Hippie Buses Forever!

About 20 years ago I had an old school bus converted into a motorhome. It was a 1962 Dodge bus that was a little taller than the usual school buses of the day. I had it for a couple of years and lived in it for several months. This evening I was indulging in a little bit of bus nostalgia and browsed the web for hippie bus photos. I found quite a few.

Hippie buses began in the 1960's and the tradition never went away. There are still people out there decorating buses in the '60's hippie style. The most famous bus was Furthur, the bus that Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters drove across the country. This journey was made famous in Tom Wolfe's book, "Electric Kool-aid Acid Test." The original bus is rotting away in a swamp on Ken Kesey's ranch in Oregon. In the late '80's they got their hands on another bus and Further II went on the road.

I knew a couple of people, in the '70's when I lived in Fullerton, California, who were bus nomads. One guy, Silverbear, would come by most years on his annual migration from somewhere in Oregon or Washington down to the desert of Arizona. His bus, "Patchs", got its picture in a 1979 book called Rolling Homes by Jane Lidz.  The book has been out of print for awhile and it has become a collector's item. I understand Patchs might be still on the road. Another friend, Arthur, converted a step van into his home, and I visited another guy who owned a school bus with a couple of VW buses welded on top.

People are still converting buses to motor homes and some of them paint them wildly. I have seen several of them at the Burning Man Festival over the last ten years and they still regularly appear at Rainbow Gatherings. I found a few websites that have collected photos of these. One of them has about 40 photos of colorfully painted Volkswagen buses. Another one has pictures of various hippie buses.

My Gypsy Caravan project is an extension of the love affair I have had with buses and do-it-yourself mobile living for over 30 years.

Caravan Progress Report - 2-15-2010

A couple of new developments to report. I started putting tongue-and-groove wood siding on the ends of the caravan. I stained the wood with a Brazilian Cherry stain and sealed the boards with spar urethane.Then  I cut them and screwed them onto the metal frame. Each piece was custom fit to the cuvces and I had to pre-drill the wood and the metal before inserting the screws.  I have the back wall done and the wood is ready to go on the front end.

I bought four trailer tongue jacks and modified them to create a way to jack the caravan off of the trailer. I made jacking points at the four corners of the caravan and made mounting brackets for the tongue jacks. I had to exted the length of each jack by two feet. I did a test jack-up last weekend and it worked fine. Now I can remove the flatbed trailer out from under the camper.While I had the camper jacked up, I was able to put sheet metal sides on the lower sides.This is all part of the process of making it weather proof.

I drew, with chalk, the positioning of all the interior elements - the bed, bathroom, kitchen, closets, etc. I researched and figured out how I will make the doors and windows, which , I think, is the next major project.

Caravan Progress Report 1-17-2010

I picked up the roofing panels on Friday. Just in time, too. Big weather is supposed to be coming our way and I needed to get a roof on the gypsy wagon so the plywood floor doesn't get ruined. The panels are 20 feet long so I hitched up my other trailer and rigged a way to put the panels on it. Fortunately they came bundled on a makeshift pallet of sorts and it wasn't too hard to manage.

On Saturday Nita and I started screwing down the roofing. She would sight along the ribs and tell me where to put the screws. A good bit of teamwork. We got all the panels on but they weren't trimmed yet. I used nearly 300 screws and there are still another 50 or so that need to be put in. That can wait until later.

On Sunday I got out the plasma torch and cut the roofing panels to fit. We also put the roof on the clerestory structure on top. The final step was to silicone all the screw heads. I then tied tarps up on the ends of the wagon and threw a tarp over the top. This wasn't easy. The gypsy wagon is pretty tall and we had a heck of a time getting the tarp over it. The wind kept picking it up and tossing it around. We got it, though and now it should be ready for the rain and snow that is forecast for all of this week.

The photos below show what the gypsy wagon looked like at the end of Saturday. I did not get a photo of it with the roof panels all trimmed and screwed down to the curve of the frame.

Cosmic Caravan Progress Report 1/8/2010

Since we got back from a trip to California I got some more work done on the gypsy wagon. I put in the floor insulation - 1 inch thick polystyrene panels. I put the 3/4" plywood floor down and attached with lots of screws. I finished the curved ribs on the frame and built the clerestory window structure for the roof.

I ordered the roofing panels, too. They should be here late next week. I wanted a certain pattern of RV siding but the cost turned out ti be prohibitive. I settled for metal house roofing panels which was 1/3 the cost. I got 29 gauge steel coated with an aluminum/zinc alloy and painted an off-white. The color, or lack of it, will make a good background to paint murals on the sides.

