As you may or may not have noticed we haven’t been updating the website much recently, this is because ‘we’ is a very fluid term these days. What I mean by that is that there has been a major shake up at eBUS live. In the past month we have had two people join the team, one of the original people quit, and one of the two that just joined also quit. To summarize review the team history below.

June - (eBUS live created) – Carson, Luke D., Josh

- Josh quits

October - Luke C. joins

November - Lieu joins

- Luke D. quits

- Luke C. quits

Remaining team – Carson, Lieu

Needless to say the personnel issues have caused production problems. Luke D. was pivotal in taking pictures and updating the website. Luke C. joining helped to lift spirits and he also contributed to the site by writing stories and helping out when possible. With these guys both quitting not only did we loose a lot of production ability but we also lost our high spirits, or should I say my high spirits. Just when it was looking like we were getting enough people together to really get the ball rolling they both quit. I’m not going to get into why they quit because honestly I’m not exactly sure but everyone has their reasons and whatnot. You should probably just ask them for yourselves. So I guess me and buddy Nguyen are the only ones crazy enough to keep going.

So this is the deal from here on out: we’re taking a break on the website and the updates to restructure, refocus, and reinvigorate. We are going to focus our efforts on completing the bus (painting, and building the interior to fully operational), building ebuslive.com 2.0 (all new website, new design, daily updates, new features, and so forth), and organizing our US tour (you get the idea).

For those of you that have been loyal fans I’m sorry but there will be a delay in updates and overall good times while we regroup and get this thing organized again. We will still post stuff from time to time but it will not be the focus of our efforts for a while. For those of you that are just fans on facebook or myspace and this is the first time you are reading a story let me first say thanks just for reading this and secondly we appreciate you. If you are not yet fans on facebook or myspace it would be great for you and us if you would become one because we are planning on offering special discounts and information to those who are in the elite group of original supporters.

- Carson

After a grueling week of preparations and a frantic morning of last minute details such as the curtains and the decals we finally headed out for the event at Pepperdine. Our purpose at Midnight Madness was to have our bus in a prime location which was provided to us by Keiy Murofushi the director of the event and to help the student sports booster club, Riptide, with a basketball contest. Special thanks to Kristi Koon, Kevin Borzenski, and Raine Mitchell for helping eBUS live get involved. So anyway, we drove through the Pepperdine gates no problem and eventually found our spot in “The Village” in the gym parking lot. We actually were in the center of all the festivities, to the left of us was Red Bull with a motorcycle show, to the right was the rest of the activities and accommodations like food from Carl’s Jr. and T-Shirts from Riptide and so on. Directly in front of us was the basketball court where we held the contests. We had a booth set up right outside the bus where we had sign-ups for the bump contest. Bump is apparently known by many names so maybe you know it is as: lighting, or knockout, or two people in the front of the line shoot the ball and if the person behind you makes if before you then you are out. The winner of that contest got a Riptide care package full of all sorts of Pepperdine goodies, but everyone that participated received a raffle ticket to win an iPod. For those who did not want to play bump we also allowed people two free throws for a chance to win a ticket in the raffle. We handed out a lot of tickets, had some fun shooting hoops and running the contests and eventually we gave away an iPod to one lucky Riptide member. After the village activities ended we cleaned up our area and headed inside for the gym performances.

All in all I would say it was a good night. We got our name out there and talked to dozens and dozens of people about the eBUS live project and what we are trying to accomplish. It was a rocky start because of the whole week of preparations but we got it done and we accomplished what we had to in order for the event to be a success. Granted it rained a little bit, but luckily one of our many preparations was to get ‘uniforms’ so to speak for the event. We wanted T-shirts but we shopped around forever and couldn’t find them so we settled on hoodies which ended up being perfect for the rainy event. So I guess everything just works out in the end. We’re probably going to take it easy this weekend and relax after such a busy week, but we’ll be back in action next week getting more stuff done and keeping the ball rolling. Thanks for reading, be sure to check back soon and tell all your friends.

- Carson

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

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

Hello Graham, Washington! Well, it took us three days to get to the half way point and about eight hours to do the rest. We spent most of the morning insulating the fuel lines and letting the outside temperature cool down. After we finished, we headed for Redding and again started having the same problems we were having before. We just couldn’t get any power going up hill and the engine kept cutting out.

In Redding, we actually got a mechanic to look at her. He looked all around but in the end, was no help at all. So Carson and I decided the next step was to replace the fuel pump. We went to the local auto parts store and as we asked he guy for a pump and explained to him the problems we were having. After hearing what we had, he told us to go back to our bus and check the distributor cap. So, reluctantly, we did. But once Carson got it off, he immediately saw the problem. There was corrosion, broken pieces and melted plastic. Finally, we found something that was wrong!

