The Great Blue Bus Experiment

The night before we were due to take the bus in for its final brake recheck, we watched ‘Everest’, the movie. We were astounded to learn that Sir Edmund Hilary climbed everest the same year as our bus was made, 1953. It put it into perspective for us. The same technology that Edmund used to climb everest(huge cumbersome oxygen tanks, woolly clothes, swimming googles), was the same technology that went into these brakes. These brakes that were being tested on a machine that wasn’t even invented when they were made. We were exhausted and felt like we had been battling up hill forever. But just as Edmund has his mind set on achieving a goal so did we. We weren’t going to give up.

We were a familar face at VINZ Te Rapa by now. So when the attendant saw me with my head in my hands to scared to look when the bus went through, he kindly passed on the word that WE HAD PASSED.

Those words, that small piece of paper, had been our focus for near on 4 years now. I’m sure i don’t need to explain how we all felt. We had reached the Summit and the view is amazing.

It took weeks to get the work on the axial finished. We were still in our friends sleep-out. It was early February. Phoenix and Izzy’s friends went back to school. I didn’t see any point in starting them and then pulling them out once the bus was finished,(would it ever be finished??). Plus I needed to get my head around how Correspondence School worked, so we might as well start as we mean to continue. In retrospect this probably was a mistake and I should have left them with their friends at school. It was a stressful time. All of us crammed in a single room, doing something completely foreign and strange. It really showed in Phoenix’s behaviour and he would cry a lot and say he just wanted to go home.

After what felt like forever the bus was ready to be picked up from Lance. Such a nice man and his son too. Genuine down to earth good men, earning an honest living. They let us have a look around their Bedford graveyard. Beautiful old machines set out to pasture. If only the children hadn’t been arguing non-stop John and I could have spent all afternoon wandering around.

The axial was replaced and brakes had been tested at the Thames VTNZ. They were still playing up slightly but on advice from Lance, all we could do is go and try for a re-test.

This mean’t a full re-test which was nerve-raking in itself. What if they found something else that needed to be fixed.And they did of course. We failed for the third time on brakes(surprise surprise), blown head-light, and those blasted window wipers.

“Thats it, the dreams over.”

At this stage we were ready to give up. I had lost all enthusiasm that this was even possible. What if this just wasn’t mean’t to be??What if I was wrong and it can’t be done?? John and I used to joke all the time and say “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it”. Well it beat us. It was just too fucking hard.

That was until my dear friend slapped me, literally and quite hard, on the arse and said

“You can’t give up. You’ve come so far. Keep going”

And so we did. We rang around again and found a mechanic that would look at bus brakes, on another recommendation. He seemed quite confident that he could help. We left the bus parked on the side off the road in his hands and started praying again.

The next day he called to say its ready to go get re-tested.  John in all his wisdom, decided to take it for a short drive to test and warm the brakes before we went in. He didn’t get far before he noticed plumes of smoke coming off the brakes. The handbrake had been tightened too much. I saw the smoke coming off the wheels before I saw the bus on his return. This do not instil confidence that this guy had the slightest clue about what he was doing. But we had no other choice but to trust him.

Not possible….. Failed again. Thats not part of the plan.

Anyone who has tried to get compliance will know that the modern braking machines are the absolute devil . After some quick re-adjustments at VINZ the brakes were now worse than ever.The inspector had given us 3 days to fix it otherwise we would have to pay for and sit a whole new inspection. So there we were stuck in hamilton with brakes that wouldn’t get us back over the Divvy, no idea where to go to get them fixed or how much it would cost. Up-until now everything had been done on a tight budget in the back-yard. Some of the guys in town charge $100 per hour. We were up shit creek.

What do you do when you don’t have a paddle…Google it. There are not that many places in Hamilton that even have big enough yards for buses so that narrowed it down to a few. We had a very sweaty, scary drive across town with minimal brakes and found a guy who would take us. We prayed to all known deities that he could fix our problem. Back to Raglan.

We didn’t have to wait long. The next day the phone call came and it was a HUGE problem.

The mechanic couldn’t take the back brake-drums off to look at the brakes pads because someone, at some time in the buses long history had welded the lock nut onto the axial and there was no way of getting it back on. So in lay mans terms for me, essentially, opening a can of worms. A very expensive can of worms. He advised us that we were better off not to have the work done at his establishment as it would be extremely expensive. We were beginning to think the dream might be over.

