wow…back to the normal road trip. the last post by me was fairly frantic with the lying cop (that’s redundant) an all. as you’ve read in the other posts, and now have experienced with the pics, we went to home depot and 12 cans of sprey paint and two green thumbs later….we now have a dragon. it really was a fun experience parking in the side lot for home depot and sprey painting a retired school bus green. but seriously…this thing is a monster. i’m sure it comes through in the pictures and you all are afraid to look at the website at night. it just has such an attitude now. people are staring like crazy..my favorite one so far is this really old guy who had his jaw dropped and stared at us the entire way around the parking lot. I know the racing lightning bolt isn’t on yet…but hopefully in LA we’ll get it on. after the day-long paintjob we left san fran. I’m pretty sad that there were things that had to be cut out of plans, but i really enjoyed san fran and know i will be back soon. we were on our way down south on the interstate…on a nice cool night. and i see a sign for yosemite. i yell out…we want to go to yosemite ? dave says yah, kelly says yah, and after a 10 mile u-turn we are on our way to yosemite. we got half of the way there and stopped in a walgreens parking lot for the night. the next day we went to the park. quite wonderful place. we walked up to a viewpoint of a waterfall…and got a little wet. a pic will be posted. there were soooo many tourists there that we barely found parking. it was a fun time. on the way outside of the park we were even able to stop by and see some giant sequias. agian…very cool. we had bar-b-que in a mountain town and then continued driving back across the state. spent the night on the side of the road and went to hearst castle. got some home design ideas. now we are in santa barbara waiting for fog to pass.

hugs,
pete

haha

I thought they should paint the bus like a giant duck, but alas I did not help paint it so I wasn’t in a position to bark orders. My career in middle managment will never take off at this rate.

Anyways, I hooked up with Dave and Pete in San Fransisco, and after a night of debauchery with Peter, we have headed down the freeway. After stopping at a Walmart to get some needed supplies, we have decided to head to Yosemite. We missed the offramp so we got gas and turned around at the next exit. Immediatley after getting gas and heading down the freeway towards Yosemite gas was 50c more expensivec per gallon. We made it to the beautiful city of merced and after an hour of driving around looking for wifi have given up and are hunting for a place to sleep.

We took an hour or so tonight and caught up on our picture uploading (once again, thank you to the anonymous house with unsecured wireless). Check out the four new gallaries! We did get a chance to go to Yosemite after all and have more pics from there, but we had to draw the line somewhere heh. We’re trying to go see Hurst’s Castle tomorrow so we’ll have more later. Sorry it’s been a while.

Ok, so we painted the bus… This involved stealthily exiting Berkley under cover of noon and driving south until we found a home depot with a big parking lot. Next, we bought all their green spray paint (of which they had 12 cans). At this point, I think we both entered an art/paint fume induced trance, for when we awoke, our beloved Mr. Mustard was dead,and in his place stood the most rediculous, and somehow also the most awesome creature I have ever seen (see picture). We had intended to do a two-tone thing with the top yellow and the body green, but unfortunately we ran out of paint before we could do the front… so I painted some nostrils and a fu-man-chu mustache on it.

From this point on, we ride the Green Dragon . Honestly, it’s a lot of fun to drive (we get a lot more stares and I still can’t help but laugh when I catch someone). The most important thing is it most certainly does NOT look like a school bus. There is no way some two-bit college cop on a power trip can possibly say we are breaking the law at this point. And if one did, I would scream bloody murder. Really… I would scream and point and say “Look there’s a dead person!” because that would make about as much sense as what he was saying. The only trouble I could possibly imagin is the fact that it does look a bit Rasta’ from the rear, however I would say the three white kids driving it put an end to that notion fairly quickly.