After we replaced the part, we headed for the mountains and had dinner at Lake Shasta, drinking what else, Shasta Cola . Then with the problem fixed, and upgrading to supreme gasoline, Carson settled in for the long drive through Oregon and Washington. Like a champion, he started driving around 8 pm and didn’t stop except to refuel until we got to my house in Graham around 7 am.
It was a long and tiresome trip, now it time to make some things happen.

-luke

Hey, Luke here and it’s day two of our journey north. Yesterday, we took a few back roads through the middle of nowhere to get to the five (I-5 for those not from California). You see, Alice (our bus) doesn’t really do hills and the grapevine coming out of LA is pretty brutal. We ended up staying the night at a truck stop somewhere in mid Cali and found out just how hot the temperature in our bus gets when it’s 100 degrees out.

We started having some engine problems around Woodland and ended up pulling off to talk to a mechanic. We also ran into fellow Pepperdine grad Emily Miller at the local Wal-Mart! After many trips to several different auto parts stores we decided to replace the fuel filters. Then, after a few miles down the road we realized that the filters were not the problem. So around 11 pm we stopped at the most glorious Wal-Mart we have ever seen to stay the night.

Our plan is to insulate the fuel lines in the morning and get back on the road. Hopefully it works!

-luke

We finally got the bus back today. It only had to sit at the shop for about a week and half to get about 8 hours of work done, but oh well we have it now. It cost a ridiculous amount of money to fix just the power steering and the carb, but it should be all good and ready for adventures. We cleaned it out today and preped it to lay the carpet tomorrow morning. I’m sure we have a lot of work ahead of us, but the bus will be amazing before you know it. We are headed up to washington as soon as possible, but we have to get the carpet in before we can put our stuff in. That’s it for now, but I’m sure you will hear all about the conversion proccess. There will be lots of pics of the whole ordeal coming too, check the media section for those. Later.

-Carson

RENO HERE WE COME! Last Friday, Carson, Josh, and I set out on our adventure to go pick up our bus. We left my mom’s house in Port Hueneme, CA around 10:30pm and headed north for the following nine hours. The iPod was pumping and the caffeine was flowing and I think I even lost my voice due to excessive sing-along sessions. Carson and Josh did all driving while I sat in the back and worked on the eBUS live logo. We made it just past Sacramento when we decided to take a power nap just off the I-80 junction (well, truth be told, I was already napping…good work guys).

Around 6am, as the sun came up, we finished our drive to the biggest little city in the world. And what a city it was. First stop, IHOP, because you cannot start a morning without you chocolate chip pancakes…eh Carson? Apart from being the coldest IHOP ever, we found out then next best thing about Reno…the people. Our waitress was probably the nicest and most chipper woman at 9 am in the world.

After IHOP, we did what everyone does in the biggest little city…gamble at 10am! Carson and Josh didn’t gamble too much but I won $80 right way on the wheel of fortune slot! Then we headed to the craps table and with the help of the nice morning dealers, we learned most of the rules and ended up winning almost $200!!!

For the next part of my story I’d like to give a shout out to the Reno Public Library. We don’t if we could have done it without you.

So as you’re probably guessing, after making some money, we hit up the local library and watched Castaway on my laptop while sucking down some “buck’s.” You see, the reason we had to kill so much time is because we were supposed to meet Joe, the previous owner of the bus, earlier in the day and as it turned out, he couldn’t meet us until around 5.

After the movie, and a good nap, it was time to go check out the bus. After a quick stop at Sonic, with the second nicest waitress in the world, we headed out to the desert to make the deal. After checking the area for any pre dug holes, we spotted our bus. It was located in a sandy lot just between a sailboat and a pink mobile home. Who says there’s nothing fun out in the desert?

So moving on, it fired right up; we paid Joe and headed on our long trek back to Southern California. We had to hustle because Josh and I were scheduled to proctor teacher evaluation tests in LA at 6:15am. The trip started off great, Josh and Carson were in the bus and I followed in Carson’s Camry. Then we hit the mountains and started to think our deal wasn’t so great. After several pull offs due to top speeds of 5 mph, we realized we weren’t going to all make it back in time.

After a few phone calls, we realized it was the carburetor and decided to truck on and that it would be better if one of us made it to work then none at all. So I made the pass, gave a few honks, and put that Camry to work. I had 6 hours till work and about 380 miles to drive…it was going to be another long night.

After averaging about 90 mph and only making one stop for gas, I made it with 15 minutes to spare. So I hit up the local Micky D’s, took a shower in the sink and changed clothes, excited as ever to sit in a silent room for two five hour sessions of riveting test taking.

As for Josh and Carson, they made it home around noon, keeping it nice and slow as to not upset anything else in the engine. It was just the first of many adventures to come for the eBUS live.

-Luke