In these challenging times, there is often little to be thankful for.

With the worldwide economic downturn that is beginning to take hold here, you have to wonder when the criminals are going to start turning up the heat as their situation worsens.

One also has to start wondering when layoffs are going to start happening. And even though world oil prices are going down, the slide in the value of the dollar is sure to minimise whatever benefits we would accrue from slumping fuel costs.

I would say the outlook for the immediate future is not pretty and it certainly doesn't help that our leaders already seem to be drowning in ineptitude.

Still, for each of us - there are a few things we can be thankful for.

For me, it's simple things - like my son and my nephew who provide more than their fair share of hilarity and my family - on both sides - on a whole.

I am also thankful for other things. Chief among them is that I don't have to take those buses that go to Stony Hill and beyond each day at the speed of sound. I swear, the owners of those buses get their drivers from the same pool of deranged individuals who dwell somewhere up 'in them there hills'.

What kind of driver overtakes non-existent traffic at 5:30 in the morning at 100 miles an hour? I mean, really, what's the rush? But there they are blasting up and down Constant Spring Road like someone is giving away large sums of money at opposite ends of their routes and the driver who gets there first gets it all.

What I want to know is if the people who take those buses are not planning to do anything about the way they are flown from departure to destination at the rate of knots with their lives hanging by a tyre thread.

Too terrified

These are the same people who will block the roads and protest over the state of their roads who, but remain mum on the drivers who literally fly them over those same bad roads that rim deep ravines filled with jagged rocks. If any of those buses go over those ravines, there is no coming back.

Maybe they're just too terrified. It could be that they feel the way I do when I am flying in very bad weather; when the buffeting gets so bad from the turbulence, you hold on to to the edges of your seat as tightly as someone straining against chronic constipation.

And the way those drivers get those buses to bob and weave in and out of traffic later in the days when they traffic gets much heavier is incredible.

Most horrifying feeling

The most horrifying feeling for me is having one of these things bear down on you from behind as you inch your way down Constant Spring Road. And when they zoom by, you pray that the conductor and sidemen don't end up in your lap as the bus leans at angles that defy the laws of gravity.

It could be that the passengers are just too tired from all the rocking and shaking and careening to complain. After all, most of them have to save their remaining energy for work. And in the evenings, after a second such ride, who really has the energy to do anything but go home and sleep. You have to get your rest if you are to survive the experience twice daily.

It's a travesty that those buses are named Coasters, because there is no coasting going on where they are concerned. Skaters, Sliders, Speedsters, and Careeners are all more appropriate names. We should invite the manufacturers to come here and see how their buses are being driven and maybe then we could suggest a few appropriate name changes.

Yes, I am thankful. Those who take those buses should be even more thankful. That they get to their destinations each day without incident is nothing short of a miracle.

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