Editor’s note: This article chronicles the activities on the Moonlight Express during Homecoming Weekend. The reporter rode along with Moonlight Express driver Mark Gardner on his Saturday night shift Oct. 20.

The building is clean for a bus barn. Tall ceilings, clean windows, vinyl seats not yet cracked with age.

A guy sits at the break room table, reading the Des Moines Register and drinking a 20-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew.

On Welch Avenue, people are huddling in lines by the bar doors, shivering as their tight, skin-baring bar clothes absorb the chilly wind that has continued to blow since the game earlier in the day.

It’ll be a busy night on the Moonlight Express.

Bus dispatchers Wanda Eikenberry and Jenny Bethurem begin fielding pick-up calls at 10 p.m.

“Call back at 10:15,” they say almost simultaneously as the phone rings again.

Mark Gardner walks out of the break room, Mountain Dew in hand. Turning to the vinyl benches, he picks up his equipment for the night – a hand radio and a large black flashlight.

Mark is driving the Moonlight Express tonight, known by ISU students as the Drunk Bus.

The sliver of a crescent moon shines brightly as Mark, sophomore in liberal arts and sciences, begins prepping the bus. It’s a short bus seating about 13 people, the kind used for handicapped passengers and special door-side calls during the day.

Lights are switched on, tires are checked. Mark turns the light on the sign display, changing the service name to Moonlight Express. It’s 10:15 p.m., as the bus pulls out of the CyRide lot.

The first pick up

Moonlight Express began in the early ’80s under the name Night Ride. A joint effort between the university and the City of Ames, it offers patrons a safe ride from 10:15 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights free of charge. Buses are run by CyRide and the service has been continuous since 1984. The program originally was funded solely through the ISU Government of the Student Body, but in 1994, it was revamped. GSB now funds 53.7 percent, the student fees committee contributes 15.8 percent and the City of Ames adds 30.5 percent.

It’s about 11 p.m. and the bus is on an unfamiliar residential street in west Ames. Mark shines his flashlight through the bus window to read the house numbers. The address he wants is on the corner.

“It’s gonna be a party,” he warns, as 11 students saunter out the door and get on the bus. They’re headed to Sterling University Plains, an apartment complex in southwest Ames.

Mark knows how to work his riders. He teases them, yells at them, takes full advantage of their drunken state and the upper hand they’ve given him. Since he began driving last September, Mark says he’s been pretty lucky with his Moonlight Express riders. Drivers can only pick up people who can walk up the bus’ stairs and sit down unaided, and he’s only had a few people ever pass out once they’re riding. He’s never taken anyone to the hospital.

But “every night is a new one,” he says. “My theory is if I come off as a fun guy right off the bat, then later on they won’t have as much of a problem following the rules.”

Although Moonlight Express’ primary purpose is to provide a safe mode of transportation for Ames’ partygoers, riders can’t take their party paraphernalia past the bus doors. Alcohol and smoking are not allowed on the bus, and Mark says he’s not hesitant to kick people off if they’re breaking the rules.

There are two microphones at the front of the bus, white for the CyRide dispatch office and black for the bus’ PA system.

“Code blue, code blue.”

One of the riders has stumbled to the front of the bus and is mimicking the dispatchers with the black mike.

Mark turns up the volume on the white radio, but he still can’t hear the dispatchers.

“Code blue, code blue.”

The bus stops suddenly, and in a warning tone even his inebriated riders pick up on, Mark says that everyone is off if the noise doesn’t stop immediately.

Silence. People sneak glances at each other out of the corners of their eyes. The giggles start.

Mark listens attentively to the dispatchers. It’s OK.

“Sorry, I had to play the role of the asshole there for a minute,” he says. “I was trying to get another call for ya’. See, if I get more calls then we get more people on the bus, and it’s more of a party.”

“Heyyy!” The bus-riders yell.

“You love me, you know it,” he says with assurance, and honks the horn as the bus goes by a house party.

“Who’re you honkin’ at? People on the porch? Hot chicks?”

