Test Drive

We took our first foray into the wilderness this weekend with the bus. Sort of a test drive to see how everything works, which, honestly has kind of worried me since we bought it for the ridiculously low price of $1,200, and we didn't bother to take it to a mechanic first and have it checked out, or really did anything more than turn on the lights and the engine and ran it though the gears to make sure they all worked.

For the test drive we decided to head out to our favorite hot springs located on the Idaho/Oregon border on the Owyhee River. Snively Hot Springs (http://www.idahohotsprings.com/destinations/snively/) is a 79 mile drive from where we are staying in Boise (each way) and I thought it would make the perfect test run. It's far enough out of town to make it a good test, but close enough that if things went wrong we would be able to call someone to come help us. Besides, it's a fucking hot springs and we can soak all day and night! Well, technically it closes at sundown, but I rarely pay attention to that kind of stuff, and so far I have been lucky in that I have never been caught. Besides, I honestly think stupid rules like "closed at night" need to be broken. Look at it this way: the hot springs is on public land and belongs to the public, the people that patrol said public land are "public servants" who are paid by the taxes we pay, therefore they work for US, and if we (the people who pay their salary) say that we want the hot springs open at night for us to use it, then that should be our right. Just because some other dumbasses came along at some point in history and abused that right and left the hot springs a mess, does not mean that we will do the same. That's like saying "oh sorry, you can't have a gun because at one time a serial killer used a gun." Fuck that. The hot springs belongs to us, which is why I have no problem breaking stupid rules like that. (End of rant.)


Anyway, Friday while I am sitting at work I was all the sudden like "Damn, I want to go to the hot springs." So I texted Candy and we decided to go ahead and just do it. (I love being spontaneous like that.) So we packed up the bus, grabbed some food to take along and hit the road.

Well ... almost.

The first problem we did discover was that a couple of warning buzzers would not stop going off. Buzzer #1 was by the back door, and is meant as a signal that the back door is locked (the back door can't be locked when the vehicle is moving. I'm thinking it's a safety issue if the school bus was full of children and the bus crashed, it has to be available as an emergency exit.) So Candy, being handy with a screwdriver (handy Candy ... lol) pulled the cover off the buzzer and disconnected it. Buzzer #2 was basically the same thing but located at the front of the bus. We did the same thing and disconnected it also. What worries me though is that neither buzzer was going off the first time I moved the bus, right after we bought it. Guess we will find out later on down the road if either of these is going to be an issue.

Once we got that all sorted out, we did finally hit the road. The buzzer thing might have been a blessing in disguise, because we ended up missing all the Friday night after-work, rush-hour traffic that is usually an issue between Boise and Nampa. We had a clear shot and didn't have to change lanes a bunch of times, which, if truth be told, was a big relief to me as I haven't really driven anything this big since my Air Force days when I used to haul Nukes, and that was damn near 30 years ago.

One thing we need to figure out is either how to make a gate that keeps our 100#+ dog, Sadie, from being right in my face when I am driving ... OR ... at the very least a shoulder pad and sleeve that I can wear to keep all the drool off my shoulder and arm.

We were very fortunate to have such a beautiful evening for the drive out there. The weather was a perfect 80 degrees, and there were just enough clouds in the sky to make for an awesome sunset.

We didn't make it to the hot springs until well after dark, which was a little bit hairy on some of those curvy back-hill, one-lane roads, but we made it without a hitch. Well, at least until we got there and I overshot the parking lot in the dark and had to back down the road about 50 yards in the dark.

Reminder to self ... fix the back up lights, and/or install a video backup system so I can see where the fuck I am backing up in the dark.

I would have taken more pics of the hot springs itself, but for one my camera is broken, and for two I wasn't about to take my phone down near the water and have it break also, so instead I'm just gonna post an old pic I have taken of the hot springs here, and if you have seen it before, just ignore it. (Taken last January.)

All-in-all it was a very successful weekend, although we had planned on staying until Sunday morning before we left to go back to town, we ended up leaving Saturday evening and driving halfway back to Boise because of all the damn flies that kept harassing us all weekend. That will teach us to park anywhere close to the outhouse!

The reason we only drove halfway back Saturday night is because we stopped at a truck stop and had dinner in the restaurant, and afterwards I was like "Fuck it. I'm full. I'm tired. We have a bed. Let's just sleep here." So we did.

We arrived back in Boise about 7am this morning, which was a good thing because we needed to back down the street where we are staying, and to do that we have to cross a busy thoroughfare that is usually packed with cars ... BY BACKING ACROSS THE ROAD. Proved to be no problem at 7am on a Sunday morning.

Well, that's it for now. Future plans include waiting til next payday (Oct. 5) so that we can buy wood flooring and install it.

The adventure continues ....

#skoolie #hotsprings #snively #testdrive #owyheeriver #offgridliving #schoolbus #idaho/oregon

Fruitless Weekend

This weekend we were really hoping to find a more permanent place to park the bus before we can begin to work on it, but as it turns out, all the real estate and rental companies were looking forward to the 3-day weekend also and all took off like their offices were on fire and filled with fire-proof spiders that have a taste for human flesh and think it's rather delicious. So, no matter how many phone calls or emails I sent Friday afternoon they weren't returned. Well, except one guy that I called Friday morning, and he only returned my call to say he busy running from spiders and might call me back on Tuesday if he lived through the weekend.

So, not wanting to tear the bus completely apart in the parking lot at my work, we did the next best thing .... organized.

It's amazing how much crap a person realizes they don't need after living in a bus for a week with another person, a dog that is larger than either person and two space-occupying cats who just rightly assume that everything is theirs. I was able to condense down my tool boxes from 3 large monstrosities, to merely 2 large monstrosities. The purchase of a clothes duffle bag, much as we used to use in basic training, really help to get a bunch of the mess relocated to a single spot, and a quick trip to the thrift store (there is no such thing as a quick trip to a thrift store, btw) helped by finding a couple of wall hangers that could be hung flat to the wall and allowed us to hang a bunch of stuff up out of the way for the time being.

Mostly though my weekend was taken up with fucking around with crap on the internet, and drawing up plans for how we want to remodel the bus.

Actually the drawing up of the plans didn't take that long, it was the multiple "honey, can you move this over here so I can see how it looks" from my loving and beautiful wife that took the most amount of time.

Anyway, here is the basic floorplan we finally agreed on:

Here it is showing the storage above the bed and above the windows:

Here is the right wall if you are standing at the drivers seat looking toward the back of the bus:

The left wall stading at the driver and looking toward the back:

And finally the draft of where the electrical lines, plumbing lines and gas lines need to run. We opted to get a composting toilet instead of a regular one because I don't like the thought of a black tank for waste and we want to be more environmentally friendly.

So far this is all just the basics and will probably change 100 more times if my wife has her way, but this is WAYYYY easier than actually moving furniture!