After a few days in Austin, we headed out towards Houston, TX. We have been here for about 3 days, and we have done a lot! The first day, we spent here, we ran into a little bit of trouble. We realized that one of our tires was leaking air, but after a quick stop at Wingfoot commercial tires (which by the way hooked us up) we were off and ready. We headed straight for Galveston, a beach town on the Gulf of Mexico. We were all pretty excited being that it would be our first time swimming in anything west of the Pacific, and to our surprise, the beaches here are much different than what we west coast kids are used to. As we drove along the strand, we saw that every strip of sand was covered in this brown seaweed and the water was very murky. We didn’t want this to discourage us from our first chance at the Gulf so we decided to stop on the side of the road and head out into the brown water. We threw the 89 Camry in Park and all opened our doors at the same time with much excitement. As soon as we got the first whiff of the hot humid air, we immediately all yelled OHHHHHHH! It was quite possibly the worst smelling place on this earth. We don’t want to know what was rotting in the seaweed that covered the beach, so After about 17 seconds of laughing and sitting with the doors open, we shut our doors and continued on our drive along the main drag in Galveston. We took a free ferry across the water to a peninsula that had some nicer beaches that didn’t stink as much and had a fun first experience in the Gulf of Mexico. Later that evening, we also had another first. Our first stay at an R.V. park. It was amazing to have running water, a free hot shower, and access to laundry, shuffle boards, air hockey, and a pool table.

The next day, we went to the Space Center at NASA and the Sam Houston Race Tracks. I don’t know if ya’ll know this, but working at NASA is my dream so I was loving everything about our trip over there. They let us see historic Mission Control where all the missions to space were monitored until 1996. We also got to see the Saturn V rocket which was unbelievable. It was longer than a football field with half of its length dedicated to an engine, well 5 huge engines, that propels the rocket for the first 2.5 min of flight and then is discarded into the Atlantic Ocean. That is an expensive hunk of metal that is just tossed into the Atlantic. Basically, the Space Center was awesome; they even let us touch a peice of moon rock, so now, eBUS live has officially been to the moon and back. After we spent many hours at the Space Center, we headed off to the Race Tracks. We had an awesome time betting on horses and being a part of the atmosphere of the races. Following the race, there was a Jason Aldean concert in the infield of the race track. Stephen and Lieu bought tickets to go inside, but Carson and I sat outside and enjoyed the concert from further away. I only knew a few of his songs, but it was still fun to be a part of another country concert in Texas.

Today we meet some of Carson’s mom’s friends, Annette and Larry, for lunch. I guess they had not seen Carson since he was about 5, so I am sure it was fun for them to reunite again. They were very nice people and gave us a lot of advice about how to avoid storms. They also paid for lunch, so if you’re reading this Annette and Larry, thanks again! After we meet up for lunch, we went to the Water Wall and the Beer Can House which were both near the restaurant. The Water Wall was nice, Lieu even climbed it which was quite a spectacle. The Beer Can House was interesting, but a little overrated. Stephen really enjoyed it though, so I guess it was all worth it. We are now back at the bus, doing a little work before we head off to Louisiana this evening. The pictures are updated of all our fun activities in Houston, so check them out!

-Ashley

Austin, Texas is a young and exciting city. Over the last few days we took in an excellent sample of what Austin has to offer. At times the weather did not cooperate, but that did not stop us from kayaking in the rain. We arrived late on our first day, but were ready to rock out to the 6th street bars. I was surprised by what we saw. The streets were closed down for 4 blocks, drunken college students everywhere, live music, and a spring break atmosphere. We posted up on a roof top bar and chatted it up with the locals. A fight almost broke out on the street below and I tried my best too encourage it from my safe haven, but it never happened. Don’t worry, both of these guys seemed like drunken morons and it would have been funny to watch them put each other out of their misery.

The Hamilton Pool Preserve was a gem hidden outside of town. The waterfall was super radical. Later that afternoon we were able to check out a hike north of there where I cut Lieu’s hair in the parking lot while Carson and Ashley checked out Sex Cave… no really, it was actually called Sex Cave.