Where to now?? We couldn’t take it back to Raglan because there was no one there who could help us. This was a specialist job calling for the only known Bedford specialist in the country, Lance Cryer. We had some dealings with this infamous man over the years getting parts send over now and then. Finally we would get to meet him.

Lucky for us he lives just out of Thames and could see us the next day. We decided to make a day of it, take the kids, go exploring the Thames coast,stay the night, all the while secretly praying that it would be an easy fix for the Bedford Guru. Please let it be able to be fixed?? But for how much?? Everything can be fixed it just costs money, How much money??Maybe the bus is a dud ????We took a huge gamble investing in this bus and there’s still the possibility it has a fundamental flaw that can’t be fixed.Is she destined for the scrap heap.??? Plenty to worry about. We had invested a lot, Johny had left his job and we were living off his holiday pay, we had poured so much money and time and tears and blood into it and it could all be for nothing??? Yeah so you kind of get the drift about how stressful this was.

After we dropped the bus off we stopped in at the information centre and discovered there was a beach nearby where you can go crystal hunting. ‘What a lovely idea’. We brought a picnic and drove to the rocky point. This is just what we needed, a day at the beach to de-stress. That was not to be and just as we had opened the boot. We got the call from Lance.”Its not good news I’m afraid”

Back in his typically shabby,dirty mechanics lunch room we sat side by side awaiting the news. I felt like we were in a doctors rooms awaiting news on wheather it was cancer or not. Lance sat in his swivel chair with a grim look.

“Its not good news I’m afraid. We are going to have to take the whole back axial off and replace it”

We had no choice. It was either give up the dream or have the work done. And worry about how we are going to pay for it later.

After a sleepless night worrying about what could be wrong. ‘Maybe there was a fundamental flaw that can’t be fixed???’, ‘Maybe she’s just too old’???

We headed back to Hamilton to await our fate. Yes she failed and yes there was a list of things that needed to be fixed. An engineers report was needed for the passenger seat (where in god’s name do you get one of those?), the brakes weren’t braking evenly, we had rust in a couple of places, the window wipers stopped working(they were working???), she smoked( something we could do nothing about as we had already taken her to the diesel mechanic who told us the O rings in the engine were worn and the only way to fix that is to replace the motor, but for what we were doing (travelling around N.Z) it would be fine.)

All very doable things. The relief was audiable. We were still on track with the plan.

I swear mechanic’s and those in the truck industry are the nicest people. So many strangers were able to help us and point us in the right direction. We were so green and knew no one in this industry in Hamilton. Sitting ducks for being ripped off. An example of this, was sitting in the VINZ office pondering how we would find an engineer that could certify our seat and a nice ‘Trucky’ over heard us and gave us the number of a guy, who gave us the number of another guy, who knew the guy we needed to talk to.Their aren’t many people in the Waikato that can do LT 400’s.

We organised what we could, packed up for Christmas and went on holiday up north.

John came back to Raglan to work on the nessarary jobs. Bless him. He was so over it. The last jobs sucked, really difficult welding in tiny spaces, dealing with the slightly bizarre, topae wearing engineer that wanted the passenger seat reinforced so that it was strong enough to tow the whole bus by. The crazy part is we aren’t required by law to have seat belts as it was originally converted into a motorhome before the 1980’s when the law changed. So it will make little difference when the children go flying through the front window, that the seat won’t move.

All the same while everyone else was enjoying there summer vacation, fishing and surfing, Johny was working 12 hour days to finish, along with the help of our mechanic friend. Little did we know but he had terminal cancer at the time and would pass-away 3 months later. He was the most amazing selfless man who really got a kick out of helping people. Thank you Chris from the bottom of our hearts – you were an incredible man and helped us to achieve our impossible dream.

We had 21 working days to complete the work. With a couple of days to spare we travelled back to hamilton to re-test.

We failed again. This time it was only the Brakes.

December 2016

The nerve racking day was finally upon us. We had to drive into Hamilton for Compliance. Over the Divvy and into Hamilton!! And once again I say ‘we’ when I really mean Johny.We had done our research and decided which testing station we should use. VINZ in Te Rapa were the lucky winners. We had our paper work, fixed her up to the best of our ability, how hard could it be??

As I approached the front desk I wasn’t even sure what to ask for.

“Ummm hi We’ve brought our bus in for re-registration??” (remebering that its a week before Xmas and every truckie in town is lined up for C.O.F’s before they close for holidays).

The lady peered over her glasses at me with a rather blank, slight pissed off, slightly perplexed expression.

