(((Week in review, rather long read)))
After spending a week in St. Lucia in the Eastern Caribbean and flying from airport to airport for an entire day Graham finally ended up at LAX last Monday. He was tired but that didn’t slow down his productivity. I think he said it best when he mentioned he “sat around the beach in the sun all last week, he didn’t need to do more of that here while there was stuff to be done.” He was anxious to get going but still a little drained from the traveling fiasco (traveling is getting pretty ridiculous with the no gels or liquids or pretty much anything you need but I understand– but for Graham it’s even worse because he has a metal rod in his leg from a lacrosse injury and it sometimes sets off the metal detectors.) So anyway after he arrived at LAX in the early evening he was ready for a meal of food because he hadn’t really eaten since the night before. There seemed to be only one logical stop to make for his first meal back in California, In-N-Out of course. I can’t say I’m a huge fan because I don’t eat burgers, but from what I hear the place makes really good ones and is native only to the southwest region of the country. After eating we hung out at Lacey’s house for a little, enjoyed some television and conversation then headed back to Malibu for the evening.

The next day (Tuesday) Graham got started early. He single handedly cleaned up the entire bus. He says it took him a few hours but I bet it took him even more than that because Luke and I haven’t cleaned it in ages. He picked up all the random pieces of trash lying around; he organized the whole bus too from all our cloths to our gear to our food and so on. Cleaning the whole bus was a huge step but it was only the beginning of Graham’s productive week.

Wednesday there wasn’t much left for Graham to do by himself. He started out by making a few plans for some projects to do on the bus that would help to organize and make more storage as well as create a more hospitable environment. After drafting a few things up he was unable to continue without help and tools. So he continued to be productive and used Luke’s computer to do some research for bus parts and so forth. He found some information on creating a solar power system and some info on generators so that we could one day have electricity on the bus. Luke and I met up with Graham at a coffee shop in Santa Monica where he had been doing his research. From there we went to scavenge trough the stuff at Goodwill to try and find some of the items we needed for the bus. We really were looking for some sort of cabinet to store a bunch of our crap in but we ended up only finding a table that we figured we could convert into our booth table top. The sun quickly set and limited our ability to get things done on the bus so I decided to get some pizza on 3^rd street and hang out for a bit while we made plans for the evening. As it turned out there were no plans to be made so eventually Graham and I went back to Malibu to play some hoops at Pepperdine while Luke went out with his friends Matt and Matt. I hadn’t shot hoops in a long while so it was nice to be out playing again.

The real production began on Thursday because Graham was finally able to get some fulltime help. We began the morning making dozens of measurements and trying to plan out the projects that we could get done in the next couple days. We ultimately decided on three projects: the table, the closet, and the couches. The table was the biggest project, it entitled drilling holes through the bus to bolt the seats into place, modifying the table with all sorts of extra wood and metal, creating a hinging structure with a leg so the table could fold up, and all the little things in between. The closet was a little simpler because all we had to do was to take the cloths off and add some diagonal strapping to the back of the structure to create lateral stability. The other project was the couches and all we really had to do was to elevate them with some left over 2×6 so that there could be some storage underneath them. With all the plans set it was time to get the necessary materials. We had most the wood we needed from the leftovers of the bed construction. We just needed to get a hinge for the leg (we already had two that would work on the wall side), one long 2×6 cut into two 55” pieces, some drill bits, some screws, and some strapping. First we quickly stopped by our favorite restaurant in Malibu, KFC, and ate some chicken while we watched a crazy fiasco on the shoulder of PCH in front of KFC. To make a long story short, some lady couldn’t get into “a” car that we all assumed was hers so people would come up and try and help. This went on for hours and all sorts of people came up with advice, one man showed up with a ‘slim jim’ in his back pocket, another had a few screw drivers, another just had his own set of keys, and another was a local sheriff. After about a dozen people over the course of an hour had a crack at it the cop and one Samaritan finally got it done. Anyway, back to the story, we left KFC to head to Pete and Tesha’s to get our drill battery charging. From there we went to a supply store that rhymes with Chrome Repo to get the stuff we needed. We spent over an hour in there and all we managed to get was the one board, a hinge, some screws, and some drill bits. We went back to Pete and Tesha’s and started working. We got many of the pieces cut that we needed but then we were interrupted by a neighboring family that wanted quiet (a.k.a. no power saws) while they ate dinner. With nothing to do we began playing Sega Dreamcast which Pete had recently acquired. We got hooked into it and played it all night. Friday needed to be a big day of construction.

Friday we spent more time cutting and charging at Pete and Tesha’s as well as at Peter and Tim (and 6 other guys’) house in Malibu. We were finally ready to build. We screwed on the 2×6 frame onto the bottoms of the couches but our drilled died and we ran out of sunlight for the day. We then headed back to Pete and Tesha’s to get ready for the evening, we were going out to see Los Pingos in Santa Monica. We left the drill battery charging and we left for San Mon. After a 10 dollar cover which I was pretty bitter about we got in and watched them play. They were really good though I could only understand a few words they sang (they’re from Argentina and sing in Spanish). The cover was alright this time though because I felt like I was paying for a concert.

The big build day had to be Saturday because Graham was leaving in the evening and we had yet to get all the projects done. We started by gluing some pieces onto the table as part of its grand modification process. As the glue dried we went on to fix the closet. We had to make a quick trip to the local hardware store to get the glue and strapping for the closet. We fixed the closet in no time but decided we needed to let the glue dry a little longer on the table before we returned to that project. Seeing as how the week had been mostly working and productivity we decided to go to the beach and get in the water for a little fun time. Surfrider was the closest spot and it’s a pretty fun area to walk around and see the surfers and whatnot. It was a little windy out so we didn’t go in the water but we did watch people surf. Also we went into the Adamson House which is pretty cool and if you ever come to Malibu you should check it out. After our nice tourist break we returned to the bus to work on the booth/table. Drilling through the bus became a big fiasco as we didn’t have a large enough drill bit, but we managed to wrestle everything in place. The seats were set the table just had a lot more work to go. We had to modify one piece of wood by using an old steak knife as a saw and a screw driver as a chisel. After a few hours of primitive craftsmanship we put the hinges in the recessed part of the wood and glued it all together. We ended the carpentry day with the table almost complete, the leg was on and hinged, and the table was fully modified but not mounted because the glue had to dry. Graham frantically got ready by packing all his stuff up and we headed for the airport. Traffic wasn’t too bad on that Saturday so we managed to get there on time. Graham took off back to Washington and the team was back down to just two, but we are excitedly awaiting the arrival of another member and possibly the return of Graham.

-Carson

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 3:46 pm and is filed under eBUS live Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.