Vanessa Walters, a family friend of the Martineau’s, was nice enough to show us a good time at Lambert’s Downtown Barbeque (http://www.lambertsaustin.com/). Larry, her boyfriend, was the owner and was nice enough to cover our drinks for the evening. Gary Clark, Jr. played live music and was amazing; he had a sort of Stevie Ray Vaughn sound to him. We met some fun people. Chris was a blast and very knowledgeable, but apparently he does not have the same taste in river floats. Sally, Vanessa’s friend, recommended an excellent trendy pizza joint that turned out to be good… and Lieu has a crush on her.

River floats are my favorite thing in life, but the “World Famous Horseshoe Loop” at the Guadeloupe River is a joke. Had we not coughed up a Ulysses S. Grant for the trip, I might have been able to enjoy it. It was humorous to float at a turtles pace and listen to rednecks talk about life, but the fact that 50 dollars got us a 2 hour float and a 4 minute shuttle ride back to our car was ridiculous.

We did some other stuff here and there and also checked out bats again. The bats were more of the same stuff, new place. I hope this is the last time I get tricked into watching bats again. One and a half million bats flying out from under a bridge sounds awesome, it isn’t… at all.

Tid bits that you probably do not care about, but I thought were funny:
- Lieu saw a bum run from the cops back and forth and into Wal-Mart at 2:00 AM and I am mad he did not wake me up
- The guy at the ice cream place told us a dirty Cinderella joke that I found to be funny, but warned him it might be dangerous to tell to all customers. Sure enough, it did not go to well with the next young couple, the girlfriend ran out of the store.

How y’all doin? I know we’re a little behind in the blog department, but I’m tellin y’all right now that everything is ok, we’ve just been havin’ a little too much fun lately and forgot about y’all. If y’all haven’t already noticed, I’ve picked me up a little southern accent. Well, we went to the Tower of the Americas to see what San Antonio looked like from way up high in the air. It’s a rather large city when you see it from up above because everything is pretty spread out there. We also went to see the five missions (Alamo included) they have in San Antonio. These Missions were small communities along the San Antonio River. The Franciscans came hundreds of years ago to Christianize the native people to make them Spanish citizens. This is your history lesson for the day. If ya’ll have any further questions, please forward them to Carson (He knows a lot more than me).

It’s only fitting that we see a country concert in Texas.  Since everything is bigger in Texas, we decided to go see the biggest country tour in the U.S.   However, because our bus broke down in Fort Stockton, we had to drive 420 miles in the Camry to make it to the concert.  It was a long drive, but well worth it.  Pat Green opened the show, Sugarland followed, and Kenny Chesney rocked.   We drove back 420 miles to Fort Stockton that night so we could fix our bus problem.

Yesterday we arrived in San Antonio TX, this time with the bus! We drove all through the night and arrived at 6AM. We didn’t wake up until 1ish but even still we had a great day seeing the sights of downtown San Antonio. We saw the Alamo which was pretty awesome. The buildings are rebuilt because the original Alamo was burnt down, but they did a pretty good job at letting everyone get the feel of what it was really like. After the Alamo, we went to The Mercado and walked around the Riverwalk eventually getting a bite to eat at the Republic of Texas. After spending all afternoon downtown, we were pretty tired so we headed back to the bus.

This morning we woke up to a huge T-storm. Stephen jumped out of bed and capitalized on the gushing water with a bar of soap in his hand while everyone decided to sleep in. We have a few errands to run today, but we still have some fun activities left in San Antonio.

Check out the video and pictures of Kenny and San Antonio in the media section!

-Ashley

Officially San Antonio was the next stop on the trip after El Paso, but as we departed we thought the trip would go a lot more smoothly if we broke it up into two sections. The plan was to stop at a small state park a few hundred miles into the 500+ mile leg. I use the word plan lightly because what eventually unfolded after we left Saturday morning was definitely not part of the plan.

