Follow Our Progress

October 10th 2003

I didn't get much done today.  It was an unusually busy day for things not bus related.  Becky had some errands to run and needed to be able to get things done without the girls demanding her attention.  Erika had a day off from school, so both Erika and Emily were with me at the bus.  

I had planned to get some more of the wiring done, but trying to plan the layout and route the appropriate cables proved to be too much of a challenge once the girls had finished watching a movie that they had rented.  All of the rain over the past few days has turned the ground around the play structure into a muddy mess.  Erika has been sniffing a bit for the last two days (she forgot to wear her jacket at school and caught a bit of a cold I think), so I didn't want the girls playing outside in the wet and cold.  In order to keep them entertained, I had to switch over to a job that they could both help me with...

	Erika and Emily seemed excited about seeing their room with walls and they both agreed that covering up the insulation that Becky had put in place would be a better use of my time, so I set out to organize the construction process so that the girls could help out as much as possible. Erika is at the stage now where she knows her numbers pretty good, so I had her help me take a few measurements.  She doesn't have the fractions down yet, so we ended up with "76 plus four thirds of an inch" and the like.  I tried to help out with the measuring, but inches and feet and fractions of an inch are really quite silly compared to how nice centimeters and millimeters are to understand to a 6 year old...
	It took us about an hour or so to get the back piece attached.  Erika helped transfer the measurements we had taken to a new piece of paneling and snap a chalk line for the long cuts.  Emily helped mark the lines for the engine access panel cut out and provided the entertainment for us when she was not busy. We made a few trips down the hallway with the piece of paneling as we refined our cuts and measurements a bit.  I must say that 3 people trying to haul an 8 foot piece of sheeting down the hallway and through the door of the bedroom took a lot of organization and a spattering of contortion practice. The result was a pretty nice fit.  Erika helped mark the locations for all of the screws and hold the piece of paneling in place while I put in the screws.  Emily helped direct the whole affair.
	Becky stopped in for a quick visit and to take the girls with her to meet our friends Dave, Ellen and their 2 younger children.  They've wanted to check out the bus so we invited them over in the afternoon for a tour.  Becky met them at our home to show them the way to the bus. I spent the time alone picking up tools and getting things a bit less cluttered in general.  Dave's kids are younger than Erika and Emily, so I had to make things safe for toddlers. I also started up the bus and got things warmed up a bit.  I thought that it might be fun to let everyone play with the air powered doors and wipers and things and with the bus warmed up and up to pressure, we wouldn't have sit and wait around to play...

I was just putting away the last scraps of plywood outside when they all pulled up.  I gave Dave and Ellen the tour.  We had Ellen start the bus and we let everyone play with the lever that opens and closes the doors a bit.

Dave said that he and Ellen had been toying with the idea of doing something similar...  We talked about conversion timelines and things that I have been learning about the whole process.  I mentioned that I have seen quite a few conversions that were in progress and for sale pretty reasonably.  I think we may have added to their desire a bit...

Since everything was put away and it would have been unrealistic to try to get anything done, we all left the bus and headed over to the house to have a bit of BBQ, talk and play with some of my Halloween props that I have hauled out to prepare for a big Halloween party.  

Unrelated to the bus entirely...

Trick or Treat?

You can check out my animated Halloween props and other Halloween related craziness at my Halloween website (the link opens in a new window).