My Bus Adventure

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that, about 20 years ago, I had a school bus that was converted into a motor home, I then went on to talk about hippie buses and how cool they were. Well, my bus was a 1962 Dodge. It was 32 feet long and had a 350 Chevy engine and automatic transmission. It was slow and got between 8 and 9 miles per gallon.  I bought it in 1990 for $800.

I wanted to move away from the L.A. area and needed a good camping vehicle. What I was really looking for was a Volkswagen bus. I saw an ad in the paper for an old school so I thought I'd go ahead and take a look, even though that was not what I was looking for. I have always loved the old hippie buses so I called the advertiser of the school bus and arranged to see it. I was a bit panicky as I caught myself making an offer on it. "What am I doing?" I thought to myself. "This is crazy." Amazingly they accepted my offer and then a big smile creased my face and the next thought was, "I just bought an $800 ticket to heaven!"

It was already partially converted inside. I went to work on it to finish the conversion by adding cabinets, cleaning up the kitchen, adding some furniture, etc. I painted the bus and my friend, Billy, made a wooden grille for it. I had a couple of yard sales to sell everything I owned that wouldn't fit in the bus, moved into it, and drove off into the night leaving Southern California behind for good. I didn't know where I was going or where I would end up. I was on the road! I ended up in Prescott, Arizona, where I still am today. In 1992 I traded the bus for a truck and a small travel trailer.

It was fun having the bus but I think, even more fun, will be the gypsy wagon I am building. Now that I am back from my annual allergy escape trip, I am back to work on it. I got the tongue-and-groove siding put on the front of the gypsy wagon this past weekend. The next step is to create the jambs for the door and windows.

Art Inside a Freeway

When Joe was in high school he discovered a mysterious portal into another world. At least it was potentially another world. He got to work and now, six years later, it is, indeed, a strange and mysterious place.

He found an entrance into the insides of a freeway overpass.  Joe wasn't the first person to find this place, either. He found evidence of previous visitors. This portal was likely created so that the structural elements of the freeway could be inspected from time to time. Apparently no one has tried to inspect this one for quite awhile. Maybe never.

The space consists of a vault that is just under six feet high, maybe eight feet wide, and probably over a hundred feet long. He divided the space into small rooms connected by tunnels. The string of rooms extends out probably 60 feet. At one point there are a couple of 4-inch holes in the concrete floor where you can see the road below. The tunnels are hidden and/or hung with strips of fabric and plastic so that it is a disorienting adventure to explore. The disorienting effect was on purpose. The vault is right underneath the road bed so you can hear the cars above and feel the vibrations when a big truck goes over,.

"It's all in the details," the artist says about his hidden creation. Everything inside had to be carried up through a 30-inch diameter hole. It is amazing what he managed to get in there. We saw a desk, two toilets (not working) and even a piano! I asked him how he got the piano in there and his response was a question, "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer, of course, is "one piece at a time." There have been parties inside the freeway, too, sometimes even with a live band, The port is just large enough to fit a bass drum through..

He says that there is an entry at the other end of the overpass with another art installation just beginning.  Obviously, all this was done without the permission or knowledge of the powers that be. Because of its clandestine nature, the location of this art installation cannot be disclosed. I probably couldn't find it again anyway.

It was pitch dark inside. We had no idea what we were in for when we went looking for the place so we didn't have much in the way of lighting. We managed to scrounge two flashlights. Because of the lack of light and the tightness of the spaces it was difficult to shoot video or take pictures in such a way that you get a good idea what is going on. Nevertheless, I put together a short video of the adventure called "Art in a Freeway Overpass."

L.A. Graffiti and Murals

 I visited my friends, Bill and Jana, in Hollywood a couple of weeks ago. We managed to cram several days worth of art adventuring into only about 24 hours. We explored sculptural art installations in Elysian Park, went inside a freeway to see an unusual art installation, visited a artist's collective of sorts in a warehouse under a bridge, and went for a walk looking for graffiti. I'll start with our graffiti walk.

We took a three-hour walk down Hollywood Blvd. in search of graffiti and murals. There were plenty. There is art everywhere, some of it obviously done with permission and some obviously not done with permission. From simple tagging to elaborate paintings, I was impressed by the talent of these artists..
More photos

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.