“I don’t know,” Mark says, trying to avoid where he knows the questions are going.

“Are they naked?”

“Huh?”

The bus laughs. Mark needs to redeem himself.

“Hey, Americans drive on the right side of the road!” Someone yells from the back as Mark turns a corner and goes briefly into the other lane.

“Thanks for the tip ass-nerd,” he responds, using a name created by one of his friends.

“Ohhhhhh . ass-nerd, ass-nerd .”

Safety concerns

A video camera is at the front of the bus, distinguishable only by the red light shining under its lens. The video sits under Mark’s seat, recording the events on the bus, whatever they may be.

Although the lens cannot turn to tape different angles inside the bus, Mark thinks it is a good safety tool for the Moonlight Express drivers.

Brandon Whalen does too, and he should know. A Moonlight Express driver for a year and a half, Brandon was assaulted last fall by one of his riders at the end of the night. The incident was caught on the bus’ videotape and Brandon’s attacker was caught a couple weeks later.

“I was kickin’ him off my bus for a bunch of stuff,” Brandon says. “[The riders] were pushing all the right buttons and then one of them opened a beer, and that’s not so much CyRide policy as state law.

“He hit me on the shoulder and I thought he was being a jerk, and then he hit me again and I thought, `Oh, OK.’ It was over before I realized what was going on [and] it was mostly just irritating . I had to go to the emergency room, and I didn’t get out of CyRide until about 4:30 [a.m.]”

Brandon, senior in graphic design, had only been working as a CyRide driver for about two months when the incident happened on Oct. 5, 2000, but he didn’t quit the job.

“[It would] take a more severe beating to make me quit a job that pays $9.50 an hour, I’ll tell you that right now,” he says. “Maybe if it was minimum wage.

“I like Moonlight, it’s a quick five hours . It’s like Dial-A-Ride on crack, basically. [On] Dial-A-Ride, you pick up elderly people and you drive really slowly and really conservatively, and Moonlight’s exactly the opposite. It’s like controlled recklessness. I accelerate pretty fast and I brake pretty fast and I’m basically trying to get everyone to hurry because all the passengers don’t care how comfortable the ride is.”

Early-morning hours

Mark drives down toward Welch Avenue, going slowly to allow the numerous partygoers to cross the street outside the crosswalks. The night seems to go more slowly now.

Finally, at 1:20 a.m., Mark answers a pick-up at on Arizona Avenue. He honks the horn and the street is suddenly flooded with people who want a ride.

About 15 are allowed on board, all headed to Billy Sunday Road in southeast Ames.

One sits down in the front seat. He has a story to tell, a lesson for others from his previous drinking experiences.

“The main word I would have to stress – moderation,” he says.

“I woke up in Boone one time. I had to walk home. I woke up in a residential area, and I walked home to Billy Sunday Road in Ames, and I have to say, I walked along I thought, the daily thing I think is moderation, because moderation prevents a lot of things.

“First of all, A, moderation – hey we’re conducting an interview here – moderation prevents – one night I peed on my friend, here. I woke up and I had, I had been beyond the bounds of moderation, I was very intoxicated, so I urinated on my friend. And I woke up the next morning with a feeling of complete remorse because normally I don’t allow myself – I feel, I felt a lot of remorse, because A, number one, I was too intoxicated to control myself, B, I urinated on a friend of mine and F, I urinated on a friend of mine who was sleeping in a friend of mine’s bed – we had a lot of variables in conflict.

“Normally I wouldn’t urinate on my friend, normally I wouldn’t urinate on my friend who is sleeping in a friend of mine’s bed. It’s complex, there’s a lot of ins and outs, but normally I wouldn’t do that – lack of moderation.”

Mark turns the bus onto Billy Sunday Road and pulls into the parking lot of the apartment complex. The stories end abruptly as our final riders stumble off the bus, waving as they go into the apartment building.

Mark heads back to the bus barn and pulls into the garage where each bus is cleaned before the end of the night.

2:20 a.m., time to go home.