a loooooooooooong time ago – i was living in gordy’s house, before i moved up to state street, so… probably 1987 or thereabouts – i had this dream of owning a school bus that was also a dwelling and/or a workshop come one step closer to being a reality than it had been before (or since), when i actually began the process of buying a converted school bus from a woman named mauldiwarp moongate-climber… i say “began the process of buying” because she began the process by sending me the (unsigned) title to the vehicle and then disappearing to lapland (literally) where she was unavailable to do things like actually sign the bill of sale on the opposite side of the title. meanwhile i found out that the engine and transmission, which had originally been a 1959 international diesel school bus engine and the corresponding 5-speed manual transmission, had been “replaced” with a 1972 ford pinto engine and the 3-speed automatic transmission that went along with it, which, of course, made it impossible to move the massive international school bus more than 5 miles without overheating, blowing gaskets and generally leaving me in a much, much worse place than i was before i began the process of buying it. the upshot was that, after i found a series of “technically illegal” places to park the bus, i moved it into the vacant lot next door to gordy’s house, where it stayed until mauldiwarp got back from lapland, at which point she seemingly-successfully sold it to another mangy hippie-type, because i never saw it again.
problem is, the school bus left my life, but the dream of owning a converted school bus got stronger. with the advent of internet, the probability that i was going to run into this site increased dramatically…
this could be dangerous… 8)
Hrm… that might not be a bad thing at all to do. If you do make it all the way through, thoguh, I’d like to see it. If at all possible, in person at some point.
ultimately, my bus is going to have 2 levels, like a double-decker bus. i saw a bus in bellingham, years ago, that was actually two busses welded on top of one another. the guy had a living space above, and a workshop below. that bus also had this ingenious modification that allowed it to be powered by firewood instead of diesel or gas. it’s a long way off, though… you’ve got to know how to do modifications like that yourself, and i’m nowhere close yet.
no, i knew it was really her name, that’s what was good about it. 🙂
i’m curious how…
her name really was mauldiwarp moongate-climber… it had originally been katharine something (i have a long and sordid history with women named katherine: my sister, my first girlfriend, the mother of my son, the woman with the school bus, and so on… 8/ ), but she, like i, was a “child of bellevue” – which means she was the offspring of rich liberal types who never actually experienced the ’60s but secretly always wanted to be hippies – so she legally changed her name immediately upon graduating from high school. i met her a couple years later, when she had been living on a local indian reservation in the school bus. i knew a whole bunch of people with bizarre names back then… whis tem men knee, mauldiwarp, anodyne, cloudhopper… and, of course, me… 8)
i had another experience that was along the same continuum last year when we stayed in the motor home before we moved into our current house. it gave me a very clear idea of how i want my bus to be different… 8)
ha 🙂 good story. good character names. 😉 i hope you get what you want, with this kind of history behind the desire, i figure you eventually will.