Your Neighbors....?

[Steve]

When I brought the second bus home last week a crowd of neighbors came over to look at it. Most of the time the neighbors will come over and say "Whats up with the school bus?". After all of them take a tour inside they leave loving the idea of it and I think they wish that they had a bus to fiddle with too.

I was told by the neighbor across the street, who has no problems with my buses, that one of the neighbors down the street had complained to the president of our HOA about my bus. The complaint had never made it to me so I assume they don't want to start up anything. In the back of my head I keep track of what the other neighbors do with their RVs, boats, and other non-daily vehicles. I can find examples of my neighbors doing equally unattractive things with their toys.

[Steve]

Like I said, all my neighbors loved my bus once I showed them inside and what I was doing. If someone doesn't understand why there is a bus at your house invite them over and show them what you are doing.

[Russell]

I spread the word around my neighborhood that if they dont want me are whats in my yard that I would leave and donate my place to the N.A.A.C.P. for a dollar, under the conditon that it be used for a youth camp\school or drug rehab facilty. Everybody waves when they see me and are always wanting to know about the bus projects. Its good being me. Russell

[kamoo]

Id agree with Smitty. Figure out how long it will be there and let them know your plans. Where I am at there is not a ton of land and the houses are all fairly close together. I would be royally pissed off if someone parked some big vehicle, RV, bus, boat, truck etc in their driveway or yard next door to me for more than a couple of days. If I lived in a more rural area or had an acre or more of land it would not look so bad and wouldnt mind, it also comes with the territory in a setting like that too. My neighbor is really particular (which I do not mind) about her house, yard and driveway. When we were putting our pool in I told her long before we did it of our intentions and also let her that we would have to partially drive over her lawn and would fix any damage. It was a real mess, mud everywhere and it was tracked all in her driveway but never one complaint. At the end I pressure cleaned her driveway and did some other little misc things for future damage control, she was happy as could be. For me it would have been alot more convenient to work on my bus at the house but I chose to move in a residential neighborhood which isnt the right place to build a bus. I have also brought our road tractor home a few times but always park it up at Walmart or somewhere overnight. The last thing you need is pissed off neighbors, they are like a wife, they never forget anything!

[kamoo]

Good deal, as long as you tell them up front, what are they going to say? Not too many people have the nerve to say no, and they cant complain after the fact, they told you no problem before you parked it.

[swhite832]

The rules in my little town were in my favor on my bus. Insured and registered is all that mattered. I could care less what my neighbors thought. They blame me for all the misfortunes on the street. One even blamed me because the tax appraiser was making his rounds. They actually called my house to complain about it.
Speaking of tax appraiser, i personally think the bus is beneficial. In it's current condition it helps keep appraisals low and gives us all ammunition to protest appraised values. I think i will rent it out for that purpose until I am ready to start on it. Truth be known it is parked at a friends property because MY WIFE wont let me keep it here. You truly dont know how big a school bus is until it's in your driveway.

[Duckf00t]

I feel ya smitty, here in Jersey it's just as bad if not worse than Ohio. My trash men are good, think they'd take a dead body so long as you got it to the curb. My neighbors dont ever say much to me- until I brought the bus home. It was interseting getting it in where it is, I thought I'd back a big rig into some tight spots...

Only one complaint really the one guy next to me said he couldn't get his lawn mower out from his basement and around my basement railing- he just moved int about two weeks earlier. I pointed out the fact the landlord hired a landscaping company, to mow I haven't needed my mower in 5 years, all is well now.

I did get a visit from the cops- I showed them the reg/insurance asked if they had anything better to do- like oh I don't know. Catch the drug dealer down the street- that drives the red pickup, everyone and their brother knows he deals. Then again he does run a gutter and siding business supposedly, funny how I never see that truck move from the curb out in front of his place until at least 4:00pm. Didn't realize the gutter installation business was a night time gig.... They left without any further questions.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Chuck Webb

...I really like my bus alot! So, do my neighbors (so it seems)...

