Photo of the Day

Page Twelve

December 9, 2006: Since moving the bus to the new property, I haven't had a lot of spare time to work on much of anything on it. Some months back, I began converting the interior into something that would pass as a guest room so that friends would have a place to stay if they stopped in for an overnight visit. Additionally, I had a rented garage storage space with all of my home theatre equipment stored in it, so I combined the guest quarters with the theatre and stereo equipment and came up with a multi-purpose indoor space.

The bus is served by a 240 volt, 30 ampere electrical service directly from the house’s electrical load center, so there is adequate power for heat and lights. The audio and video equipment, surround speakers, overstuffed furniture and such makes the interior a bit cramped, so I’m using a TV set instead of the video projector to display the pictures.

Overall, the oriental carpets and furnishings have made the interior of the bus pretty comfortable, and I’ve spent quite a few nights watching DVD movies to while away the long winter hours of dark.

Towards the front, I’ve set up my backup desktop computer for use, and to have it handy for email checking and file backups:

Having all this stuff inside the bus will make it difficult to do much of anything in the way of construction, so I expect that this will be the last update of the year. Once I get the house I bought fixed up enough to put the couch and theatre equipment into, I’ll empty out the bus and get back to work on the interior.

Today’s contribution to the project was to run a telephone cable from the house so I can catch calls while I’m vegetating in front of the tube, and to allow the computer to access the ‘net through the painfully slow dial up connection.

December 26, 2007: Last year, when I finally got a title for the bus, I also inquired about getting "Special Interest" registration for it. At the time, I was kind of pinched for time, and when I inquired about it, the DMV clerk gave me a form that needed to be filled out, and then dropped the subject. I didn't want to press it, since I was already nervous that they might get weird about titling the bus as a bus instead of a motor home.

Last November, I had to go into the DMV here on the coast to renew the registration on one of my cars, and I took the form along. This form was pretty simple, it had check boxes for several possibilities, "Antique Vehicle", "Show Car", etc. At the bottom of the form was a section that was supposed to be filled out describing the "recognized club or vehicle association" that had designated the car or truck as a collectable, with all of the warnings for false statements, etc.

One of the check boxes simply said "This vehicle is over 25 years old". I checked this one, and left the rest of the form blank, as it didn't request any confirming information from the recognized association.

The clerk at the DMV had me fill out a registration application, filled in the blanks for "office use only", stamped everything with the ink stamp, and collected $84 from me. No difficult questions, no arguments, no requesting of validation by an outside source. Nothing.

One of the main reasons I wanted this registration is that it is permanent, no renewal, no additional fees, no tags to purchase, nothing. From now on and for as long as I own the bus, it has registration.

Of course, it comes with some restrictions. The "Special Interest" registration is supposed to be for vehicles that aren't driven frequently. The enclosure when the plate arrived described that the vehicle was supposed to be driven for "special events, parades, shows, exhibitions and other gatherings", and that "misuse of the registration was a Class D infraction and may result in the rescinding of the registration".

Well, I think it's a pretty damned special event when the Crown gets driven anywhere, and I didn't lie on the application form, the bus is over 25 years old. Who is to say whether I am using it for a special purpose at any given time? I could see if your friendly, local traffic officer saw the bus drive past the cop shop twice every day, but unless I gathered a bunch of traffic citations for speeding, etc, it would be hard for them to prove that I was not in compliance with the terms of the registration. What? No special events on the calendar? Well, maybe not in this county, or maybe even in this state. Big Crown reunion in Chico, California, I hear... Maybe I'm taking the bus to the tire shop to prepare it for the big Independence Day parade? Next year? Year after?

Anyway, thanks to Bradlee, a years-ago contact I met through this web site for cluing me into the Special Interest registration. He had it on his Crown Supercoach, and all these years I figured that DMV would turn me down flat if I applied for it. No more trip permits for me, and no $200 per year motor home registration fees, either!

September 14, 2009: Unfortunately, my financial situation does not allow for luxuries such as building materials for the bus. I've just this summer managed to erase all my debts, and now have only a small amount of disposable income with which to try and get the house I bought back into liveable condition. Although the bus is first in my heart, the house must be repaired after being mostly demolished on the inside in an attempt to repair a lot of dry rot in the kitchen and as a cleansing ritual to try and get rid of the previous owner's grimy smell. Since the house has a lot of value if it is habitable, I must concentrate on getting it into saleable condition in case I need to bail out from this property.

Working on the house does benefit the bus indirectly. Once the house is clean enough to receive the furnishings now in the bus, I will be able to resume construction on the interior of the Crown. As it is now, there's too much stuff inside to make it possible to saw, drill and weld as needed to move forward on the outfitting of the interior.

Hell, what's another year or two after 15 years of waiting to see it finished?

April 16, 2011: About a year ago, a large Western Red Cedar tree fell down in the creek bed. After laying there all summer, and through the winter, with the help of a friend, I cut the large trunk into long bolts and hauled them to a small mill in the area. After seeing the quality of the cut that the mill was making consistently, I asked the mill operator how thin a board he could cut. He told me that he could cut any thickness I wanted, so once we got down to the heartwood in one of the more clear logs, I had him cut several pieces 3/8" thick by a full 6" wide. They were beautiful! A few minutes after cutting and being exposed to the air, they turned a warm shade of tan, with an almost flesh-colored blush to them. After that, when the cant was in the heartwood, Dave would align it on the mill and cut 3/8" material until the grain became flat again, making a growing stack of pure vertical grain lumber. On several of the logs, he cut two cants from the heartwood, then lined them up side-by-side on the mill and cut book-and-cant-matched boards.

When this stage of milling was underway, I took full control of removing the wood from the mill and stacking it on the trailer and truck. Each piece was kept in the order and orientation that it came off the cant, so all of the grain patterns are intact in the stacks.

The result was over 1,000 linear feet of paneling for the inside of my bus! Much of the wood from the last big log was completely clear of knots. Here's the cache of paneling, stacked and stickered in the back of my storage shed for drying:

There are 56 pieces 8'10" log, 20 @ 12'11" and 30 @ 11'2", more than enough to do my walls.

One reason (of many) that I haven't moved forward on the Crown is that I have come to the point of installing the interior walls, but couldn't find anything that I liked. The material I used in the Housetruck is no longer available, and I need thin material so that the windows in the bus aren't restricted from hinging in. This wood, after having a tongue-and-groove routed into it's edges will fill the bill exactly! That it was grown on the property, cut and milled personally, and handled and cared for so as to preserve it's beauty and integrity as a single being (a tree, not boards from a bunch of trees) makes it that much more valuable to me.

Anyway, in theory, I'll have dried out the wood in 4 months or so and it will be ready to use. In reality, I probably won't get around to doing this for much longer, so the wood will be nicely cured by the time I start putting it up.