By
Ayse Guner
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Minutes before the sun rises, hours before his lunch break and a day before tomorrow, Rod Baarstad turns on the red lights of his shuttle and starts a new day.
Slowly cruising through the streets of the University of Arizona campus, he worries about being on time - something he will worry about for the rest of his day.
At 6:30 a.m., Baarstad, a Cat Tran shuttle driver working today on the yellow north express route, pulls up to Lot 9002 on, a UA parking lot at the intersection of East Speedway and North Tucson Boulevards. He is there on time.
"See her, she drives that car and rides with me every morning," Baarstad says as he points his finger to a student coming out of her car, Lora Nelson, a music sophomore.
Through the dawn, Nelson approaches the shuttle, carrying a large trombone case. She sits behind the driver's seat, takes out her trombone and combines the parts of the instrument. Then she places it in her mouth and starts playing it loudly, red light illuminating her facial features.
Five minutes later, across from the Center for Computing and Information Technology building, Nelson gets off the shuttle.
Baarstad continues his ride for 20 minutes until returning to the parking lot. He is on time again, but has 75 more stops to get to. Cat Tran escorts roughly 685 riders a day, 250,000 riders a year. Since the shuttle began in 1987, every ride is free.
He drives down East Second Street, turns onto North Cherry Avenue and stops in front of a coffee cart - Old World Espresso - where he sometimes drinks a coffee or eats a bratwurst. But he does more than grab a snack. He gets to share pieces of his life with a friend.
Dan Mathy, the barista of the cart, greets him by saying, "That mustache is a paste-on," teasing about Baarstad's uncombed, puffy mustache.
Baarstad honks his horn and gets back to his routine to pick up his favorite "7:40 group." As he gets to the parking lot, more than 20 people in line anxiously wait for him. They rush into the shuttle, slowly finding their places, squishing into the corridor and holding onto the poles.
"Well, anybody see anybody out there in the lot?" Baarstad asks after waiting a couple minutes for more passengers.
"No," the riders reply.
And so starts another ride with the 61-year-old former court reporter and occasional tour-bus driver.
In 20 minutes, all his favorite riders will have departed the shuttle, off to their jobs or classes at the UA. But until then, Baarstad will have someone to talk to.
People who joke, laugh and share with him, who listen to the news with him on National Public Radio and comment on an earthquake or a presidential election, make up his favorite group, he says.
"One of them sitting beside me is a musician. He is a funny kid," he says. "Another one, a woman who started a business on her own. Not typical students you run into on campus talking on the cell phone to decide where the party is tonight. More of a blue-collar type."
"I really enjoy these people," Baarstad adds. "Each passenger group has their own personality and mine are the mature type."
As a driver, Baarstad wants nothing more than to send his passengers away with a smile, he says. He plays a radio that he brings from home, tuning from 89.1 to 90.5 to listen to "good" jazz and classic music.
In the next couple of stops, the group begins to disburse before Baarstad has the chance to hear all of their stories.
"13, see you, 14, yeah, you too, 15, bye, 16, have a good day," Baarstad says as he counts the numbers of people going out from the shuttle, something he has to do every time passengers board or exit the shuttle.
Keeping tracking of the ridership helps to manage and improve the service, he says.
A shuttle driver's job is not only to be behind the wheel and to pay attention to the numbers, roads or time, he says, but also to see what is going on around campus.
As a part of his job, Baarstad keeps an eye on the cars parked in Lot 9001 - his territory. So far, he has spotted an unoccupied car with the motor running, and cars with their lights on or windows down.
He copies the permit numbers hanging on the rearview mirrors and calls the dispatcher at the parking and transportation department, who contacts the cars' owners, he says.
On other occasions, he has caught suspicious events too, but only seeing newcomers to the lot, who tried to figure their way out, he says.
Baarstad says he is happy with his job, with his riders and with the diversity he enjoys on campus. As a semi-retiree, he takes advantage of the energy and action that the campus has to offer, he says.
"By chatting and learning little bits and pieces, you get to know a little bit about them," he says. "A baby-sitter or a musician...it is just a piece of life that they are going through and that you see."
To see these lives, Baarstad came a long way.
After he got married in his native Chicago in the 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles and started attending Bryan Stenotype School. He went to both morning and night classes so that he could finish as soon as possible and begin supporting his young family, he says.
For 27 years, he worked as a court reporter in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson until he got tired of his fast-paced life, he says.
"It was grueling."
After his wife passed away and his three sons grew up, it was time to find a "quiet" job, he says. So here he has been for the past two years.
During the summer, when the UA campus population drops, he works as a tour-bus driver carrying passengers around the nation for two months. Last summer, he went from San Francisco to Vancouver.
But he most enjoys working here - where he would like to be a student himself some day, studying environmental technology.
When Liz Hedger, a secretary at the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center, rides the shuttle with him, they are usually alone.
"I can just tell him whatever I want," Hedger says. "He is my free psychologist and adviser. I just want to put a sign on the shuttle saying, 'doctor's in.'"
Baarstad is also liked by his colleagues. Cat Tran lead driver Tony Mojica described him as someone that can anybody can "count on."
"Whatever he sees that doesn't feel right, he takes care of it," Mojica says.
If there is one thing Baarstad doesn't like, though, it is the bicyclists who cut in front of him without signaling or waving, he says.
"They are kamikaze migrators," he said. "They should learn the rules."
The afternoons are always more lonely for him than the mornings, he says, but even then, he will be behind his wheel talking with people until someone turns to him with a simple request.
"Next stop please."
