One Week

Our first week of bus work is complete, though I can’t say the say about any non-bus activities on my to do list. The laundry sits filthy. My bills are unpaid. The fridge is well stocked with rotting produce, and I still haven’t purchased plane tickets to a friend’s quickly approaching wedding. I couldn’t be more satisfied with my life.

The days are even more exhausting than my 12+ hour workdays as a management consultant. When I wake up thought, the pains are muscle aches from lifting plywood rather than jaw aches from grinding my teeth all night.

Highlights of week one:
We unbolted the rest of the seats from the floor and stacked them in the back of the bus. Priceless finds included a picture cut from a student ID clearly intended for use in a fake ID, a Kudos wrapper from 1995, a few hundred star-shaped white candies that had been stuck between the seat and the wall sometime in the last 5 years. I think something else had been stuck down there as well, but it had begun to compost into a dirt binder for the star candies. And so, the circle of life continues.

I tried to find a local school district or bus company to accept the seats as donations. I know I was out of luck when I called up Eastern Bus Distributors after an hour on the phone with various districts.
Me: “Hi. I’ve just bought a 1984 Blue Bird All American and am going to do a conversion on it.”
Secretary: “Ahhh, you must be the guy with the seats. I’m afraid we don’t want them.”
Me: “ Ummmmm … Okay. How did you know.?”
Secretary: “Cambridge called about 10 mintues ago while you were on hold with them asking if we wanted to take them on their behalf.”
Me: “Why’d you say no?”
Secretary: “We don’t have any customers that buy buses that large.”
Me: “Well, thanks anyway.”

Everyone thinks we’re gay.
We went to scope the professional RV market on Friday; an excuse not to lift anything for a day. First stop, Branford RV. Manning the front desk was Bill. Bill is the kind of guy who wears shorts, a polo shirt and a cowboy hat. His drawl is pure Texas, but the certificate over his desk says he’s has reached the rare achievement of selling RV’s for Branford’s, deep in the heart of the Northeast, for 20 years.

To the last man and woman, everyone we sell trolling the lot of Branford and later Giant RV World is a clearly married couple with a fully gray hair. I choose today, God knows why, to wear my tight black ribbed t-shirt. Ehren as least has the good sense not to shave. When we walk into the showroom, we get a long look and a very slow “Can I help you two gentleman?” Still, sales people don’t pass up sales, and we did get an excellent tour of a $150K tour bus motorhome. Very swank.