Up until this point we had driven mostly at night to avoid the heat of the day as well as the traffic. (People don’t look to happy passing us when the speed limit is 80 MPH and we are cruising along at 55). So we started out at about noon and maybe after driving on the freeway for 1 minute we hear a loud pop and I immediately noticed one of the tires on the tow dolly exploded. Luckily there was a shoulder so we slowly pulled over. Using the jack from the car and a bunch of left over wood from building the bus we were able to get the dolly in the air and get the tires off. Lieu found a tire company near by and we had a brand new set of tow tires in no time. Needless to say it wasn’t the most fun changing tires when it was 100 degrees out on the side of a freeway, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

Back on the road about a hour or so later, we were feeling good that our first major problem was solved quickly and effectively. So we continued but it was still the middle of the day. Little did we know but there are actually some mountains down in western Texas and driving through those in the bus when its 100 is a daunting task. Just short of overheating I was able to pull off the freeway onto a frontage road in front of a old broken down motel and gas station (you know the type like in the horror movies). We sat there for another hour or so and hooked up one of our fans to blast air through the radiator. Eventually it cooled off enough so we filled the radiator back up and took off again, crossing our fingers this time.

We finally were rolling for a while and we were 120 miles into the drive when disaster struck again. This time the loud pop came from the engine compartment, followed by a screeching low pressure alarm. Something in our air brakes system had broken. Upon inspection we realized it was just a small fitting hear the compressor. We drove 9 miles west to the nearest town (Kent, TX) and all that was there was a gas station. They actually had parts like our broken fitting but none that matched exactly. From there the next biggest “town” was Plateau, TX which was 12 miles west of Kent and also turned out to be just a gas station as well, but they had a 24 hour mechanic service. The lady inside called the mechanic and he said he didn’t want to come fix it. Eventually I managed to get the mechanics number from the attendant lady and I called him myself to try and explain our situation. He said we could talk about it if we drove into the real town (Van Horn, TX) 20 more miles west. He had already gone home for the day but he still wanted to help us out so he told us how to get there. We pulled up and he came out drinking a Miller Light and asked if we wanted to join him. Manuel was his name and he was the local mechanic. We followed him back to an old panel truck and he began digging through it for a replacement to our broken fitting. Eventually he rigged something together that would work but was different from our broken piece. All he wanted as a payment was a sixer of Miller Light, so we bought him a 12 pack. We shared a moment with him as we chatted about our adventures then we took off to go fix the bus.

It took awhile and it was getting dark but we eventually finagled the fitting into place and got back on the road with air pressure and everything. What a day and we weren’t even half way there. But the sage has yet to unfold. Ashley took the wheel as I was a little tired from fixing the bus twice already. She was driving for only 20 minutes or so and again we hear the same pop and pressure alarm as before. We assumed our piece broke and we were going to have to replace it again. After further inspection a larger copper pipe connected to the compressor had exploded. This obviously is a harder fix because you can’t just buy another pipe like this, but regardless it was like 10 PM on Saturday so everything was going to be closed until Monday morning and we were stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, Texas. I called the insurance company to get road side assistance but they said no one could come get us until Sunday afternoon, but if we found someone ourselves we could get reimbursed for the tow. So instead of getting us a tow truck they sent a state trooper out to check on us. Luckily we had internet and Ashley was able to find a tow company that could come get us, as she was talking to them the statey showed up. He suggested the same tow company and he decided to put in a call himself to make sure they would come quickly. Hours pass as we clean the bus up a little bit and prepare to live from the car for a little while. The tow truck showed up, worked under the bus for 30 minutes and said “where are we going”. We responded “Fort Stockton” and he took off and we began to follow him in the car. We arrived in Fort Stockton, TX at about 4 AM and the tow truck driver hopped out of his vehicle disconnected the bus and said “it will be $450”. I went to hand him my card and he said, “cash only”. So we drove to a 24 hour ATM, Stephen got out some money. I went to pay the man but I knew I needed a receipt to get reimbursed, apparently he ran out of receipts because he jotted the info down on a small memo pad and handed it to me as a receipt. We passed out in the parking lot of the only truck service center in town.

