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.