The Bus Blog

In 2019 we actually didn’t get the bus out at all! We visited it during the summer and took it out on a few short drives, but were a little preoccupied with life. In June of 2019, we bought a condo that flooded the day before we closed. Thankfully it was all covered by insurance but we dealt with a number of contractors over the summer and had our hands full planning and building out everything that we wanted! ...

In the summer of 2018 we already knew that we wouldn’t be able to take a honeymoon just yet, but wanted to take at least a small trip as newlyweds. We had never been to Kelowna and decided that it would be a fun weekend to drive the bus up there for a couple of nights. On the way up, we stopped for a hike at an old railway tunnel in the mountains. There’s some really cool history here - learning about all the effort that went into the trans-Canada railway right across the Rockies. ...

And of course, the bus was involved in the wedding. We got married at the sea-to-sky gondola and hosted our closes friends and family in a beautiful house in Whistler for the week. If you know us well you’ve likely seen all of our pictures already - I’m not going to post many here publically but suffice it to say we thought it was just perfect.

Through the winter of 2017/2018, we didn’t do much, except keep the solar panels clear and the batteries charged. Come springtime though, it was time for our annual trip to Whistler! We loaded up the car and headed to the bus, but were shocked to find a whole rally happening! Our bus was right in the middle of the whole thing, so it took a little time and musical chairs to get us out. This set us back an hour or two but everyone was still in good spirits. ...

Wow, so much to update on! I’m going to try to keep these posts in order, and not skip anything, but that means jumping back a little for a couple of them. Back in the summer of 2017, we had heard about the total solar eclipse that was coming. Turns out it the totality could be seen in Oregon, and it was going to happen on a Monday. This meant that with one day off work, we could mozy our way down over a weekend and catch it first hand. Mom was also looking to make a trip out and visit us, so it was all set! ...

As we prepare for our next trip in the bus, I am reminded that I never finished the blog post for our last one! It was Zara’s birthday in May, and another one of our friends has a birthday couple days earlier. Because of this, it has become a bit of a tradition that we do a trip in the bus celebrate. Last year was our trip to the Whistler gun range as many of us had never done that before, and this year we headed back to Whistler for some zip-lining down the mountain! We have another friend who has been working as a zip line instructor up there so it just seemed like the perfect opportunity. ...

Zara’s birthday has come and past, which is a story in itself, but as usual the blog is a little behind. We finished getting the roof re-insulated fairly quickly, but not without difficulty. We realized after some trial and error that it was going to be really hard to put the metal paneling back up without knowing where each one came from. This meant that we had to sort through and deduce one at a time which panel came from where… There are not really any photos of this process because we powered through it as quickly as possible and were struggling to keep our arms from giving out on us after holding panels above our heads all day. ...

Now that Zara and I are really settled into our life in Vancouver, we have some more time and money to re-visit some of the aspects of the bus that we were never quite satisfied with in our initial conversion. I won’t divulge the entire list of projects that we came up with yet, but they will all be detailed here at some point ;) We also have a new Instagram account for the bus (which we’ve officially named Steve) that you can follow for more regular updates from Zara [ @abusnamedsteve] ...

It’s been too long since my last post, and there is lots to talk about! I’m going to split everything up in to a few posts but they may appear all at the same time. First of all, we took a small day trip in October to a little town called Harrison Hot Springs here in B.C. Our friend was visiting from Ontario and it seemed like a good opportunity to get the bus out on the road for a day. ...

Well the summer is coming to an end here in B.C. and I think it’s time for a little update.We we’re hoping to do a longer trip this season but only managed to squeeze in a couple of weekend trips. Trip 1: Whister For those who don’t know, Zara’s birthday is in May, along with one of our other friends, and they decided this year that they wanted to go too a shooting range and shoot some guns! So we packed 7 of us into the bus and headed up to Whistler for the weekend. ...