A lot of people like to only write about the good stuff, the victories, the happy accidents. Today, I’m going to tell you about some of the less pretty parts of our adventure to date.
Read more: Sometimes Things Just Don’t Go Smooth…Yes, that picture up there is of our bus, in the ditch, at our home. This happened the night I had brought her home. It was my 1st time driving a vehicle this big, and had been on the road for about 12 hours, alone, and it was about midnight. I had originally planned to depart Idaho, where the bus was being converted, at around 7 in the morning. Due to issues with the wiring between the toad and the bus, I wasn’t able to get on the road home until around noon.
That wasn’t the last problem.
While taking a left turn the main door blew open. The little camper latch that was installed just wasn’t enough.
While driving I started to hear a loud buzzing sound that I assumed was the door between the living area and driving area. I found out I was wrong when I heard a loud BANG and saw a solar panel hit the side of the highway and get destroyed.
Finally, I got home. In the dark. I tried to get the bus up our driveway, misjudged the turn and .. well…
Lucky for us, Mom had heard of Coach-Net! Think of it as AAA for buses and RVs. While we didn’t have a policy with them yet, they only have a 24-hour “simmer” window. We signed up that night, and were able to get a tow out the day after. Only ~mildly~ disrupting our neighborhood garbage pickup…
After getting the bus out of the ditch, we managed to get it stuck again! I had taken the bus out to get it weighed for registration, and on returning home, I decided to try and turn the bus around to park it in my neighbor’s yard (with permission). While one side of the road was well-packed and designed for parking, the other was not… luckily we were able to pull the bus out ourselves, with a little help from our F250.
But wait! there’s more!
Not all of our trials to date have been ditch related. One of our pre-launch goals was to have a complete systems check on the bus. While the conversion company told us the bus was mechanically sound I had enough trouble getting over the mountain to warrant the double check. And we’re very glad we did. The list of needed services was frankly staggering, the most troubling being the hydraulic cooling fan motor.
This motor is needed to cool the engine, as our bus is a rear engine, and doesn’t get passive wind from driving. Our mechanic noted that the motor was leaking, and had been for some time, and needed to be replaced. Doesn’t sound bad, until you find out that the part isn’t readily available, and the wait list is 2-3 months long!
What happens next?
First, I reread my post on managing stress. Then we solve the problems as we can.
On the drive home, I was able to secure the door with my belt. A little MacGyver, but it worked. On top of our list of things to do when we work on the bus is to reinforce/re-imagine that door lock.
Since our bus is still under warranty, the builder agreed to send us a replacement panel.
We’re going to use a spotter in the future when maneuvering in tight spaces.
We found a seller of used bus parts thanks to the Facebook Hive Mind. AAA Bus Sales had the part, and will send it to us within a week.
We’ll roll as soon as we can, and we’ll have more missteps. But as I always told my trainees when I worked in the factory, when it comes to mistakes, first you own them, then you learn from them. Most importantly, get over them. If you can’t get over them, you didn’t learn from your mistakes.
Update from Mom:
The other day, we were trying to pull into a Boondockers Welcome host site. This particular site had a gravel road that we had to take off the main, paved road, that was at quite a bit of an incline. The host assured us they successfully made the turn with a big rig, we just had to approach the incline at an angle. Well, we weren’t able to make it:
A tow truck got us out easily, but we made the decision not to attempt it again. We continued on down the road, figured out how to get back to the freeway, and found the nearest rest stop. From there, we were able to make a reservation at a nearby RV park and had a restful couple of days to recover. From this, we learned an important lesson: Our tow hitch is a lot lower than the rest of our bus, and will get us stuck if high clearance is required.