Do your neighbors like your bus better when you're off camping in it, or when it's home on location?

(...glad I don't have neighbors... )

[josetann]

Our neighbors are about a mile away. Someone did start having some land cleared and even has part of a driveway diagonal from us, but haven't seen them in over a year (Thanksgiving day in fact, I remember because I had to use my station wagon to pull out their stuck pickup truck).

There are some rules about what we can and cannot do on our property, it's part of the deed. No homeowner's association, so I shouldn't have to worry about new rules being made out of nowhere that seem to be oddly aimed right at me. As long as we have current tags and keep the RV parked near the house or in its own enclosure, then we're fine.

[timbuk]

i think the wat the economy is going most people wish they had a bus in their yard to make a getaway in! People that have junk in their yard and bitch about our buses? yea,right

[josetann]

Originally Posted by timbuk

i think the wat the economy is going most people wish they had a bus in their yard to make a getaway in! People that have junk in their yard and bitch about our buses? yea,right

Ours is part of our fallback plan. If all else fails, just park the RV behind my dad's house and live there for a while. If I can find a cheap piece of land with hookups, I'll buy it now while land is cheap (my dad just bought some land with a shell of a house on it for $3k, told him if anything else pops up to let me know!).

[Duckf00t]

Us too, if things get much worse we'll be off living in our bus. Seems like a common theme.
What we need is a whole new "hippie" movement.

[lapeer20m]

Originally Posted by Duckf00t

Us too, if things get much worse we'll be off living in our bus. Seems like a common theme.
What we need is a whole new "hippie" movement.

minus the hippies. lol



Michigan would be happy to only have 10.1% unemployment! The latest report says It's officially 15.2% here, but the real numbers are much higher than that. The official numbers don't count people who gave up looking for a job and people are are able to work but not counted because of various other reasons.

The number of houses in foreclosure is astonishing. I think that there are many many many more houses yet to hit the market. The times here in michigan are getting scary.

One very strange thing to me however is that the roads are still packed with cars, the restaurants are still full of patrons, and I still have to wait in line every time i go to the store. If it wasn't for all the unemployed people i personally know, and all the houses for sale, you would barely even know we're in a recession...or as i like to call it "the beginning of the next great depression"

[josetann]

Originally Posted by vanguy67

Chuck, same thing here in Tennessee. I've met more and more people who are living in their travel trailers... and they had no intention of becoming full-timers!
Desperate times call for desperate measures!

I live in Tennessee. Too bad I can't open up an RV park on our land (deed restrictions, at least there's no HOA to make more restrictions). Not even using our house now, will end up being in the RV this year more than being at home. Wife's already been extended an extra month, so we know we'll be in Alaska through mid-October. If the roads get too bad before then, we'll hope for another extension to cover the ferry costs back to the lower 48! I swear, it'll cost more to get the RV back than it did to buy the thing (pre-conversion price).

I'm just thankful that we weren't completely forced into this (i.e., the bank didn't kick us out of our house...though if we hadn't started this they probably would have).

Wait...what was this thread supposed to be about? Neighbors...ok, back on topic.

Our neighbors at the last assignment in Houston, TX had a big scary dog that was tied outside (against the rules) and could reach our RV. Not a big deal, except we have little kids. Did have one person want to look inside the RV as we were about to head out. I'm not saying he was overweight or anything...but our step wasn't broken before....

Neighbors here in Anchorage, AK are just whoever's working at the school that day. Apparently summer school was still in session until last week. One lady was pissed that we blocked her view of the mountains. Of course it was the only place we could park, and was where I was explicitly told to park. Didn't hear anything else from her, although someone did call the cops about our truck leaking gas (we had recently filled up so it did smell a bit like gas, and it had recently rained so there was a water puddle underneath...that's about it though). We'll have new neighbors in August (have to move to a park 20 miles away), shouldn't have too many neighbors there!