Since it was Sunday nothing was going to be open and we had tickets to the Kenny Chesney concert in San Antonio 320 miles away. We decided to leave the bus behind and head for the concert. We drove to San Antonio, saw the concert and drove back immediately. (About 700 miles of driving in a 18 hour period.) Read about the concert on a separate blog and/or watch the video.

After passing out on the bus Sunday night (or 4 AM Monday morning) we were quickly awoken at 6 by a knocking on the door. Stephen woke me up and then everyone else continued to sleep. Blah blah blah taking with the mechanic and ultimately they had to make a new copper pipe for the bus and install it. The whole process took several hours though could have been done in 30 minutes. Over the course of the day I made friends with the mechanic and he told me about how he drove to Dallas on Saturday to see the Chesney concert, I thought it was ironic. Anyway a couple hundred dollars later we were back in action and they assured me it was just the pipes being old and not a problem with the compressor. To finish off the daylight and the heat we drove back west again to go to the state park that we initially planned for. It was a glorious escape from the heat as we went swimming in what appeared to be the only water source within 200 miles. Night finally came and we hit the road for the last 300 miles of the El Paso to San Antonio leg of the trip. What an saga, hopefully there is not many more of those on this trip.

-Carson

After one day off and seeing how much fun my crew was having without me, I had no choice but to join them in their adventures the next day. We decided to spend most of the day in Juarez, Mexico one of the largest cities in Mexico. We took a trolley across the border with only one thing on our minds, get drunk and go crazy. Actually we had a few other things on our to-do list such as find fake Rolex’s and fake Chanel sunglasses. Good thing Ashley spoke Spanish fluently or else we would’ve been in real trouble wheeling and dealing with the locals. They thought we were pretty funny because Carson and Stephen were walking around with their shirts off because it was hot, like always. One car full of people actually pulled over on the side of the street to take a picture of us. I felt like I was a celebrity at that point.

The next day we headed off to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We had to drive 150 miles to get there, the farthest we’ve been away from the bus so far. It wasn’t so bad though because everyone was super excited to see the caverns. Stephen was the most excited because he knew the temperature inside the caves was going to be close to Seattle’s, 56 degrees. He still hasn’t quite adjusted to the weather along the south. He’s in for a treat once it starts getting humid. The caves were out of this world with bizarre rock formations everywhere. I have never seen anything like it before. We also bought tickets to see the King’s Palace room in the caverns; little did we know what a treat we would have. The caverns were pretty cool, but the ranger Chucky was even cooler. He was actually a very awkward person that told some pretty cheesy stories of the caverns. Everything is in the video, so you must check it out!

-Lieu

Carson, Stephen and I went to White Sands Monument today and it was awesome.  Gimpy, Lieu, decided to stay in the Bus because of his kankle. Words cannot describe our adventures that we had, but the video in the video section attempts to show the fun activities at White Sands.

We arrived at White Sands thinking we would climb around on the dunes and and take a few pictures.  We decided to stop by the visitors center first.  Luckily we did because we hit the jackpot when we found sand sleds that we could rent for a mere $5.  The cashier directed us to the Alkali flat trail where all the big dunes are.  We jumped out of the car and immediately ran up the dunes to test out our sleds.  We got the hang of sliding and walked around to several different peaks to test out all the places we could.  We all ate it more than once, which got sand in every crevice of our bodies, but it was well worth the excitement and pleasure.

On our way back to the Bus, we stopped by this missile testing sight that was right off the highway.  We found out that sometimes the highway and White Sands are closed for missile testing, but luckily we made it to both places without any missiles landing on or around us.   The signs on the way to the missile museum were crazy; they had warning signs, an danger level of alpha (whatever that means)  and missile truck exits, it was intense.  Upon entering, they had us give our registration, insurance, and each of our I.D.’s as well as open every compartment of the car — doors, hood, trunk, and glove box.  They even went around the bottom of our car with a mirror to look for any weapons that we may be hiding.  They also told us that we could only take pictures facing towards the mountain.  After being thoroughly freaked out, we made it to the missile exhibit.  We saw some pretty intense missiles; we even saw a casing for ‘fat bot’ the nuclear bomb that dropped on Nagasaki.  After we had our fill of the missiles, we headed back to the Bus to meet up with gimpy, Lieu.

