashier glared at me and motioned for another customer, who stepped up to be serviced. The cashier did it again for a fourth customer, but I silently stood there, cap in one hand and money in the other.Realizing I would not take the hint, the cashier finally took my money, rang me up, put the cap in a bag and gave me my change, all without a single word. Welcome to Indianapolis, I thought as I walked out the door and headed for the bus stop to return to base.Back at my dorm room, I related my experience to my three roommates, who all came from other states, and one said, “Don’t you know that Indiana has the largest Ku Klux Klan membership north of the Mason-Dixon Line?” Well, that explained a lot, but it did little to ease my discomfort with being in Indiana and among its people.That was the bad. Now for the good.The bone-chilling weather gave me such a bad cold that I went to sick call on a Friday in October, was admitted to the Ft. Ben hospital just for the weekend to recover, and wasn’t released until January 1969.I was well enough in late December that my doctor gave me a two-week convalescent leave to spend outside the hospital. I reported back to my dorm and the clerk suggested I go home instead of spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve on base. I told him I didn’t have enough money for the long flight to Hawaii, so he suggested I take a military hop from Wright-Patterson AFB outside of Dayton, Ohio. He said with my convalescent leave status, I could pretty much get a seat on any flight going to the West Coast, and then I could fly commercial to Hawaii. I could fly on standby status and my convalescent leave would put me at the top of the standby list.That sounded like a plan, so l packed my duffel bag, caught an early morning ride to the Greyhound station in Indianapolis, and bought a ticket to Dayton. I was wearing my Air Force uniform and was the only military man on the bus.The bus made numerous stops along the way, picking up and dropping off passengers. About noon, the bus stopped at a roadside diner and the driver announced we had a 30-minute lunch break. I had a burger and Coke by myself, and returned to the bus to find the driver eating his lunch. He seemed friendly and asked me my situation. I told him about my illness and my desire to hop a flight home from Wright-Pat.As the bus neared Dayton, the bus got emptier as passengers left with hardly any getting on. There were probably only four or five passengers left when the driver waved for me to come up front. He said he could drop me off at a military bus stop from where I could get a ride directly to Wright-Pat. It would be better than going into Dayton and working out a way to get to the base. “Do you trust me?” he asked.I nodded I did, so a few minutes later, he turned off the main highway. The bus went down a two-lane road surrounded by empty fields with patches of snow. The driver took another turn and, a few minutes later, stopped in the middle of nowhere. He pointed to an open-sided shed on the opposite side of the road. That was the bus stop, although there was no sign identifying it as such. I gathered my bag, stepped off the bus and waved good-bye to him. He closed the door and drove off.I sat in the shed in awe of the countryside. Empty fields as far as I could see. No vehicles on the road. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. There were no street lights. I saw the lights of a faraway house. And it was getting really cold.Then it hit me. Did the driver pull a fast one on me? Was this another perverted introduction to midwestern hospitality? I tried to figure out what to do. If things got bad, I decided to walk to the faraway house and take my chances.Then I saw two headlights in the distance. They got closer and then I could see it was a bus. I stood up, waved my arms, and a blue Air Force bus stopped. I told the driver I wanted to go to Wright-Pat to hop a flight, so he took me on base to temporary billeting, where I got a room. Although the mess hall was closed, the clerk called and arranged for me to get a quick meal.The next morning another clerk told me that flights did occasionally go to the West Coast, but he didn’t know if anything was scheduled for that day. I took a shuttle to the flight office and, lucky me, learned a plane was scheduled to go to McClellan AFB, Sacramento, Calif., that morning and I could get a seat.Well, I did make it home for Christmas and left on New Year’s Eve on a TWA flight for Indianapolis.To this day, I think about that bus driver and thank him for restoring my faith in the goodness of people regardless of where they live. And I’ll never forget his words: Do you trust me? And the fact that with no reason to do it, I did.

I took this selfie between bus runs a few weeks before Thanksgiving break, which due to increased COVID-19 cases in our region has extended into January.Since August, our school system has been on a hybrid schedule offering virtual and in-person learning for students depending on their preference. Our school buses have been transporting students, but on a limited basis allowing for social distancing on buses.Salute to all our teachers, classroom aides, administrators, bus drivers, bus aides, and cafeteria workers, who have all worked together to keep our students and each other safe. Thanks to these combined efforts, virus cases in our school system have been contained to a minimum.And God bless our amazing custodial staff who work late into the night disinfecting and sanitizing classrooms and bathrooms. Their behind the scenes dedication has been inspiring.I also took the selfie to show a good friend of mine, who is a teacher at our middle school, my Ohio State Buckeyes mask. He too is an OSU Buckeye fan.As a lifelong Buckeye fan, I am proud of my team.But the team I am most proud of is the awesome team I work with in our school system.They are all my heroes.

