Former bus member Peter Grangaard and his fiancé Tesha got married today and eBUS live was there for the whole thing. Parked outside of the Chapel on Pepperdine’s Malibu campus, Alice (our bus) represented her self proudly with the ebuslive.com banner displayed for all to view. The ceremony went without a hitch and although there was some rain and thunder in the morning, it was clear and beautiful.

Alice had some complications at the beginning of the day when we moved her on to campus for the ceremony. It seems the hills on campus are much too steep for her and going up them proved to be too much. She died just shy of the chapel. So Carson, with some help from Rachel, went into problem solving mode as Luke got ready and took pictures with the wedding party. They managed to hook up with a couple of campus safety officers, who were more then willing to help, and charged Alice all the way around the campus loop. The officers blocked off intersections and Alice stormed through the stop signs due to the fear that she might die if she lost too much momentum. It had worked. Alice made it to the chapel.

After the ceremony, it was time to test Alice yet again with her second task of the day; to get the wedding party up the gigantic hill for the reception at the graduate part of campus. With some loud cheers and encouraging chants, Alice made it with ease.

After the reception, and some shoe polish decoration, Alice was ready for her next task. We were to take the newlyweds to there hotel in downtown L.A. Carson drove the bus and I followed behind as we made our way through the poverty stricken streets of “skid row.” To be honest I was so scared that we would break down I was shaking at the wheel as I followed our house and all our stuff in circles through the area. And then, just before we found it, Alice decided to stop going up a hill in the middle of Grand Ave., one block from the hotel. I thought we were done for. Then all of the sudden Carson pulls the bus directly across the street and stops, blocking both directions. He then backed it up and completed his turn around rolling back down the hill and stopping in front of the hotel. We had made it.

I traded off the car I was driving with Sarah, the photographer, and we headed back west for some much needed late night breakfast at our favorite diner, Norm’s.

Check out the photos, and the video below.
-luke

Well, we made it. It took a while and with a few scary moments we finally made it back to Southern California. We left Graham, Washington a bit later than expected because we decided taking the mountains of Southern Oregon at night would be better for the overall wellbeing of Alice, our bus. Oh, and there was also a slight delay due to an incident involving me and a swarm of bees while I took an old jar of honey out to the trash can.

So around noon we headed out, blazing through WA and OR without a hitch. Alice was running great and we were even making better gas mileage then the trip up! Blazing through the night we, managed to make it through the mountains of Northern California and when, as I began to fall asleep, Carson noticed some engine issues developing. Things didn’t look good as we woke up to find that Alice’s alternator had lost a key bolt and was causing the belt so lose tension, thus causing us to lose power. So after some quick thinking, we managed to solve this problem with a quick jerry-rigging involving metallic wire and suspending the alternator in place. It worked! The wire was able to hold it in place high enough to give the belt adequate tension to run.

Back on the road, we headed down as rapidly as the temperatures headed up. Estimates of the air temps in Sacramento and Stockton ranged from 105 to 115 degrees. This was not good for Alice or for us as we baked inside her metallic frame.

We managed to make it to our junction off of I-5 and on to the 41 so that we could bypass the terrible uphill battle with the grapevine just north of L.A. As we exited we caught a glance of the local In-N-Out and immediately knew we had to stop for some delicious treats. Pulling off the ramp Alice was giving us some resistance and then, all of the sudden, she quit and we rolled to a stop just 20 yards from the tasty burger joint.

After a careful evaluation of the situation, we decided that the problem was caused by the intense 110 degree heat in Kettleman City and Alice just needed to cool off. We killed about an hour in the local restaurants’ air conditioning and decided to get her back on the road. At first this plan had worked great, she was running fine and we were back on our way. Then about 10 miles into it she died and again we rolled to a stop on the side of the road in the middle of an enormous hay field and tremendous heat.