Three? Why yes, what a nice segue. I say three because, as of tonight, my friend Kelly from LA has joined us on our trek. We’ll be dropping him off as we head through there, but for now he’s part of the crew (I don’t know if he wants to post but he’s certainly welcome to). Also, much thanks to Sra. Liza (Kelly’s mom) for doing some research and finding out that, apparently, California shares a 30 day registration grace period with the rest of the nation. Now, some of you may be wondering how the nice police officer from Berkley could have been so mistaken as to confuse 30 days with 24 hours. I’m sure he wasn’t lying to us to get us out of his fair city, just as I’m sure he didn’t “take us in” out of the kindness of his heart and not because there was no legal merit. In any case, I’d like to thank you Mr. Berkley police officer, wherever you are, because I think the bus looks cooler now anyway. We owe you… a swift kick in the balls. Ass.

so we were driving back from our little journey to the golden gate bridge and our attempt to go to muir forrest (we drove on a steep, curvy, road on a cliff for 20 miles only to get to the park and have it sooo swamped with tourists that there was no parking at all). we got all the way back to berkley and pulled into the parking lot for the train station. a berkley cop pulls in behind us and walks up to the bus.

‘you know you can’t have a yellow school bus in california’-cop
‘it’s not schoolbus yellow…it’s neon yellow’-us
‘you can’t have a yellow bus in california’-cop

hmmm…so the bus is not marked a school bus anywhere. it has not been a school bus for at least 5 years. it is an ovious bright yellow color and not the traditional ’school bus yellow’, it has no pupils in it, it has no school bus seats in it, and it has a large platform in the back, but somehow this cop believes that you can’t have a bus that used to be a school bus and have it be yellow at all. now one would believe that since all school busses are all the same color…that there’s an official color that other vehicle’s can not be. but that color would be an official color…not just the relative name of ‘yellow’.

he asks for license and registration…we explain that we are in transit and are within the legal window of 30 days to move registration. he basically says not in my territory country boy…

‘not in california…in california you have one day to get registration’

what is with the laws in california ? one day ? are you kidding me? are you trying your hardest to NOT have people buy cars in your state. I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but your state is one of the biggest states and it’s absolutly ridiculous to think that someone is going to travel to the state..buy a car..and have it registered within 24 hours. ESPECIALLY when most states you have to physically provide the title to your local title office to get your temp registration. I guess you are supposed to fly out to california, buy the vehicle, get the title, fly back home, register the vehicle, wait for you to get your official registration, then fly back to california and pick it up….but i digress.

after about 20 mins of him being the biggest jerk he could, he eventually left us alone and let us off, basically saying paint the bus and get out of the state….such a great message to tourists. after much debate we decided that that is what we should do. while we’d love the story of us in jail….it’s not quite the end to the road trip that we had imagined.

today we are going to paint the bus. (with a racing stripe) and then head out for LA to drop kelly off at night. we might stay in LA only for a day and then will try to get to arizona fairly quickly under the cloak of night. hopefully in arizona we won’t get harassed about silly laws about bus colors. I’m pretty bummed because today is the huge haight ashbury festival and it looks like we won’t get to go to much of it at all. it also looks like we might be home from the road trip a few days earlier. but we might just spend some more time in austin and new orleans. btw if any floridians want to meet us up in new orleans…you should….it’d be fun.

so if anyone wants to suggest things that we should paint on the bus, call me today. also if anyone wants to look up the laws for arizona, new mexico, texas, louisiana, and mississippi concerning vehicles in transit….it would be much appreciated.

we decided to swing by lake tahoe since it was only 15 miles off of the interstate. the road that leads to tahoe was really cool….driving through the mountains with little streams and cabins all along the road. of course there was a little trendy town next to the lake which was really picturesque. we ended up driving to the boat dock to get lake access. they were nice there and allowed us to park and walk out on the dock for pictures of the lake. the lake was quite nice. the water was sooo clear. I have not see a lake with water as clear as this. i’m used to the dirty, mucky, lakes of the midwest. we got back in the car and headed for san fran. again it was a wonderful drive down from the mountains, so yet again dave loved driving the bus around the corners and such. we hit some bad traffic in sacramento, but we were still able to get to san fran around 7. we decided to stop and try to park in berkley and take the train into town from there. we drove around berkely for a while, not finding any train station. berkely looked really cool…just as expected. a bunch of hippyish/liberal people walking around this area with tons of shops and cafe’s. If we have time we might travel around there more. we finally get directions to the train stop, park the bus, and get on the train. the train system is really good here. it reminds me of the trains in d.c. we finally get to downtown san fran and meet up with joe. his place is in the nob hill district so it’s only a few blocks away from the trainstation and right in the middle of the city. just being here reminds me again how much i want to live in a city. each area is so unique and has so many interesting shops, bars, and restraunts to explore. joe’s place is pretty cool. we think the building is an old hotel. he has nice wood floors, a rikety fire escape, and an old murphy bed door that was modified so it spins and opens to the closset. it’s actually quite quiet here which is nice for living in the middle of the city. today we are going to try to see the bridge, the huge trees, and just more of town. we have our plans for chinese food, jazz club, then strip club with kelly and co tonight. tomorrow we found out is actually the huge haight ashbury festival. we actally are probably going to put off yosemitte and go to the festival. (sorry LD) yosemitte will have to be put on the list for my next trip out west. everytime i travel i end up just making bigger and bigger lists of places i want to go. with this trip already I know that i want to go back to denver, go back to arches nat’l park, go back to lake tahoe, and now go to yosemitte. that’s all for now.