I lived in Columbus Ohio for 5 years during college, for a year when I was 30, just East of it for 4 years in High School, and currently just North of it for 2 years.Other places I’ve lived include 4 years in Arizona (I was too young to remember much), 10 years in Denver, and 7 years in Chicagoland (Aurora/Naperville area).Here’s what it’s like living in Columbus:OSU Football is inescapable.For 2.5 years, I lived on High St just a few miles from the OSU stadium. The street would fill with cars several hours before game time. Normally, my parking was on High St, but on game weekends I had to make sure to claim a spot on a side street early (parking on High St was prohibited on game days), and resign myself to not going anywhere by car or risk losing my parking space and being stuck in game traffic for much too long.Fans, with scarlet and gray clothes and make-up would stream down the street, I could watch them from my 2nd floor apartment window. If the Buckeyes won, they’d be drunkenly and boisterously rambling back down the street. If they had won a particularly important game, there might be riots: burning couches in the street, tearing down the end goals on the field, jumping in mirror lake on the OSU campus.Having not been a fan of sports before, living around this madness did nothing to make me more amenable to it. A few months ago, I wore a red shirt and gray slacks to work. “Rocking that scarlet and gray!” A coworker called to me as she passed me in the hall. And now, I can’t wear a red shirt with gray pants ever again. It’s completely unfair for a sports team to claim color combinations so thoroughly.[image: photo of OSU football fans trying to tear down their own teams goal post]Gay PrideColumbus is one of the nation’s most accepting cities of GLBT individuals. I did not appreciate, in college, that this is an unusually accepting city. We have a wonderfully popular Gay Pride Parade every year and many, many, openly allied businesses, especially in the Short North and German Village.I remember seeing an article lauding Columbus for being so GLBT friendly a few years ago. It’s deeply ironic that Ohio was one of the last remaining states to have not allowed homosexual marriage before the big supreme court decision. At least Columbus was a bastion of hope in a state stubbornly clinging to the past.[image: rainbow colors abound at Pride Festival]ComfestShort for “community festival”, this is your chance to embrace your inner weird. I love comfest and try to make it every year. If you’re a women, no one will fault you for taking advantage of the fact that it is not, in fact, illegal for a woman to go topless in Columbus. Many women get elaborate body paint on their chests for this event.In college, I worked a booth for “The Joint” during Comfest, which sold things which shall never be called “bongs”. They are water pipes, people. They are also beautiful glass sculptures. Seriously, we did not sell bongs… Despite being pretty well controlled, it was accepted that a few of these artistic pipes would get stolen every year. That’s not very community, folks.The last time I went to Comfest we ran into a guy that had a giant snake and was allowing all passers by to pet it. We could not convince our daughter (4 at the time) that she should pet the snake.[image: Typical Comfest crowd]ArtsOn the first Saturday of every month, the Short North, where an there is an unusual high concentration of art studios, stays open late for hordes of artsy folks to come and look at arts and craft and eat free hors d'oeuvres. This is called the Gallery Hop. It’s actually fun.In addition to this, there are many art festivals that happen in and around Columbus. I think it’s an artsy kind of city. The Columbus Museum of Art is pretty cool. I had my high school prom there, actually.[image: a Short North gallery on gallery hop night]Public TransportationThere are city buses that regularly run up and down High St, and elsewhere. I pretty much only used them for High St. As an OSU student, I got a free pass on the city buses. I didn’t use the buses that much because I never quite figured out the schedules and routes and I never minded walking too much anyway. Besides, I had a car for the truly desperate times.Still, when I did use the buses, they were clean and seemed to come at regular intervals. I have no complaints.There is no train of any kind.There is generally plenty of parking anywhere you go. Parking is far more reasonably priced than in Denver or Chicago if you can’t find it free.