I'm no cinematographer...like, not at all. Fortunately for me, in this day and age, they'll sell anyone with $129.99 a video camera. This means I can take video everywhere. Even while driving to work.

Craig and I went to Buses by the Bridge in Lake Havasu City, AZ last month. It was all kinds of awesome. I've never seen so many buses in one place before.

Here's a little insight into the kinds of things that amuse Craig and me.Your motivation to watch to the end is that you get to see video of Craig, who is normally less than enthusiastic about being photographed (isn't he cute?)

Here's a real gem. I deeply regret having pointed the camera toward my face and having said anything during the filming of this video. Anyway, the point of the video is that the bus engine is functional! Sorry you can't really see it...just enjoy the noise I guess.

Finally, here's a short one, showing the bus actually on the road, moving. As we understand it, this bus hasn't been road worthy in over 15 years, so we're really happy that she's rollin!

Sunshine and The Wave

A neighbor of ours came by yesterday and said “how are Sunshine and The Wave doing?” I found this amusing on several levels. (He was talking about Bluebell and BB.) Makes ‘em sound like a 70’s rock band, don’t you think?

“The Wave” got her missing piece of trim this week. It is amazing what a difference one little piece of chrome makes.

“Sunshine” has headlights again. She looks much more alive now…as long as you ignore the gaping cavity that is the engine compartment.

I took pictures of BB with her eyes intact this morning on my way out of the house. I was excited because I happened to have the camera in my backpack. It wasn’t until I got to work that I realized that while I did have photos, I didn’t have any way to get the photos from my camera to my computer. Go me.

We’re going camping tonight. We still are without a winch (because I just don’t want to pay for it) and our oil temperature gauge is working sporadically. Hopefully it will be a mild and not a major adventure.

One bad engine, one old Subaru and one too many cars in the driveway.

Good news--we finally have a name for the blue bus. We're calling it BB. The naming process was accelerated out of necessity by the fact that we now have--yes, count them--two blue buses.
Intoducing BlueBell:




Craig sends me a craigslist posting for a car approximately once per every 1.65 days, so it was no surprise to me when the morning after we got the news about BB's engine I got the craigslist link for BlueBell. She is a 1970 deluxe transporter--mostly original, right down to the radio, and gas
cap.

We took BB's engine down to our mechanic to get his opinion on the motor's condition--long story short--he informed us that the engine was completely shot. This was a posibility that we were somewhat expecting, but not fully prepared to deal with. Our greatest hope was that there were simply missing hoses...and our realistic hope was that the case would be solid and everything would be rebuildable, but as it is, the case is cracked, pistons are shrunk, and we're back to square one.

Ultimately we aren't sure what our plans are at this point other than we are still going to fix BB up, but we don't know what to do about the large cavity in the engine compartment. We're painting her on July 11th. We're about ready to get rid of the red bus frame (which my grandma has lovingly named "Doris"). We are having a really good time having four VWs at our house, but I think our neighbors are getting concerned. We've got the Subaru on craigslist, but apparently no one is interested in an old--but not old enough to be cool--Subaru with over 200k miles...should have seen that one coming.

Oh, AND, the extra bonus to buying BlueBell is that her previous owner is a painter and we had been wanting to paint our house. Thank you Lawrence for the beautiful bus and the beautiful paint job--seriously, it is gorgeous.

...and then there were three.

Have you ever seen a tow truck move a car that has one axle and no wheels? I hadn't...until tonight. I rather unfortunately missed the miracle that followed--the tow truck depositing said car into our garage. Hydraulics are amazing.

No, we haven't gone on a bus buying rampage, we just happened to find one containing SEVERAL things we needed for our restoration project.

Thanks to Pam for selling us her bus. Thanks to B&W Wrecking Service for saving the day once again. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for driving me home.

Out of balance with a project for Penny

Following our failed Grand Canyon road trip of 2008, we started asking around about what might be causing our engine to heat up so darned quickly. The one thing we heard repeatedly was to check the engine compartment seal to ensure that it did not having any holes/missing areas—in other words, make sure it truly was acting as a seal. Rather than doing this immediately, we came up with a quick, albeit horribly tacky remedy, which was to bolt a 20 inch fan to the bottom of our Vanagon. It does the trick, but it really is a temporary solution.

Finally, we got around to figuring out what the engine compartment seal was and when we looked at ours, discovered that about half of the seal was missing. The problem with this is that (being an air cooled vehicle) air is pulled into the engine to cool it, but because the seal is broken, hot air is being pulled into the engine, rather than cooler air. Does that make it an “air heated” engine? (Oh, how witty.)

The images below show the gaps in our engine compartment seal…and also the brand spanking new seal we purchased (and quite obviously have yet to install).

One final thought for today…if you happen across a ’71 bus (transporter, not camper) with minimal rust, that runs and has a decent body, we “have a friend” who is in the market for said vehicle... Oh come on, don't act surprised, you knew it was coming. We tried having only one VW, but our garage feels like a yin with no yang.