There was nothing for us to do but to wait. We killed time by snapping photos, zipping around on the scooter, and throwing the football. It was miserable, the heat was intense and there was no shade to be found. After about four hours of roasting in the sun, it finally set on the horizon and we fired her back up. She was doing well and had appeared to be cool and ready. But she was not. After about 2 miles she started cutting out again, just as she had done on the trip north, and going up hill was tremendously difficult. We didn’t know what to do. We were heartbroken.

After a few sad minutes on the side of the highway yet again, we decided to push on through, engine troubles in all. We did not want to spend another night on the side of the road. She cut out a bit at first then started to fall in line. We where only about 5 hours away from my mom’s house in Ventura and we knew this was our only chance; no stopping was going to be allowed.

After a grueling six hours we finally made it. It was long, hot, and frustrating, but it feels good to be back in Southern California again.

See more photos.

-luke

Luke is really missing out these days I guess, but we’ll be back at it as a team shortly. But anyway, today eBUS live had its first interview for a newspaper article in the local paper. The whole thing was set up by Dawn Olson (Ashley, my girlfriend’s, mom), who by the way is making a strong case for most helpful fan. Anyway, I met with her at Redmond Town Center today at 1. She asked a bunch of questions, I talked about the bus, the idea, and about Luke and myself. Then a photographer showed up, took some shots and they both left. It was pretty exciting, hopefully the article will be good. All published articles will be available on the eBUS live website. In the blogs section there will be a page made just for press releases. I guess that’s all I can say for now, but I look forward to the article coming out. Thanks again to Dawn for setting this up, we appreciate the support.

-Carson

Its not like eBUS live was big enough so they rolled out the red carpet, but I wish. My brother and his friend Soli and I went to Seattle to try and see the show but we didn’t have tickets because it sold out a week after going on sale. (Luke was in Graham, WA without a car to make it up.) So the free part, we hung around outside the venue for a couple hours trying to get tickets but the scalpers were trying to sell them for $100 and that wasn’t going to happen. Finally Soli saw this lady who she knew from high school that happened to work at the venue. The lady cleared everything with her co-worker security guards and we just walked right in, no questions asked, no money taken. The show was awesome, Brand New is definitely in my top punk bands of all time list.

-Carson

No, unfortunately eBUS live in its entirety did not get to go, but I was able to take a plane ride and go out there to visit my girlfriend Ashley and to see the great city of Chicago.

I flew into Chicago, I took the CTA from O’Hare to downtown and met Ashley as she arrived on the train from Holland, MI. We saw the city of Chicago as best we could in two days. We ate a bunch of pizza, we saw many buildings and went up in a few (Sears and Hancock), took a cool architecture tour on the Chicago River, rode on the ‘L’ for the authentic experience, we went to Oak Street Beach, Grant Park, Museum Campus, and Millennium Park, we saw a concert in and amazing venue in the park, and a fireworks show on the waterfront, we also saw a bunch of artwork too. I could go on and on about Chicago, I loved it, the city is so much fun. Briefly my favorite parts were Millennium Park with the giant bean, all the great architecture and the pizza. Oh I can’t forget it was also pretty cool to do the Ferris Bueller thing and the Blues Brother thing (those movies were shot in Chicago). Basically we packed in as much as we could and it was a great time.

Then we took a train ride to Holland, MI where I got to see Hope College. Ashley has been doing research at Hope College all summer so it was fun to see the area and meet the friends she spends all her time with. In Holland we went to the beach on Lake Michigan, climbed some sand dunes, ate a bunch of ice cream, went to Dutch Village and walked around the town. Holland has a great small town feel and I really enjoyed spending time there and meeting the people.

My message doesn’t do justice to how much fun I had and how many cool things I saw but hopefully I will put up some pictures so everyone can get a better idea of my weekend. Anyway, it was great to see Ashley and I’m excited for her to come back to California in a few weeks. (That’s where eBUS live will be too, check the events calendar).

So now I’m back at it and hopefully we’ll be building some bunk beds soon and getting the bus situated for full time living. I’m sure you’ll hear more about that soon.