[image: map of COTA (Central Ohio Transit Authority) bus routes]SafetyMore often than I probably should have, I walked around Columbus at night as a college student. I also did not stick to safe areas.For a while I worked a job which ended at 3am just north of the Short North area. I would then drive downtown to a government subsidized apartment building where a friend lived at the time, at 3am, by myself, on multiple occasions. Nothing bad ever happened to me other than getting a dick pic stuck under my windshield wiper once.I would also occasionally make a 3 mile or so walk from my apartment North of OSU campus, down High St and through campus out to a club nestled in a little neighborhood out west of Victorian Village, alone. The worst thing that happened to me on these treks was some guy asked me for money “for gas” in the middle of the Oval (a park on OSU campus), far from the road. It was creepy, I gave him $20 and he went away.Two of my coworkers have been robbed while driving around Columbus. One in a known bad neighborhood after their car broke down, one in a known good neighborhood while stopped at a red light. When I lived north of OSU campus, every couple months several cars on my street would have their windows busted in the night. I kept nothing valuable in my car and left the doors unlocked. It was rifled through once or twice, but no one ever stole my cow print seat covers or nail clippers.All in all, if you stay away from the OSU football madness and don’t do drugs or hang out where drug dealers are doing business or join a street gang, I’d say Columbus is really very safe. There are street gangs in Columbus, the Bloods and the Crips are the major ones. I have met members of both, not in the same place.[Image: map of serious crimes in Columbus by district]EntertainmentWhen I was in college I was convinced that Columbus was a boring town and Ohio was a boring state. There was one club I enjoyed going to, and I spent a lot of time walking around or playing video games.I think this was a self imposed sense of boredom. There are definitely things to do, although not as much constant activity as I found in Chicago. There is not, unfortunately, somewhere to go Salsa dancing every single night of the week as we had in Chicago. Maybe 2 or 3 nights of the week is likely, if we had time to get back involved in dancing.There is a few good theaters, there are frequent concerts. All the major Broadway shows do come through Columbus, eventually. We have opera and classical performances too. We also get lots of pop artists, rock, country, and various other types of musicians through town.There is a lot of sports. I do really like the Columbus Clippers, our little minor league baseball team. Once, at a Clippers game which was delayed due to rain, the entire audience applauded for every lightning strike. We were there to be entertained and took advantage of the slightest reason.[image: Ohio Theater in downtown Columbus]Nature / ClimateAfter growing up at the foot of the Rockies in Denver, it took me a long time to realize that other environments could be just as beautiful. Ohio has beautiful trees, check out the Dawes Arboretum. I have also come to find wide open farms particularly aesthetic to the eye.However, there is no good downhill skiing anywhere around here. I have been to Mad River “Mountain”. Please, that is not a Mountain. That entire hill is the size of the bunny slopes that Coloradans use to teach toddlers. And it’s icy.It is much more entertaining to hook up a sled to a lawn mower or golf cart and whip around a flat yard or a very well frozen over lake. We’re flat here in Ohio, let’s make the most of it.Likewise, there is no “hiking” in Ohio. There is walking. You can even put on a backpack and walk through the woods to make camp. I would even call that backpacking, but it’s just not the same as the Rocky Mountains.I suppose I have been spoiled by the Rockies for natural beauty close to home. But, every year I am coming to appreciate more the simply loveliness of woods and farms and prairie and lakes.[image: Dawes Arboretum]Columbus Zoo and The WildsThe Columbus Zoo is home to famous Zookeeper, Jack Hanna. It is a very good zoo, as zoos go. Far more interesting to me, thought, is The Wilds. This is a place that’s about 1.5 hrs drive from Columbus where you can take a safari through over 9000 acres of reclaimed mining land that is now a nature preserve for lots of displaced zoo animals. It’s a pretty amazing place to have practically in our backyard.[image: safari tour at The Wilds]County FairsOhio does really good county fairs. This is where you go to eat seriously unhealthy delicious food, see a wide variety of farm animals, shop crafts and antiques, and watch all manner of amusing community events. Have you ever seen a group of toddlers in little kid cars painted up like demolition derby cars trying to crash into each other? It’s hilarious. Also, tractor pulls, monster truck rallies, adult demolition derbies, rodeos, horsemanship shows, etc. This is All-American entertainment.There is something just blissful about sitting down with a Bloomin’ Onion to watch a demolition derby. Can life get any better than this?[image: Ohio State Fair, near downtown Columbus]Family LifeAs a parent, with children, I have a new appreciation for Columbus that I never had as a college student. Here, we can afford to live on acreage in the country with a not too long daily commute to the city. Traffic is far more manageable than in Chicago. We don’t need constant activity, because kids keep us pretty well occupied.[image: kids in Central Ohio]There’s a peek into Columbus, Ohio life.