Even I can’t believe it. But there it is, right out my kitchen window–all 40 feet of yellow-orangeness. Like, an actual school bus. That we’re going to live in. Sitting there saying, alternately:
Wow! What wonderful adventures we’re going to have together!
our bus
and
What the hell did you just do?
also our bus
We had been talking about buying or building a tiny house on wheels for a couple years. We even went to the tiny house festival. We spent the weekend in a tiny house. We decided to do it…someday.
Someday, when we’d gotten rid of more stuff. Someday, when we’d saved up the tens of thousands of dollars to have a tiny house the size we wanted. Someday, when my husband was ready to quit the job he’s been at for 25 years.
Then, one day I realized that school buses had just about the same amount of room (minus lofts) as a really long tiny house on wheels…and that they come with their own means of towing themselves (I mean, we and all our stuff probably don’t weigh more than 70 kids and the seats they sit on!)…and that they only cost about $5000.
So, I told my husband,
“I think we should start looking at school buses.”
He said
“Ummmm…. Are you sure?”
And I said,
“Ummm…. I think so.”
A couple days later he was spending all his spare time on his phone, looking at retired school buses on Craigslist and other online sites, counting windows and trying to figure out dimensions from really bad pictures. A couple days later, we drove down to Knoxville to see our first bus. And, man, it was a rust bucket. Still, it being the first bus we’d ever thought about buying, we were afraid we might be passing up a good deal and took much longer deciding to say no than we should have.
The next two weeks, my husband went back and forth between being excited about the little bits of info he got from people-selling-buses-online and feeling like we’d never find one we’d like. (I mean, who knew there was such variety in school buses?)
We looked at a few more and passed on them. Then one day, someone told him there was a good bus (40-footer, rear-engine, great condition, full “basement”) for sale nearby on an online marketplace. I messaged the guy, and the rest is history. Turns out, he had hundreds of messages from people who were interested, but he had only replied to me because he was busy getting ready for his daughter’s swim meet. It was meant to be.
We’ve already made all kinds of plans and have had all kinds of ideas. We’ll see how it all works out. It’s not like we’ve ever done this before. Luckily, Jason is one handy and industrious guy. Stay tuned!
