Dusting off a closed book : Chapter 4 "the magic bus incident"

by My Walkabout

Hands down, my favourite car I’ve owned so far would be my granny smith apple green VW 1960’s bus. From the moment I paid the nice gypsy woman $500.00 for it (over a nice two paycheck payment plan so I would still have enough gas to drive), and the moment I took the wheel and drove it home, I was in love.

It represented everything I thought I was, or hoped to be, at that time in my life.

It was a beast that had no A/C, or heat for wintertime, and a manual transmission that would routinely give me a little trouble. I was also a little short for it, and I had to squinch up the front seat in order to reach the gas pedal. It only played music tapes, and the only tape I had was the Best of Jim Croce. I became a big fan.

But it was all worth it when a group of us would gather to head to the mountains, either for a overnight camping party, or a chill day hike along the sweet Wasatch mountains. I had many crazy, wonderful times in the magic bus, but their is one day in particular that I remember with much fondness….

It was July 24th, which in my fair part of the world is a State holiday. We packed the bus with a cooler of drinks, and the usual food to cook over a fire. I started heading up the winding road in Big Cottonwood canyon.

a girl I can’t remember & my room mate Colby
      ____________
We found a good place to park and explore around. We were hoping to find a spot more secluded  so we wouldn’t be bothered by the holiday crowd. So we grabbed our stuff and headed up the mountain. We were glad to be off the beaten path.
When we got to a little hill about 15 minutes later, I looked back over my shoulder to see how high we were. The first thing I realized was that from our elevation, I could see the entire road, and magic bus was nowhere to be seen.
“Someone stole my bus!”. I couldn’t believe it. We all freaked out, tearing down the mountainside. As we arrived at the road, I looked up and down the road, and that was when I saw this…
AAAGGGHHHH!!!!
Magic bus had rolled, backwards down a winding canyon road! It was now lodged (resting peacefully it seemed ) on the mountainside. I stared at it dumbfounded. How the hell did this happen?
As we started walking down towards the bus, I could see that traffic coming up the canyon had been halted, and that police and fire crews were arriving on the scene.
On the scene?
Oh great, now what do we do with all our beer?
When I saw the policeman and the fireman approaching the bus, I got up from my stunned state and joined them. It was nice to have ‘the girl whose name I can’t remember’ by my side. I was always nervous around the law.
What we discovered was that their was a huge rock that the bus was leaning on. If that rock was moved, magic bus would be toast. Also, my gas had leaked out. But that was secondary in my mind, I  just didn’t want magic bus to fall.
Luckily, we all decided that a tow truck would be called to pull my bus off the mountain, which worked just fine for me. We didn’t have very much gas left, but luckily we were downhill the whole way, and we just coasted in neutral to the canyon bottom and filled up at a local gas station.
Had to finish the party we missed out on up the mountains another time.
me, psycho Paul, and Colbster
I know, me with hair. Do you wonder how old this story is?

4 Comments

  2. @Dori – Thank you! it's been a fun,interesting series so far.

    As far as the one tape situation, I was selling all my tapes to a discount record store so I could get CD's. But the only one I couldn't sell was Croce. I think my mixed tapes just disappeared…

    @EW – thanks again! I think we started laughing again as soon as we knew the bus would still run, and we successfully got it upright and runniing!

    Reply

  4. I am so loving this series you are doing! I am glad the bus survived šŸ™‚

    My real question, tho, is: how did you only have ONE tape!?!?! No mixes?!?!? I still have a rather healthy sized box of mix tapes from my younger years hidden away!

    Reply

Wench, bring my ale, what say you?

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