From Veeduber@aol.com  Sat Sep 23 04:28:06 1995
msgnum: msg16263
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 1995 05:28:02 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Hair Ball Run, Part II


A Little Pneumonia.

That's what the doc-in-the-box said about  week ago.  "You've got a little
pneumonia in the right lung."  I assume Big Pneumonia hangs over onto the
liver or something.

Wanna know how you get a Little Pneumonia of your very own?  Sleep in an old
bus, don't eat, work twenty hours a day, get rained on... stuff like that.
 First, you get this great chest cold; Canada Geese appear each time you
cough.  Then you get this really neat fever, during which you have insightful
conversations with cats and things seem to be going just swell, except you
keep falling down.  

If you're lucky, you find a place of refuge where people will put you to bed,
stick needles in your ass five times a day and clean you up when you shit
yourself. Pneumonia is a fun trip.  After five or six days, six in my case,
you're strong enough to drink your coffee without spilling it.  Of course,
you still have to get home.  

I'm going to drive home.  In Grendel.  That's the name of the '67 bus Eric
Oster said was in good condition.

Here's what 'good condition' means to some people:  No brakes to speak of.
 Hammered brake line to rt. rear, the wheel with the leaky cylinder; the one
with the bleeder broken off.  Left front spindle cut & scored, link-pins
rusty and having more than 1/4" of lateral play.  Both rt. front wheel
cylinders leaking; shoes contaminated, bearing seal failed, grease all over
the drum.  And the right spindle has been ground on too.

Eric said the bus had remarkably little rust.  Howzabout blisters under the
windscreen rubber, lower front door pillers rotted away, passenger-side
cockpit floor with a nice view of the ground, cargo doors don't even touch
the sill it's so rotted/sagging.  Driver's side cargo-bay sill rotted, held
together with paint.  Rear of the front wheel arches rotted through.

'Good condtion' around Shelton, Washington (site of a state pen and home of
the Climbers) means collision damage front and rear, no rear bumper, no
engine compartment seals, engine hatch secured with wire, broken shifter-rod,
tranny sitting on the cross-member, rear mounts collapsed, front mount solid
steel, now ovaled out the holes so the tranny moves any which way it wants.
 Hub frozen on the left rear wheel -- no idea what condition that brake is
in.

And no seats.  Or at least, no seat that will attach to the vehicle.  

And no heat.  Heater cables busted, knob broken off, central heater duct
under the body missing completely -- some clothes dryer hose hanging here and
there.  Throttle cable is bad too, chewed off at the ferrell.

It's kind of hard to see out of the Good Condition bus because the windows
were not masked when the K-mart paint job was applied.  Yup, right over the
window seals, dirty hand-prints and dead bugs.  Three cans worth of blue
paint plus some white.  Part of the top of the bus is white, the central
portion beer-bottle bronze.  Under that I fond some yellow, some white and
finally, the original red below, white above.

There are no handles on the  wind wings.  Ditto the body windows.  No rubber
on most of the windows but lots of bondo and bathtub caulk.  

No clutch return spring.

Battery hanging half way through the rotted floor.

No keys of course.  And rear hatch is locked.  And the title is not clear.

Wiring is a mess.  Original ignition replaced by a Universal keyswtich, one
that doesn't work.  ("Oh, it works!  There's a trick to it!"  But never
reveals the trick.)  

Bug headlights instead of bus.  They do a nice job, assuming you want to
 illuminate the sidewalk immediately to the right of the bus.  Headlights
wired to a cheap toggle switch laying loose on the package tray, the stock
switch having gone the way of the dodo.  And the ignition switch.  And the
door grab-handles.  And the fuel gauge.  Good Condition.

Good conditon means three different sizes of tire on two different sizes of
rim; three 15's and a lonely 14" up front, just to make the steering
interesting.  Earl Oster, Eric's brother, is very pround of his impact
wrench.  He keeps it set to about 400 pounds so the wheels won't all off.  Of
course, it ruins the lug bolts, and if you're out in the boonies trying to
change a flat, you quickly learn that 400 ft/lbs is a bit more than you can
loosen with your fingers, or even with a lug wrench, assuming the Good
Condition Bus came with one, which it didn't.  Nor a jack.

So there I am, out in the boondocks with a dismantled engine, two hundred
pounds of tools and eighty-six pounds of personal baggage with these two guys
grinning at me.  They've already got my money, now the question is what will
I abandon to their honest and honorable care inorder to get home. 

I smiled back at them and rolled up my sleeves.  Being suckered is one thing,
being scammed is another.  They would have to kill me to win and while they
came damn close, now it's my turn.

Grendel.  It's a good name for what happens next.

-Bob

Hopefully, over the next few days I'll be able to do the brakes, replace the
trashed spindle and find some headlights.  Then I'll head home.