We’re now in El Paso, and we’re hoping that we will continue to have some awesome adventures.  We’ll be visiting Carlsbad Caverns on Friday so keep watching for more pictures and blogs.

-Ashley

Today was my first true day on the eBUSlive adventure and it was everything I dreamed of… and then some. We set out early for a morning hike at Sabino Canyon. Not sure if anyone knew this, but Arizona is a desert. The hike went pretty well to start out with, but then we decided to walk back along the river, and by “river,” I mean a sandy ditch where a river once was. Eventually we stumbled upon a ten foot waterfall (cliff), and Ashley, Carson, and I decided to walk around. Lieu stood upon this waterfall, glaring down below, thinking god knows what. As I glanced back I saw him jump gracefully 9 feet down. That last foot was the problem and now he has a gnarly sprained ankle. 

Following the Sabino hike, we packed up and headed out west… well actually east to the great town of Tombstone. Some might call Tombstone corny, and way too touristy, but they apparently did not get the same rush as I did when I scooped up the dirt that Doc Holiday once stood on. The O.K. Coral gunfight reenactment was entertaining, and I am hoping they’ll be accepting applications in the near future. Further down the road we had some food and whiskey at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. At this point we wondered the tourist shops of Tombstone and I was able to stumble upon a cowboy hat that was much needed as we approach Texas.

As the day came to an end, Carson, Ashley, Gimpy, and I loaded up the bus and set out for Las Cruces. Driving across the county in the bus is a blast, and with the speakers we hooked up today there is no need to ever get off. Which is good news for Lieu, because who knows how long it will be before he can walk normally?

-Stephen

We finally arrived in Tucson at about 4 in the morning only to wake up 6 hours later to 100 degrees. We decided to attend Sunday morning mass at the San Xavier Mission. The place the pretty cool seeing as how it was built there over 200 years ago. After sitting in there with no A/C for a little over an hour we were beginning to melt and we needed to cool off fast. We quickly put on our suits and made the drive to the nearest lake to Tucson. Unfortunately at this time of year the nearest lake that is not dry is called Patagonia Lake and it is 90 miles from Tucson. It was all worth it once we pumped up our kayaks and got out in the water.

This morning we woke up and headed over to Saguaro National Park to see some cacti and desert wildlife and whatnot. It was alright, but I didn’t get to see a Gila Monster which I was really hoping for. After that we cruised by Old Tucson Studios but we didn’t have time to tour because we had to go pick up Stephen at the airport. Stephen arrived in style, sporting a fanny pack, full hat and a bag in each hand. From the airport we went to purchase a solar panel from a guy who probably steals them at the price he is selling them for, but nevertheless we got a deal. Then we headed back to the bus to get a little work done. We now have a solar panel and a stereo system, things are looking good.

- Carson

Hi everyone we finally got kicked out of Josh’s and A.J.’s place after almost staying a week there. Actually we had to leave to our next destination, Tucson to pick up our fourth member, Stephen Martineau. They were great hosts by the way. The last couple of days weren’t as pretty as the first few in Phoenix. By pretty I mean about our adventures, not about the weather. We had some fixin up to do on the bus, but it was too hot during the day to work so we either had to work in the morning or at night. During one of the days we went to Mystery Castle and took a scenic drive up South Mountain Park and got a bird’s eye view of Phoenix. Another day Carson and Ashley went to the Phoenician Hotel to swim while I stayed back and attempted to barbeque steak for the first time unsuccessfully. I left the grill for a few minutes and when I came back, my steak was very well done, but I still enjoyed it. There’s a video and pictures of Carson and Ashley at the Phoenician if you’re interested. I guess it’s a very fancy hotel, oasis-like is how they described it to me. One night we watched game one of the NBA Finals which was a complete waste of time. LeBron James didn’t show up to play at all and I hate the Spurs more than any other team in the league. Anyways, for being our first real stop on our trip, I’d say it went really well. Hopefully it’ll just keep on getting better as we move along.