After some discussions she deducted that what I needed was in fact a “Compliance”. This is much more difficult to get than just any old warrant. A re-compliance mean’t ever part of the bus is picked over with a fine tooth comb. Sure no problem, that blind optimisim.

“Do you have ownership papers??” She asked.

Since the bus was de-regisisted, we didn’t get change of ownership papers because technically it was a bus that didn’t exsist in the system.I proudly produced a letter from the previous owner. I had done my homework.

“You need to have a VIN number on this letter and a staturory declaration that you are the rightful owners”

What the fuck!! You didn’t tell me this a year ago when I phoned to ask what I needed. A year ago when I got the previous owner to write us a letter. Which took about 3 months to track him down and get the letter out of him. NOW you’re telling me I need a letter with a VIN number. How the fuck am I going to get that????

Breathe Gretchen…….One foot in front of the other…..Next step……

Get the letter….

All we knew about the previous owner was that he was an Orthopaedic surgeon in…… Hamilton. Holy shit its a long shot but if we Google him we may just be able to find him. So down to the Te Rapa McDonalds for some free wifi. (Why does your data always run out when you need it). Amazingly with the help of some modern technology we rang the Doctors office and thanks to some more amazing technology, the Receptionist looked it up on her computer, found the letter added a VIN number, and got our Doctor friend to sign it that very afternoon when he came out of surgery for lunch. Good I love organised people.

As for the next part of our mission, to find a Justice of Peace and sign a statuary declaration, easy peasy. Onto goggle, ring the lady, down the road to crazy cat lady’s house, squeeze in between thousands of cat ornaments, hand on the bible solely swear, job done.

There we were back at the VINZ office less than 3 hours later with all the correct paper work. Nothing can stop us now.

“you are going to have to leave the bus here overnight” the kindly receptionist informed us.

O.K back to Raglan to await our fate……..

March 2016

I got sick of waiting for this bus to be finished, so decided it would be a fantastic idea to get a job at Mt Ruapehu. That should create enough pressure to get this project finished. I got the job and what it created was enormous amounts of night anxiety. I realised she wasn’t going to be finished in time. Bless my darling husband and our volunteers who were working their arse’s off and this is be no means a criticism on them. Its just the way it was.

October 2016

So the ploy to psychologically bully Johny into finishing her didn’t work, so I took another tack. I rented the house out, made us move to a friends sleep out and made Johny quit his job so he could work full time on the bus. Everyone in the family hated me.

Progress was good and with Xmas approaching fast I had it all worked out. We would take the bus in for compliance just before Xmas, move up north to my sister charlottes, John would come back to Raglan to work on final jobs for compliance (because surely she won’t pass first time), get compliance,start travels. Simple. I was still blinded by my naive optimism. Oh how god loves a trier.

Life with the Rice Edwards/Wells Family in the Sleepout

The best part about this story is the number of incredible people that just helped us out. It started with our next-door neighbour kindly letting us park our bus on his land. This mean’t we could easily pop thru the fence and work on it. And when I say ‘we’, I mostly mean Johny, because he slaved away under that bus on his days off with a metal brush on the grinder scrapping some 60 something years of dirt and stones off that chassie.

There were a number of mechanical jobs to be done before we could take her in for a warrant(or re-compliance as we were latter to learn). When we took the bus to an old Codger for a pre-inspection he surprising didn’t share our enthusiasm. “Hope you’ve got deep pockets” He gruffed. I laughed nervously. Surely he didn’t mean that and years of working with broken down old buses he turned him into a pessimist. She was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen and it wouldn’t take much to get her on the road.(We were still in the naive and ignorant honey-moon period)

Our good friend Ash helped jack the bus up and made us a metal stand to prop her on so we had more room to move around under her when we were working. He also grovelled around under her for a whole Saturday in full spray gear to give her final coat of paint. For no other reason than because he’s a ‘good bastard’.

See what I was saying about good sorts helping us. Ash was also the one who introduced us to our mechanic Chris. Now without this man we would not be where we are today. He gave up his time to not only work on and fix things we had no clue about but to also take the time to teach Johny. This was a man who had lived a colourful life and resided in the philosophy that money isn’t important. He also taught me a lot with his gentle nature and thoughtful wisdom. I cannot really express just how grateful we are to this man.

This is how it was for a couple of years. We’d work on her when we could. We’d use her as a spare room for when family came to stay. There was the odd drinking session in there too I’m sure. We had made it some way up the mountain. We were at Base Camp.