IT'S CLIPTASTIC!
It's been a long time coming, but I can finally announce that we have a 1947 FLXIBLE Clipper bus of our own now.

Well, it's really a joint ownership thing between Greg and his college friends...but it is living in our backyard now as Greg finishes restoring it into an RV. It's an investment. These things, when they are finished, can sell for 50K or more! And he only paid $6K for this one. It was a smoking deal.

A small part of me is, "Ehh...now we have a BUS. In our BACKYARD"...and the other part of me is totally geeking out on how cool it is to actually own one of these things. Back when I worked on Bus Ride magazine, we ran an annual photo contest and I had a tendency to choose FLXIBLE buses as the winners. I love them. They're just neat old buses. People convert them into cool retro RVs-- and I admit I kind of daydreamed about possibly hunting one down one day for myself. Little did I know one day I'd marry a guy who'd hunt one down. And here it is:


What started this whole interest in FLXIBLEs for Greg was when we stayed at the Shady Dell in Bisbee, AZ, the night after our wedding. We stayed in the Tiki Bus, if you will recall...and it made quite an impression! Now here we are a year and a half later, with a bus to take apart and covert ourselves. (I probably won't do much on it, really, unless he asks me to help since I am kind of afraid of messing up something this antique.)

We tried to pick the bus up a month ago, but it broke down only 10 minutes later as we drove out of town. (We bought it from a great guy named Dave in Hesperia, CA... a good 5 1/2 hours from home.) So we had to leave it there while Dave did some more repairs on it to get it road-worthy. Finally, it was ready to go this past weekend, so on Friday, Greg and I drove out to Hesperia once more, stayed in a hotel for a night, and drove over to Dave's in the morning to pick up the bus. We've gotten to really like this Dave guy-- he owns a FLXIBLE, of course, and his son Jason has one, and his other son has an old Greyhound bus converted into an incredibly cool Elvis Bus... clearly it's a family obsession. Dave just became a grandfather for the first time a week ago, so we brought the baby girl a gift, too. Why not, we figured. They're just really nice people.

Of course getting the bus HOME wasn't easy. It was fraught with peril, literally! First, the bus overheated two hours into the drive home. It was an extending uphill climb that did it in, so we had to pull over and let the temperature drop down to at least 170 again (it hit 240!). That was really no big deal. Then, we made it to Quartsite, AZ, which is just over the border of CA. We needed gas. As Greg pulled up to the tanks, and I sat in my car a ways back so he had room to maneuver, all the sudden I notice FIRE under the bus.

The bus. was. on. FIRE.

And Greg is driving towards the gas pumps! Holy SHIT.

A lot of screaming and running towards the bus happened next, as I rightly freaked out and tried to catch his attention so he could stop driving towards the pumps AND get the hell out of the bus. Other people saw it, too, and started running and screaming. Finally, he figured out what was happening, shut the bus down and jumped out with a fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

It turned out a hose for the power steering fluid had blown apart. Since the engine was so hot, the fluid caught fire as it dripped out. Nothing exploded. Everyone was OK.

Well...

Until the BEES showed up, that is.

A truck pulled into the gas station while this was going on, and this truck was apparently carrying food, or something that attracts pollinating insects. And that meant a swarm of bees came with it. These bees proceeded to swarm and attack everyone at the gas station. The guys trying to throw saw dust down on the steering fluid and clean up were chased and stung... people at the pumps were hollering and getting attacked... yeah, just what we need while trying to deal with a burning 1947 bus blocking some gas pumps. Fun. At one point about an hour later, I looked around at the chaos and thought: "Is this really my life?" :)

Greg somehow managed to MacGuyver the bus back into action. He fixed it right there in the parking lot, ruining his favorite T shirt in the process, unfortunately...but the important thing was it was operable again. Amazingly, the whole time he was out there in Crazy Bee Country, he didn't get stung at all. And I didn't either...even though they were landing in my hair, on my neck and at one point, on my eyelid...! Not sure how we got so lucky given the magnitude of that swarm. Towards the end, I was forced to hide in my car and watch poor Greg from a distance as he labored under the bus. I had no choice, though. I couldn't exactly help him at that point, since I am not a mechanic even though I was fathered by one; and the bees were getting really touchy-feely by that point and I needed to flee.

We got the bus home many hours later, finally. On Sunday Greg spent the day moving the gate so the bus will fit in the backyard, alongside the house. It's strange seeing this old bus there... Hailie and Indy loved exploring the whole thing when we finally let them out to do a walk/sniffaround. Indy made me laugh because he systematically moved around the entire bus, smelling everything and checking it out like he was some sort of safety inspector. He's going to be a cool RV dog. I know it.

So that's the bus story, and how I spent my weekend.

Other than that, yes...I was in St. Louis, and it was a decent time overall. Even though I was busy non-stop and had a few points where I literally passed out the second my head hit the pillow at the end of the day, for a work function it wasn't too bad. Then again, my company knows what they're doing and that helps a lot in making life a little more tolerable in these situations. I got to know several more of my co-workers on this trip (people I don't normally cross paths with since we're in different departments), and went to the top of the St. Louis Arch like a good tourist before we left town.

I liked St. Louis, from what I experienced, because the downtown was full of old buildings and interesting architecture; the people were pretty friendly and nice; and they have mass transit. I don't underestimate the power of trains, and use them whenever I can when I travel to a city lucky enough to have them. I know they're kind of gross sometimes, and can be packed with weird people, but seriously... so cheap! So efficient! I love that. I'll be in Phoenix 10 years next month, and I still can't believe the lack of decent mass transit in a city this enormous. We have buses, but oh my GOD. They're not easy to navigate. I remember I once wrote an editor letter about how difficult it was to map a route from my home to the office, because the system would have required me to transfer buses about 4 times and a drive that would normally take me 20 minutes by car would take almost two HOURS by bus. And as of this writing, there are NO TRAINS.

Oh, we're supposed to be all excited because the light rail system they've been building for about 4 years now is finally going to be operational in December. Don't get me wrong, I am excited for myself because I am fortunate enough to live near the line, but I am still not impressed because it's going to cover such a small area of the Valley. It'll connect Mesa to downtown Phoenix. Ok, I know, that's great, really! But damn... Phoenix is nothing but miles and miles of SPRAWL. In every direction. Traffic is terrible, everywhere. The lightrail is going to be a bandaid on a massive, gushing wound. I guess it's better than nothing, and it IS a start. I just can't fathom how a city can explode to this size with no real planning regarding mass transit. I think a train should have been installed decades ago, had anyone thought ahead and tracked population trends. Oh, well. Sure we have over 300 days of sunshine a year, but all that sun can warp brains, apparently.

Wow, I really railed on for awhile there about trains, huh? Get it?

It's good to be back to the blog. I missed my stupid thoughts, vomited all over the keyboard like this. Ahhh. Word vomit.