Today we officially have the back end of the bus reinforced. You might be asking yourself why? Basically the back end of this bus hand no real frame supporting it. The frame only reaches the back tires and then it stopped. So what we had was wood hanging off the back, with small support brackets underneath being held up by the side walls which are also made of wood. Not a very strong design but I am sure they were trying to keep the weight off. The problem it has for us is that we cannot tow a car behind our bus which is pretty much essential if we don’t want to be driving this bus everywhere we go. In addition to that, we it was in really bad shape because it had been busted up pretty bad when the bus was towed. So it needed to be fixed anyways. I figure, might as well do what we need to do to it since it is going to cost us either way.

On the downside of this, it raised the floor on the back end around 3 inches. Not sure exactly how much higher but it was certainly higher. I had a rough decision to either drop the floor 3 inches or raise the floor 3 inches. Considering that there was an issue with dragging the back end causing the damage in the back I opted for raising it. Hopefully this will prevent any future dragging and damage. It was a sacrifice but I wanted to play it safe which someday may pay off big time. A small inconvenience in the back but a huge sense of security.

Here are some pictures of when the back end floor got ripped out and post installation of the floor. Got much more to go but we should have the whole bus ready to drive in the next 4 months if all goes according to plan. Keep us in your prayers.

Ok, so much to report. Where do I start? Last we reported we were looking into renting a house and that worked out. We have been there for several months now. In addition to that, I found out my job was a total fraud and wasn’t making money anymore. The company that hired me lies through their teeth to get people involved but the job doesn’t deliver. Around the time that I started seriously looking for another job, my cousin hired me to work at the shop my bus is currently at. So, that makes getting the bus done a bit more complicated but I am fully committed to this goal. I believe in a few more checks we will finally see some major body work get done. Nothing has really been done since  my last post. As you may know, things had been real rough for us for the first year. We dug ourselves into some pretty serious debt that we are now finally taking care of.

Today marks 1 year, 2 months and 11 days since we left Cambria for “The Valley”. We are really bumd out it is taking this long, however we are not giving up on our dream. I mean we have a running double decker bus. Not much is really standing in our way. It is just going to be a much longer process than we ever thought it would be.

For an update on the home front. We are living in a small town 15 minutes from Sequioa National Park and 20 minutes from work. Since we have been here we have found some rather wonderful things about the area. For example, a very cutting edge charter school designed to assist home school families is here in the area. http://www.erclc.org/   We were sooo shocked to find something this cool in the Visalia area or even in general, but especially in Visalia. Avira has been really taking up the homemaker apron and getting deep into homeschooling the children. Elijah is doing amazing! He knows how to read and write, and is a wiz at math. He has grown incredibly with his social skills and is far happier being around children his own age.   Kaiya is doing well and is starting to learn her ABC’s. They both have a new pet they earned for being good helpers. Kaiya has a bird and Elijah has a rat. We are one pet away from there being equal with the amount of humans in the house. haha. My new job has allowed me to focus on my computer skills. I do computer repair, web design, flyers, ads, video, and have even written an article. I have many more things I am getting into such as animation, photography and videography. So I am learning so much so fast.

So that is an update on us. We will be updating the blog as soon as there is some progress on the bus which will include pictures and video. Until we get something done I suppose there isn’t much to post about. Maybe I will post some home videos and pictures soon. =)

Ok, so this won’t be brief but it has some interesting info.

From time to time (usually one every couple of weeks) we look online to see if their are any cheap places that we could potentially rent. Rarely do we see something that we are interested in. This is mainly due to our criteria. We are not interested in a place that is really all that nice, but just something that is right. So I will explain what “right” is.

We do not want to live in Visalia or Tulare. Exeter is the only place we were thinking we could stand around here but we figured that we are likely to end up living in either Visalia or Tulare. So if we were to live there, we need a to find a really inexpensive place that is not in a ghetto area of town. Unfotunately, that is near impossible to find. If we cannot find that, we want to live near the mountains (as we are nature lovers) and commute to Visalia for work. We have looked at 3 rivers but it seemed too far away. We watched for places available in between but nothing ever came up available. So, it started to seem that our only hope was either get lucky with cheap city house in a non-ghetto area, or get lucky with a random house available in the country between the mountains and Visalia. Eitherway, we needed to get lucky or settle for Exeter.

