Autopendium :: stuff about old cars

Tags: bus shasta volkswagen vw

And as soon as we were there, it was time to leave. :(

I awoke early (again) on Sunday morning and instantly my mind focused on road conditions and whether or not we could make it out of town by 9am. I wanted to get back and at least have a little bit of day to unpack and rest up before work the next day (note to self: take Monday off next year).

6:30am...I wander out to check on the bus and then go to the Stage Door Cafe again for a coffee and to call home and have someone check road conditions for me. Good news: Interstate 5 is open, but there are chain restrictions for about 20 miles south of Shasta. We can do that! Cool, no worries.

So I polished off my coffee and decided to get a little upper body workout and dig out the bus...and part of the parking lot so I could actually get out. Geez! Easily ten inches of snow on the bus and easily fifteen feet of parking lot to dig out! Oh well, here goes!

And so I dug...and dug...and dug! Luckily a guy in a 4X4 parked kind of behind me showed up and moved his truck, so my exit would be much easier! As I was almost done, Cory, Tim, Damon, and Sean all rolled into town (Cory had broken an axle early on the first day of the trip and he apparently found a replacement gearbox and completely swapped it out to get to Shasta at all!). I came up, shared some cheer with them, found them decent parking spots, and then went to move my bus. Aaaaand, managed to get just slightly stuck. Bless these guys, they ran over and helped push me out! I chugged up to the house, parked, and set to rearranging stuff and packing up.

Slowly others awoke and assessed the situation. I shared the road conditions with everyone because some people were headed north and the chain restrictions lasted much longer in that direction. When I went out to chain up the bus for the drive, I saw that we'd actually broken a link at some point. Crap, we don't have a repair link...I couldn't find one before we left on the trip! I was frustrated again at that point and tried to figure out what to do. Well, Team Idaho once again came to the rescue with a repair link I was just able to make fit. **Sadly, after getting home and getting the chains back in their bag, did I realise there was a repair link in the bag!**

Well, our 9am departure quickly turned into 11am, but we got on the road with two of the DeafVolks buses. As soon as we hit the Interstate, people were already on the side of the road unchaining their vehicles! What tha?! Okay, quick, let's unchain and keep going. We did...messy, as always, and I just tossed them up on the roof and bungeed them down.

Once we dropped below the snow line, the drive was fairly uneventful save for the occasional gas stop and food break. Amazingly, we made it home in very good time! About 380 miles in 7 hours. Rolled into Saratoga, CA right at about 6pm. It was after dark, but at least I had some time to unpack and unwind before work on Monday.

The Shasta Snow Trip taught me much about myself and my bus. For years, I was nervous to drive too far from home for fear of breaking down and getting stuck. Now, I have the itch to get out there and blaze new trails! This trip found any weakness in my bus or in myself and exploited it! It took that weakness and went "Look, here's this...how you gonna handle it, eh?" But you know what? We handled it. We made it there and we made it back.

And I would so do it all over again!

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