Originally posted 6/2015
This post was written by the one and only...David McQuaid. Sweetest, most patient soul I've ever known! <3
Note to self…getting an old bus repaired takes longer and costs more than getting your car fixed! With that bit of painfully obvious information out of the way, I’m pleased to announce that after THREE WEEKS in the shop, Sugaree is back in our grubby little hands, with less than a week before we leave on our trip. All we have left to do is to tile the kitchen backsplash, paint a few walls, have the rear-view cameras installed, tile the bathroom floor, have the stereo and alarm systems installed, wallpaper the bedroom and paint the exterior. But before we paint the exterior, we must first sand the entire bus, wash it thoroughly, tape it impeccably and THEN, paint it’s 35-foot mass. If everything works exactly perfect, we will still be pulling out of here this Saturday morning. If for some reason it doesn’t, we have a couple of extra days of fluff on the front end of the adventure, so we should still be ok.
Wait a minute…this just in…after having Sugaree back for only an hour, the FRONT brakes caught on fire! Now, we’ve had two fires on the bus…the rear brakes and the front brakes. This is throwing a left-handed monkey wrench into our perfectly laid-out plans. Again, fortunately, the fire happened on Oak Lawn, so, thankfully close enough to home. The girls were able to Uber home, and as they got into the Uber car, Kelly asked the driver if she could have his two bottled waters to help douse the fire in our bus, as if it was just a normal thing. The girls all then drove back in my car and followed me and Sugaree as we limped back home, hoping not to catch on fire again, and bring out the fire department and the neighbors again.
I just heard from George, the mechanic, who said if everything goes right, we should get it back tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. It looks like we will be leaving on Monday instead of Saturday, but that’s ok…as long as it happens.
As with any true labor of love, the project always takes longer, costs more and ultimately squeezes every last drop of energy out of you to see it to its ultimate reality. This project has been no different, but we are SO going to be pleased with the end result. So much love and care has gone into our every decision on every element of the bus, from the floors to the ceiling tiles, to the exterior paint. No matter what happens, it will be interesting to see how we pack all of our crap into 6% (yes, that’s six percent!) of our normal living area for a month. We will learn a lot about conservation, interpersonal relationships and many other things we haven’t even thought about.
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