To make matters more difficult, we have 2 children and a dog. Most renters refuse to rent to a family unless there is a room for each child. Most renters do not allow dogs for inexpensive rentals. In fact. we only found a handful that would allow dogs that were under $1,000 per month. That is not inexpensive at all and most of them are large homes. Let me remind you, we don’t have any furniture. Could you imagine? haha. Empty house.

Our ideal is to find a one bedroom that is inexpensive and located between the mountains we love and the city I need to work in. Now back to the random searches for said criteria. We had no luck in the 9 months we have been here now. Can you believe it has been 9 months???

Yesterday we gave it a try to see what was out there and as luck would have it, there was a one bedroom in Lemon Cove that allows dog and is located between the mountains and Visalia. Woohoo! So we are in communication with the owners and things are looking good. The only issue we had was that there was a really heavy cat smell in the house that I am sure cannot be washed out of the carpet. In addition to that, the carpet really needs to be replaced. Considering how cheap the rent is ($600 mo. to us it is cheap, we paid over $1,250 for the past 6 years for rent and peaked at our last rent of $1,400), I was willing to negotiate getting the carpet and pad changed out. I told them that we would only be there for 6 months maybe slightly more and they were ok with it. The house isn’t obviously a palace, but it is perfect for us. Country roads, animals, a quick drive to Sequoia National Park, and most of all NO SHADY PEOPLE WALKING AROUND. We can actually take our kids for a walk, see some beautiful things and not have to worry something bad could happen.

So it looks like this place could be exactly what we need right now and Avira is VERY excited. She is already imagining it which means she will be heart broken if it doesn’t pan out. So I hope it works out mainly for her and my children, but I am looking forward to it too. They really need to have their own environment again for the first time in 9 months. Wish us luck and I will report what happens.

Next…

I was contacted by a gentleman today who tracks double decker buses. It was really awesome to get that email and he had some cool info which I will post in a sec. Here is a link to his site with my bus http://bcv.robsly.com/414pta.html

Here is quotes from the email because I am not a big fan of retyping what people have already typed. hehe

“US history is somewhat sketchy, but it is known that its first RV conversion was done (to a very high spec for the time) around 1982 and it is reputed to have been used by no less than film star Richard Dreyfuss…Prior to your discovering it in Paso Robles it was last reported by the network of interested bus enthusiasts (mostly Brits abroad in the US) in March 1992, for sale for $25,000 in Sun Valley…414PTA was new to the Western National Omnibus Company as their fleet number 2034. That company operated in the South West corner of England, in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset.”

There was more in the email on a more personal note that I will not share but I thought that info was interesting enough. The guy we bought it from told me about Richard Dreyfuss owning it so I did know that. I can see how the conversion was very 80′s as it still seemed to have a disco remnant design to it. Can you believe it was selling for $25,000 in 1992??? Whoa, I think we got a great deal!

That is it for now, more to come!

As of Thursday December 11th we have a running bus! =)

Friday we spent the day changing the oil out and fixing a radiator hose before we started it for the second and third time. The second time it died after running for a while and then the third time it ran better and better the more we let it run. By the end, it was running beautifly. The only problem now is to deal with what sounds like a fuel line or air line issue. We aren’t sure but it is causing it to run a bit rough. Sooooo, we video taped the events and here they are.

Second time starting the bus

Third time with interview of Wenn family

I love you soooooooooooo much!

So, if you have been paying attention you know that things have been a little rough for us in our goal of accomplishing our dream. We knew before we started that this would not be easy and man, we called that one. hehe. The obstacle we have had is finding jobs so we could fix up our bus has now turned into needing jobs to just live here. That was not what we anticipated. So as you can imagine, not having money doesn’t mean you don’t have expenses and we actually sank into a small debt. In the last couple of weeks I have managed to score a job that looks like it is sent right from heaven although that could still be wrong. I have not been able to work yet because of legal paperwork but it will soon be done and I will report on how it is going. Hopefully it is as good as it appears.

