9:00 AM came way too soon.

 

Rarely have I wanted to go home less than when I awoke on Sunday at EveryBus. But the vacation was done and it was time to bring it to an end and get ourselves home and back to the grind. So I made some coffee and set about packing things down and trying to find a way to fit all the stuff we had aquired into the bus for the trip home. It wasn’t made any easier with a 1-gallon keg aboard the westrailer.

 

Somehow we made it happen. I put crammed dirty laundry into the dry food box. I put the side tent into the cooler aboard the westrailer. I put lawn chairs on the roof rack, and stuffed every nook and cranny in the bus. And somehow it all fit, even with the kids aboard.

 

It did take some time though... by the time we were ready to roll it was already noon. With a 15-hour drive ahead of us that meant that I was going to be getting home at 3AM. And that was assuming that nothing was going to go wrong, which is far from a sure thing when you’re driving an old bus. Just ask Ian or Adam about that some time.

 

We said a few too-short goodbyes... I was still quite affected by the Golden Pancake treatment and was only firing on three cylinders anyway thanks to staying up until 2 AM. And that beer Ian was handing out was really nasty stuff, it probably had something to do with it. I set up the camera on the dash to get some video and then we beeped the horns and headed on out of the campground. Everybus 2006 had come and gone.

 

The trip home went as well as could be expected. We stopped for fuel and lunch around 2PM. We stopped again for fuel at 5PM, and I took the back seat for a while and tried my best to nap while Colleen drove. At 8:30 we arrived in Morgantown and Colleen followed my parents off the highway; we were going to get something to eat and they were going to get a room for the night and continue to Toronto the next day. This sounded like a good idea for us too, but since I had a plane to catch in Toronto on Monday it just wasn’t an option.

 

And then the shift linkage broke. While climbing one of Morgantown’s many long hills Colleen suddenly discovered that the bus would no longer go into first or second gear. As soon as traffic slowed down the bus stalled, and then we were stuck. I climbed out of the back and somehow managed to find first, but then the starter wouldn’t engage. I waited for traffic to clear and then bump-started it in reverse, which is not something too simple to do when you are one a hill and have a trailer in tow. Luckily the engine caught, and I was able to limp the bus up the hill and get off the main drag. After which the linkage went out on me, so i radioed up to my Dad that we had a “situation” on our hands and I was going to need a short tow.

 

It turned out that Dad was busy with paperwork at the hotel, but Mom passed word along and he wasted no time getting back to us. We hooked up the bus with some light nylon rope and Dad was able to haul us a very short distance to the level parking lot of a jiffy lube. I climbed under and had a look at the rear bushing... it seemed OK. When I pulled the belly pan up front the problem was right there in our face: the front bushing was laying in the pan. No wonder it wouldn’t go into gear properly. We removed the linkage, pressed the bushing back into position and replaced the linkage and with fresh grease in appropriate places the shifter worked as good as ever. After which I loaded up the family and we got rolling again with only an hour lost.

 

A snack stop in Cranberry, a fuel stop near Zelienople; a coffee stop in Erie, and another Fuel stop in Angola NY brought us to the border at about 2 AM. There wasn’t much of a line, and the questions were easy. No inspection or paperwork required. Another coffee stop in St Catharines and we pulled into the driveway at 4:38AM.

 

2,438 miles. 141.9 gallons of fuel. Two liters of oil.

 

17.2 MPG (US Gallon) is not too bad for fast interstate travel with a full load and a trailer behind.

 

One coil replaced. One shift linkage bushing re-installed. The muffler seems to have worked loose from the heater boxes, and we suffered a rock chip in the windshield in Mount Airy. Other than that the bus suffered very little, and is running fine.

 

Less than 12 hours after arriving home I was at the airport awaiting a flight to Edmonton Alberta for a 4-day business trip; which is the main reason why the trip report was so late.

 

I can hardly wait to do it again; I know the family is already looking forward to BusFusion and Buses By The Falls.

 

Here’s hoping we see you there, or at Buses Of the Corn.;-)

 

Happy trails,

 

Greg Potts

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1973/74/79 wesfakia “Bob the Tomato” LY3H