June 9, 2005

If anyone ever tells you there is nothing in Utah, show them Nevada. Seriously, I think I could set up a lemonade stand on US-50, declare myself mayor and start collecting taxes… and there would probably be prescident. I think, so far, the most interesting thing we’ve seen has been “Shoe Tree”. Now, we don’t know why it’s called that, but I have a hunch it wasn’t named by someone trying to get the tree to go away. In fact, I would wager that it has to do with the fact that the tree’s numerous branches are all laiden with ripe shoes. Yes, like you wear on your feet. Inexplicably a tree with about 200 shoes in it is located not 20 feet from US-50 with no more fanfare than a spot to pull over and a trash can. Add to that the interesting wild cricket parade we saw at the last stop and I’d say you have a representative sample of all that Nevada’s interior has to offer. Oh well, at least it’s pretty. Onwards to Reno!

PS: July 10th:
I would also like to say a quick thank you to the Adam family of Reno, NV for living close to this shopping complex and not securing their wireless network .

after the wonderful arches we made it all the way to salina utah. this is the town where the interstate went one way and the road that we wanted to go on went the other. it was probably around 1030 at night so we got off the interstate and began our search for food/parking/internet. we found parking and internet…but not local places to eat. we decide to keep to our pillar and not eat at the denny’s right next to where we park. we upload some stuff on the website and hit the hay. now at about 11 in the night in utah, the temperature is about 30 degres. we tried to go to bed but both of us woke up two hours later shivering like crazy. let me tell you something about short buses…A. they don’t have great insulation, and B. they don’t have heat. so there we were freezing and starving at 2 in the morning in the middle of nowhere in utah. from fear of hypothermia we quit the bus nonsence and go to denny’s to warm up. after much thought we finnally broke down and ordered food. if we weren’t going to sleep or be warm tonight we should at least get a meal since we hadn’t eaten since 11 a.m. so we ate some breakfast and talked to the waitress. turns out she was a navy brat and lived in guam for 18 years but now is married and has a child on the way and lives in salina. she was quite an interesting person. the sun finally began to rise so we decide to just hit the road with our two hours of sleep and full bellies. the morning was slightly cloudy, but there was a wonderful erie mist over everything. US-50 left the town of salina and then went straight for a mountain range…right before the range we took a sharp turn north and followed the mountain north. we ended up driving around the entire mountain range and seeing it from every angle. we continued west on US-50. it is labeled as a ’synic byway’ by someone somewhere and it really is. the road was dead though. from a range of about 150 miles i saw exactly 12 cars. only one was going the same direction as us. the road would go straight for a while, then head up into mountains and then down though valleys and then into huge basin areas in between mountain ranges. while not exciting at all, this road really provided some of the best views on the trip so far. the road would take us though small valley and mountain towns that looked straight out of the 1940’s. a little later we were passing through basically a huge salt flat. on both sides of the road there was a small ledge before the flat. all along the road people had arranged rocks on the ledge saying everything from “gh loves sf” to ‘jesus saves’ to ‘hi mom’. it was pretty cool just driving down the road and looking at all of the rock messages that people had put up. the whole 4 mile stretch of road had these messages. some of the messages were slightly messed up, but i have a feeling some of them have been there for a long time.
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that was the post that i typed up yesterday…now it’s the morning on friday and we are in the side parking lot next to a safeway. right next to the safeway is a housing complex and thanks to the wonderful ‘andyfamily’ network, we are able to do a post. i’m just going to respond to some comments here. I’m posting pics right now, and i think there are a few more pics of the bus and such. the floor isn’t dirty right now, so i won’t take a pic of it(dave’s mom). We aren’t going up to the northeast because we do not have the time and i went on a roadtrip to vancouver last summer. I love it up there, but we couldn’t fit it into this trip. Sorry about the tropical storms in florida…i’m sure we’ll get some when we’re back. I think that’s all we have to say for now. we have updated the plans page..the people page now has my resume on it…and we updated our actual route. take care all.