Two days ago we were driving past the restaurant that “hired” Avira and noticed that the restaurant signs are down and they have been replaced with “for lease” signs. I guess that means Avira’s job that we were waiting for has officially fell through. It was probably a really good thing that I took the opportunity to pitch the idea of hiring Avira to my new employer because a few days before that they decided to hire her too. We are no going back to Los Angeles (probably next week) for her to take the class I took two weeks ago. So if this job is as good as I am hoping it will be, then it will be twice as good because we both will be doing the same thing. The good news is that we should have money to start working on the bus soon and it may be much more money than we ever made before which means the bus will be getting done quickly. We aren’t giving our hopes up yet but just taking it one step at a time. Keep us in your prayers as we continue on this crazy journey toward a new lifestyle. Maybe we will look back in a few months and think this was only a small trial to test how bad we wanted this. Yesterday I sat in the bus for a few minutes imagining how it will look when it is all done and on the road. My heart welled up with joy. I think it is going to take much much more tribulation than what we have gone through so far to make us give up on our dreams.

So I got one FINALLY. A very bizarre market I knew nothing about. It is a straight commission sales job but requires some explaination. So here it goes…

Every month, all gas users pay a surcharge of only a few bucks that is usually percieved to be a tax. It is actually a federally mandated charge that the utility companies are required to charge to provide programs to assist low income energy users. On thing it does is help lower the bill for people who are low income. It also helps increase the efficiency of their home to lower their bill. That is where the company I work for comes in. Though the utility collects and holds that money for their program, they do not advertise it nor do they tell people about it. They contract with independent companies, like mine, paying them for each person who they sign up for the program. Not only do they pay them to sign them up, they also pay to have them do the work on the home. Change light bulbs, ballasts, seal windows, check a/c and heater for leaks, attic for ensulation and so on. Whatever needs to be done to make it more efficient, they do it absolutely free. Well, not free because they pay out of their bill each month, but free in the general sense. They just have to be low income and qualify for the program. Pretty amazing huh?

My job is to appoach these individuals and try to get them to sign up so my company can come out and do the work. The program is not very successful and they need a certain percentage for the Feds to be happy, so they pay pretty good to those who can get it done. I will get a descent chunk of money for each person I get to sign-up for the program. Thats it. I am basically “giving away a free service” for poor people to make their home more energy efficient and make their air conditioning work more efficiently. For doing that, I can make serious money. I am not kidding. The money is almost too good to be true. Today when at the office getting hired, my manager (who is a really really nice guy) showed me how many people he signed up in half a days work. Lets just put it this way, he worked half a day and would have made $375 if he wasn’t on a salary for being manager. Catch my drift? Good money.

To do this job I have to spend a week in Los Angeles taking a class with the ultility company to become a licensed contractor so that I can do this job. Have to pass the test of course but it sounds pretty easy. Then I start the following Monday basically giving away a service for profit. Now, if you are thinking this is too good to be true, I feel ya. I am like, NO WAY. However I have spent many hours researching this company and it is legit. The people are very nice and I am still waiting for the catch. They are paying my trip down to LA, hotel and food. When I start working they give me a $300 gas card to spend every month to get around that is in addition to my pay. If I spend any money for the business, they cover it. So, there is litterally no risk unless they don’t pay me back like they claim, if so, I leave. It isn’t costing me that much money to do it. 

I am still waiting for somebody to pinch me and wake me up from this dream I am having right now. We will see what happens and I will keep you posted.

Wow, time flies doesn’t it. We have gotten the bus down to the bare bones and are now trying to figure out the electrical. The bus still is not running and I am not ready to jump in and start it till we make sure that it doesn’t catch fire when we actually turn it over. I am anxiously awaiting a response from an expert on the bus to tell me what the cold cranking power for the battery needs to be. Then we will try to crank it over.

In the mean time, we are broke as a very very bad joke. I am grateful to have family to help us at this time otherwise we would be in serious trouble. There just aren’t many jobs in this area so my wife and I are digging deep within us to bring out our entrepreneurial spirit and trying to find work for ourselves. We are going to walk around fliers and hope that some kind people give us some work. I am marketing my computer skills and Avira is marketing her housekeeping, childcare and pet care skills. I am truly hoping that we come across a business owner who hires us for something more consistent but we are desperate and will take whatever we can get (within reason).

It is hot. So hot in fact, that we have passed up several days we could go work on the bus because it was just too hot. The sad thing is, it isn’t even the real hot weather yet. Thinking about 100+ weather makes me want to cry except I cannot afford to lose the body water in tears. haha. Anyways, even if we come up with all the money to fix the bus, we might just chill (literally) until fall comes around. We shall see.

That about does it for us right now. Did I ever menchion that we have a donation button——>
*Wink*