-Carson

While Carson was away in the Midwest I’ve been keeping busy here in the Northwest. I went with my best friends from high school (Drew, Matt, and Katie) out to Westport for some good-old, icy cold, Washington surfing. It was amazing, but very strenuous. The surf up here is nice once you get past the rip currents, constant whitewater, and unpredictable breaks. After our evening session, we went and set up camp in the woods. Although the waves were a bit tough to ride, what I love about WA beaches is that when you go to them, you feel like you are in nature and not some over priced resort town. Where else can you surf the Pacific during the day and sleep among the evergreens at night? Fun times. Anyway, it was fun, look for more updates to come.
-Luke

Apparently the stardom is striking a lot faster than we anticipated because we just were let into a sold out movie for free at the last minute by the owner of the theatre. Well that’s how it seemed to us, but it didn’t have anything to do with eBUS live. I really should stop hyping these things up like they are about eBUS live, it’s bad for business, but it’s so funny. Anyway, the true story is that Luke, my brother, Lieu and myself showed up to a 12:00 midnight showing of the Pirates movie at about 11:55 thinking we could just buy tickets and see the film no problem. As it turned out after we parked and walked up to the theatre we discovered that the show was sold out, and not only that the next evenings 7:00 showing was also sold out at that theatre. Just as we were getting ready to leave a man walked up and said, “Do you guys want to see the movie?” Naturally we said yes, and he followed up with, “I’m the owner of this place, follow me.” The movie was about the start so we quickly followed him past the ticket booth, past the ticket collector and directly into the theatre, no questions asked. He said, “There are a few seats in the front left.” So we walked down there and took a seat.

The movie was sub-par to say the least but I’m not a critic and this isn’t a film review site, the cool and adventurous part was the this owner guy just magically let us in the theatre for no reason, it was amazing. And who was this magical man, we’ll never know because he left the theatre right after letting us in. Oh well, it still made for a pretty cool story and not a bad night for the price.

-Carson

I am about to tell a tale of the worst week ever, it is not for the faint of heart so viewer discretion is advised. Alright, it’s not that bad, but if you do actually read this whole thing you’ll know why it was the worst week ever. I’m going to try and keep it as brief as possible for the blog then block it from my memory completely.

So in case you haven’t been following along with the eBUS live adventures this past week we took on a project to operate our own fireworks stand in Puyallup, WA to try and make a little extra cash while we work on eBUS live’s development. It sounded good on paper and we were slated to earn about $2000 if we did as well as the stand did last year.

We got our paper work fine and everything seemed to be in order, we inventoried everything and overall kept pretty tight books. So the 27^th rolled around and we had to ‘move’ to the stand location to accept shipment of our product and to stock the stand. The reason I say move is because we had to live by the stand 24 hours a day until we closed the stand 7 days later. Luke spent about $50 on misc. items to prepare our stand for business, plus we were already down $250 for renting the credit card machine and $100 for insurance.

Shipment arrived on time, inventory checked out and we immediately stocked the stand with the product. (Minor detail: inventory was incorrectly marked by the supplier but in the end we received all the products we were supposed to receive). At that point we were feeling good and we were prepared to open on the 28^th at noon which was limited by a local ordinance.

After a descent nights sleep (I don’t think Luke would say the same thing) via ear plugs and a sun shade we were ready to open. Noon came and passed, as did 1, 2, and 3 and we were still not open because we needed to be inspected by the fire chief. Our advisor at the fireworks company told us to just open and that she had completed all the paper work and everything would be fine. So we opened at 4 and closed at 11, retailed a couple hundred and made about $30 on the day (chipping away at our deficit). Not exactly minimum wage, but we were told the first few days are really slow.

Nine in the AM rolled around pretty quickly on the 29^th and Luke had to open the stand while I slept in a bit. It’s not like he needed my help though, it wasn’t exactly busy at 9 on a weekday 5 days before the 4^th. Blah blah blah…lots of sitting, little selling…blah blah blah. Then tragedy struck, but to make a really long story short a set of checks did not clear at the bank and we added about $600 to our deficit. We were not off to a good start.

