Goodbye Tree...

Obviously, a very long 4 month break. Winter has a hibernation effect on me. Sorry.

Waaaaay back in October, by request of my wife, my neighbor and the City of Mentor, a large deceased Ash tree next to our house had to go.

Our choice for the task was Sam and his crew from Keep-It-Green Tree & Landscape out of Madison.

At 9am, Opal alerted us to their arrival. Sam was cool, and we worked out the safest and easiest way to bring this squirrel-perch to the ground.

After careful assessment the situation...

...and protecting the driveway...

Let the sawdust commence.

The first cut is the deepest...

"I'll cut, you pull"

And then...

Whoa, this was ONE DEAD TREE !!!

They left us a nice pile of firewood and enough mulch to dress-up the whole front yard.

And then I hibernated until mid February...

More to come very soon...

First things first...

We can not keep the bus at our home. Period. After receiving a letter from the fine folks at the City of Mentor's Economic and Community Development office regarding the lengthy presence of the forlorn trailer, and another friendly letter regarding a decidedly dead tree looming over our neighbors roof...

...we have decided not to kick the gator and maintain a low profile with the bus. I'll bring it home to work on it, but it won't stay here. It and the forlorn trailer share a corner at a local storage lot.

But a lot got done on the first visit home...

Decals...

I'm not sure exactly what rule exists concerning this, but I'm pretty sure that you can't drive around the neighborhood advertising that you are a school bus when, in fact, you are not a school bus. So off come the decals.

This was a learning process. I found out that if you "Bake & Scrape", You get a sticky black mess.

HOWEVER... if you warm the decals with a heat gun for about 30 seconds and then LET IT COOL for about 30 seconds, they will peal right off. And very cleanly....

Yeah, I know...tacky and sexist. But I couldn't pass it up. The point is that they come off very easily if you warm and peal rather than bake and scrape.

The next project was to defeat or disconnect the incredibly loud buzzer connected to the rear door.

Inside of that square, steel box dwells the world's...NAY, the universe's most obnoxious buzzing device. If the red handle (that latches the door closed) is moved upward, one would hear a noise that could be compared to a drug-crazed beaver trying to take down a steel flagpole during a lake effect hail storm.

I can't decide if this contraption was designed to not be easily removed, or is was not designed to be easily removed. Point is...it was NOT easily removed.

First, the half-bench seat had to be dismantled. Unfortunately, it was a bit easier than I expected.

In each bench, regardless of length, two legs on the aisle side are mounted to the floor with 2 bolts each. The outer side is screwed to a rail along the wall. The wall bolts easily loosened with a 1/2" socket. But...two twists of a 3/8" on the leg bolts broke them in half with a rusted taper. Hmmm.

This photo is out of sequence, but I needed something to break-up the prose.

With the seat out of the way, I thought that I could easily disengage the killer buzzer from hell.

Yeah, right.

Most of the screws securing the box from hell came out easily. Except for one. I literally had to rip the box off of the last screw.

For 5 minutes solid, the beaver went nuts. and there was hail the size of meatballs.

Just THINKING about that...Whoa...I need a break.

Late update...It's going to be a long break. But, hey, Check back soon!

It's WAY too Big !!!

"Jeff, it's WAY too big!"

That is exactly what Anna said when she looked out the front window and saw our future home for the first time. It blocked our view of the two neighbors homes across the street, which I guess could be accurately described as pretty darn big. But, really, what is "too big"?

"Too big" is a subjective term.

Too big to park on the street?  The average lot size here is 45 feet. The bus is 36 feet +/-1ft. So, yes it is too big to park on the street. Legally.

Too big to fit into the driveway? Nope. 15 feet to spare.

BUT...

The interior of the forlorn trailer is exactly equal to the distance from the back of the drivers seat to the rear of the bus. The cab and engine take up 10 feet (36' total). Any truck that's capable of towing a trailer would be around 20' long. So as Spock would logically point out, we are 10 feet LESS big.

Big or not, it is SO MUCH EASIER to back-up.

BIG TIME ground clearance. Hello, Quartzite !!!

After a brief curb-side inspection, I got the impression that the latent wanderlust pent up inside of Anna was chipping away at her armor. Something clicked.

Since that day, Anna has been immersed in YouTube "Skoolie" videos.

I could not be happier.

Hello Bus !!!

The next morning, I drove out to Geneva to inspect my (our) new acquisition. I hoped to bring back good news to help make breaking the "bad" news to Anna a bit more palatable.

Happily... no, GLEEFULLY...I discovered that I didn't screw up. Actually, I was quite pleased with our future freedom machine.

Very little rust...

Nearly new tires...

Needs a power wash...

But, all in all, I felt like a winner!

But there will be much work to do.

And the first task will be telling my wife what I (we) just bought.

Let go and let God.

E-Bay

I always wanted to convert a bus into a camper. But what kind of bus.

A shuttle bus? Kind of small.

A "short bus"? Still too small.

A full sized school bus? Kind of big.

I've been looking at various buses for a few years. I even placed bids for a variety of buses in the region. I figured that if it was supposed to happen, it will.

If you have ever bid on anything on e-bay, you know that it all comes down to the last few minutes. Reserve not met. You've been outbid. Already sold. In retrospect, I'm happy that most of these deals fell through. They just didn't seem right.

Then it happened. 2000 Freightliner, Cummins/Allison. 112K miles. Good body with very little rust. Only 20 miles east of our home in Mentor. A couple of bids with reserve not met. So I bid just to see what the reserve might be. Someone will outbid me, so what's the harm?

No one else bid. I went to work terrified that I would come home to a commitment to purchase a bus I've never seen (and neglected to discuss with my wife). All I could do is let go and let God.

When I got home and logged on to e-bay, I found out that God wanted us to have this bus.

God..

Thank you.

Please grant me the Grace

To tell Anna.

Amen.

The Camper

Last fall (2017) my wife's friend said that she wanted to sell her 2002-ish Keystone Sprinter 274RLS travel trailer. It had been sitting in her driveway for about 10 years, providing a neat place for her kids' sleepovers. Anna was all for it. She wanted to plant it a a local campground and use it as a summer home. Sounded OK to me. I could tell that there was a soft spot in the floor around the slide-out. Hell, I can fix this. So this spring we handed her the cash and parked it in our driveway.

We knew that the City Of Mentor was eventually going to get on our butts to move it to a location that complied with zoning. The goal was to repair the damage and get it out of here. I immediately realized that this was going to take some time.

And the more I looked, the more damage I found...

So, I tried to repair the rotted, molded carnage...

And it only got worse.

After ripping this can apart for two months, it became apparent that we could not live in this disaster. There is no way I was going to let my family live in this decomposing dump.

So, what are we gonna do with this mess?

Strip it. Remove anything that could possibly be used. The fridge, microwave, stove/oven, heater, hot water, electrical panel, dinette, couch, chairs.

So, NOW what?