i really enjoy denver. after the last post we went and got tickets to the rockies game. we had tons of downtime before the game and were going to try to tailgate, but believe it or not there are no liquer stores within like 7 city blocks of the stadium. maybe the fact that it’s called ‘coor’s stadium’ might have something to do with that. no one was at the game, but it was just nice to be outside in denver as the sunset…quite pretty. we bailed fairly early on the game due to me and dave’s love for food. we headed west, and after a 30 min search, ended up eating at a truckstop restraunt. while there were waay too many smells there that i shall not discribe nor wish to make my worst enemy smell, the food was excellet. I had a full meatloaf dinner that was delicious. earlier that day we had a great breakfast at a small place in lamar, then we had sandwiches at a cafe in denver, then the meatloaf….i would rate it one of the best food days so far. today we left denver and headed through the mountains. the bus held up wonderfully. she doesn’t like downshifting sometimes…she also doesn’t like upshifting sometimes….but we still love her and will put up with her finiky ways….until we are home. we stopped in glenwood springs for lunch. we had basically picked an exit, but once off the road i was amazed. it was this little, kinda-hippy, kinda-yuppy mountain town. it reminded me of vancover…but set in colorado. we had lunch at a little italian place with a gorgeous waitress. i had huckleberry soda… it came out white and frothy but tasted amazing. we got back on the road. we stopped to get gas before we got into utah. dave opened up the laptop and low and behold we had wifi. we ended up ‘borrowing’ some bandwidth from a mechanic shop across of the street. wifi is fun! we made our way into utah and it’s been nonstop crazyness. first 40 miles before the welcome center. then exits for ranches…not roads. we were able to make it to arches national park. it was well worth the 30 mins of the road. the whole place was just so beatiful. i will not try to discibe it..i’ll just let you look at the 2 million pics i took. we are now on the road and will try to get through as much of utah as we can. we’ll most likely be stuck in the middle of no where and will have to sleep under the hopes the coyote’s don’t like neon yellow shortbusses.

*we have noticed tons of hits on our site. I would just like to say thank you to everyone who keeps on reading the site and spreading it. Thank you to phun.org and anyone else who links us or spreads the url. We appreciate it very much.

days without a shower: 4
gas $ spent so far: $367
food $ spent so far: $131.24
miles traveled: 1461

I just drove a schoolbus over the Rockey Mountains… AND IT WAS AWESOME! I kinda thought today would be a wash, what with all the driving we have to do, but that was more fun than some roller coasters I’ve been on (I kinda want to go again). We’d go from winding around snowcapped peaks to driving through a canyon alongside a cool river and train track (think Thunder Mountain) within minutes. To be honest, driving this thing up in the mountains is really pretty cool (aside from getting in the viscinity of 8 mpg). The front face above the windshield is vertical, so when you get over 65 it feels like you’re driving with a drag chute out. We try to keep it around 60 when it’s flat, but this comes in handy on a 13 mile, 7% grade. Now it’s Pete’s turn to drive and I’m sitting in the back enjoying the scenery typing on the laptop. Our next stop is Arches National Park where we plan to spend a few hours before getting back on the road and trying finding somewhere to sleep. We’ve decided to skip Salt Lake City in favor of an extra day in San Francisco and a more leisurely pace. The California coast is growing tantalizingly close, but before we get there we must pass through the Nevada desert (a test of stamina) and Reno (a test of restraint). Also, I think we have to solve some riddles and collect the parts to a golden monkey. All in all, nothing we can’t handle.