At that point we already wanted this whole thing to be over with, the only thing keeping us sane was the fact that the Malone family visited often which gave us a nice change of pace from starring at the sea of passing cars all day. The 30^th went a lot like the 29^th, not much happened and we didn’t make much money either.

So the 1^st and the 2^nd was the weekend so we were naturally expecting things to pick up so that we could make a little bit of money. Things did pick up a little and my brother Graham made it down from Redmond to help out which was cool. Still significantly in the hole we retailed a few hundred both days but the weekend still wasn’t worth the effort.

Finally on the 3^rd we were getting a decent flow of customers. There was a lot less sitting/starring and a lot more selling going on. After closing at 11 on the 3^rd we counted our money and balanced the books. We were finally feeling like we just might break even and maybe even make a little money for our 7 days worth of effort. Needless to say we ended up just barely in the hole after the 3^rd and a big 4^th would push us into the green.

The 4^th was going tremendously well, we were having tons of sales and the flow of customers was pretty consistent. Of course we all know that going a few days without a major complication is too much to ask for, and then suddenly in the afternoon a man walked up with a badge around his neck and a gun on his hip and told us that we needed to shut down and that we were not legally allowed to be there operating our stand. To add insult to injury I was will a customer who was about the spend $100 and Luke was about to close a deal for one of the big boxes valued at $450. So the customers fled the scene and we quickly shut down. The officer left and we called our rep to see what was going on. She frantically got to work as we pulled out our lawn chairs and sat in the parking lot under the midday sun while turning potential customers away citing the fact that we had been shut down. About an hour passed by and our rep called up and told us to open back up, apparently someone at the fire department has mysteriously misplaced our paperwork but they found it and everything was good to go. We opened back up, sold a few things and closed shop for good at 9. We inventoried what we had left, packed it all up and got our paperwork in order for our meeting the following morning to turn in our stuff.

We slept at Luke’s house the night of the 4^th, but we didn’t get there until about 1 in the morning because of all the work we had to do. At least we got to sleep in beds away from the road and lights for one night. We quickly woke up on the 5^th and headed to our final meeting with the supplier.

After about an hour of inventory nonsense our rep showed up and decided that since everything wasn’t working out that we needed to meet with her next week to sort it out. Basically their computers were off. Also we found out that we were supposed to bring our fire extinguishers back with us which we left at the stand or we would get fined. Luckily Debbie was able to pick those up for us so I think we may have avoided that one.

Hopefully we can meet with our rep soon, get this thing sorted out, and be done with fireworks selling for the rest of our lives.

So just in case the story didn’t accurately depict the horrors of this past week let me do a quick recap for you. We worked a total of 88 hours and if you include sleeping next to the stand then we were occupied a total of 187 hours. We made a profit of around $200, which if you do the math is about $1.14 an hour per person based on the 88 work hours. And if the money thing isn’t enough to convince you that it was terrible let me recap the issues that arose. First of all we had to open 4 hours late because the fire chief never came to inspect us. Second, we were robbed about $800 retail. Third we were shut down by the man because again the fire chief lost our paper work. Also, we showered only 1 time during this period only because my brother Graham was helping us out and guarded the goods while we went to Luke’s house. Additionally, we had to re-inventory our items when we turned them in because the supplier had not entered one of our reorders. And the cherry on this whole thing besides the money is that I missed my big 4^th of July extravaganza with my friends up in Redmond. The 4^th is a big deal for me and I had this tradition going with some friends which I could not attend this year and all for this awful experience.

The only redeeming factor from this whole thing is the lessons we learned and few moments we got to spend with our visitors/fans such as the Malone’s, the Olson’s, Matt, Graham, and some others. Plus I guess you could say we got some publicity for eBUS live but who knows how much impact that will have on passersby and fireworks customers.

-Carson