Robin, Biostar, and I slowly rolled across the GW bridge last night and rumbled down Amsterdam Ave into a prime, free parking spot on Amsterdam & 115th street. Lynn gave me the warmest homecoming I could ask for – hugs, kisses, tea, and Guinness cake!!
Lynn and I spent the day relaxing and enjoying the nice weather – it is great to be back after my two months on the road. The trip home was indeed an Odyssey, but it’s telling will have to wait for another day.
This picture was taken on route 80 near Washington, PA. We were expecting to make it home late tonight – instead we got towed to this out of the way intersection near a truck repair place. This seems to bode badly for the transmission – this time it is a mechanical problem, not electrical. Robin and Lotus are in the left corner – there have been many lows on the trip – but right now feels the lowest.
This is Robin, relaxing in the parking lot of the truck repair place we got towed to on the East side of Columbus, Ohio. We had been having trouble with the fuel system for a day or two, and kept stalling and not being able to start the bus and spending lots of time with our finger on the starter. It turned out the the starter solenoid needed replacing – but we were still learning that the truck places are NOT the places to be with a bus. The truck people basically said no, they wouldn’t fix it, at least not for a week and for less then the bus was worth. Hey – at least they let us camp in their parking lot.
So then we got towed to N&W bus repair. Great place, great people. They let us work on the bus ourselves – Robin and I pulled the starter motor assembly out ourselves, the Connely helped us test it – turned out it was just the starter solenoid that had failed. So they let us look through the half dozen solenoids they had until we found the right part, and then remounted the thing. AND IT WORKED! My first really serious bus maintenance operation.
What a couple of days! About 30 minutes ago we pumped about 30 gallons of grease from the Flowershop stockpile into the dirty tank. Everything is ready for the first test of the entire system tomorrow morning – coolant is flowing (after installing some bleeder valves), the pumps are all wired (after some surgical soldering and electrical taping), and the all the connections have been made. Looking forward to relaying the good news that the BioBus is running on veggie oil!!
Tons of other progress as well. Ed and I slept on the new bed last night and survived, the new wiring in the back is almost complete, and lots of other great stuff. Well, I’ll leave you with a bunch of photographs before going to bed.
Gloria and Eddy working on the bed