Mosaic, Junk, and Mud

We just got back from a week-long driving adventure to southern California over the Christmas holidays. Since Adventures in the Zone is about art I will focus on the arty parts of our trip. We also visited family and friends for most of the time which was the reason for the trip.

We visited Queen Califia's Magical Circle in Escondido - my second visit but Nita's first. It is truly magical even though I can see some deterioration since my last visit. There is supposed to be a foundation that maintains the site but I didn't see evidence of anyone repairing the broken bits. The first phot0 in this post shows two giant mosaic snakes that frame a view of Queen Califia atop a giant bird.

My brothers and their significant others joined Nita and I along with my good friend, Don, and went to see the movie, "Avatar", in 3-D. A ground breaking movie for sure. I recommend it, especially in 3-D. It is visually amazing.

We went for a walk in Elysian Park in L.A. with friends who live near there. Surprisingly, there are some folk-art pieces cropping up in the less-manicured areas of the park. These things are happening without permission from authorities and by anonymous artists. A totem pole of toys and junk was quite nice. We didn't have a camera with us on that walk so I didn't get a photo myself. I did find a photo of it online, though, on a blog called Summer of Shred. Here's a link to their photo of the Santa Totem

We went out to East Jesus on our way back to Arizona. Things keep changing out there. Some more work has been done on the Tower of Found Object Art and a visitor has arranged the truckload of duck and goose decoys around the tower in an entertaining and hilarious way. Some are partially buried as if the dirt was the surface of a lake. Some are interacting with pieces of junk that are lying around. Nice work! Only a small portion of the duck array is shown in the photo at left.

Our last stop was to see the mud volcanoes that are only a couple of miles away from Niland - the gateway to Slab City. We really loved these! The mud volcanoes are part of a geologically active area on the east side of the Salton Sea. There are hot springs, and geothermal energy extraction facilities in the area, too. The area is seismically active and is the southern end of the San Andreas Fault. Charlie said there were a couple of earthquakes the morning of the day we arrived. Although the mud volcanoes fall outside the focus of Adventures in the Zone, they were so interesting I had to post about them. I shot video. I love the noise they make. See my video here.

Gypsy Wagon Progress Report 12-19-2009

I got the floor frame skinned last weekend. This meant putting sheet metal on the bottom and painting it. Once the floor was done I and three friends, Dan, Jason and Amber, carried the 6'x16' steel frame out of the shop and onto the trailer. With the floor now on the trailer I welded the pre-made end panels and side panels to the floor and to each other. The Gypsy Wagon is finally starting to look like something.

Today I bent and welded some of the curved ribs on the wagon. It's starting to look a lot like a Conestoga wagon. I guess it's the decorations that will make it look gypsyesque. I am very pleased with how it's going together so far. I have been very careful to constantly measure and square everything so I don't run into fitting problems later on and it's looking like that care is paying off.

When all the curved ribs are welded on (there are four more) I can then skin the outside of the caravan. The sooner the better on this so I can protect the inside from the weather. For the time being I will have to cover it with tarps so the metal won't rust. I'd like to use some RV siding but I don't know if I can afford it. I found a pattern I like that I think will work

There is a lot to this project. Not only do I get to exercise my welding skills, I get to learn wood working, plumbing, and electrical skills as the Gypsy Wagon progresses. I am hoping to scrounge appliances out of old, dead motor homes to save money. The further I get on the project, the more excited I become!

Leave an Interesting Trace - Part One

Over Thanksgiving weekend about twenty-five people went out to the desert near the Salton Sea, California to build a large, collaborative artwork out of junk. We have a couple of working names for it - The Tower of Barbarella was the first name we came up with. Another suggested name was "The Tower of Slabylon" No decisions have been made on this yet.

We all had a great time building and decorating the tower as well as taking field trips to other Slab City art destinations like Rockette Bob's Church of Broken Toys, Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain, and the two huge concrete tanks that have been totally muralized by a lone artist who calls himself Tom.

I shot video at the event and also took some still photos. The stills are at
http://picasaweb.google.com/zebulonspleen/TowerOfArt

The video is at http://vimeo.com/8023555

Big THANKS to Charlie Russell, the Mayor of East Jesus, and to everyone who contributed and participated in the project. We are NOT done! There will likely be another art jam at East Jesus probably in March of 2010.