Hello all,
Haven’t been on these forums for some time, been insanely busy with work and touring and haven’t had the chance to check on here let alone post. So I posted at the beginning of the year about how I acquired a 1987 International Blue Bird shorty and how we traveled to Austin on its maiden voyage as our tour bus.
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Well it ran strong to a good many cons in the last couple months. I had a storage area, bed, couches and we comfortably had 8 to 12 people in this little bus for many road trips throughout a major part of the country. As you can probably make out I’m talking about the bus in its past tense, so allow me to tell you the story of its untimely death at the age of 23…
We were traveling strong from convention to convention; we had a convention in Nashville TN, Thursday April 29th we started up I75 N to Chattanooga arrived in Chattanooga and hoped on to I24 W were we started the climb of Monteagle at a whopping 45mpg. I had to kick in the heat as the engines heat continued to rise. We arrived at the top of the 4 to 6% grade and pulled off into a gas station to allow the bus to cool down as it got very close to overheating. After a 30 min cool down we started on our way to Nashville TN, this was a mostly uneventful trip as we arrived at our Wyndham Hotel next to Opryland on Thursday evening at about 2am.
The next day we start our activities and it’s a beautify Friday were we have a successful day of sales and panels at the convention center. We then travel to the hotel in the bus and park her for the night, and start drinking and having a good time. Sometime during the night the rain starts, at this point we are unaware how bad it’s going to be.
We wake up with very little sleep Saturday morning and loaded up our bus and head to the convention center for another day of fun and work. At this point it’s raining really hard and sometime in the afternoon around 2pm or so we are starting to hear how that the rain is starting to cause some flooding. We leave the convention center and head back to our hotel where we prepare for another night of fun around the hotel as well decided not to leave for downtown Nashville as the rain was coming down quite hard and though it would be better if we stayed in. We watched a few movies and flipped back and forth to the news to hear about the road closures throughout Nashville because of the flooding the rain caused.
Waking up on Sunday, sunny it was not. It was raining pretty hard and according to the news broadcasts many of the interstates and roads in Nashville were flooded and impassable. We decided to just head to the convention center to gather our stuff and prepare to get out of Nashville if at all possible. When driving to the center we ran into problems with roads being completely washed out and couldn’t drive to the convention. At which point we headed back to our hotel to figure out our next plans. We park the bus and take this picture.
We anxiously wait in our hotel rooms, watching the news to figure out what we shall do. After a little time and no word from the hotel as to what to do, we decided since it’s getting darker outside we decided it wasn’t safe to travel on the roads and just thought we’d wait it out. After some time the water was raising really fast and the way out of the hotel was now a lake. At this point the Wyndham became its own island and dry land was slowly disappearing. The staff at the Wyndham had a small van and were shuttling older guests out of the flooded building. At which the water got to high for the van to be able to safely pass through the water to the flooded buildings. At this point we offered our services of the bus to shuttle people from flooded buildings to higher ground. We tore off gutters from the hotel and with the use of duct tape we macgyvered a snorkel for the exhaust of the bus. My bus didn’t have a name until now, we named it Yellow Titanic and here is a picture that I like to call “The Last Ride of the Yellow Titanic”
Well after a couple passes the water turned to be too much for the girl and she stopped working, guess I should have put a snorkel on the intake as well. Well we wadded through waist deep water, and had to leave her there until the next day.
After the morning came you couldn’t even make out the parking lot, and can only see a lake littered with the roofs of cars and trucks.
We were then rescued by a fleet of boats that shuttled the 500+ of us to shore. On the way out I could make out the final resting spot of the Yellow Titanic
That's where we left the shrinking island of Wyndham, and headed to our lovely evacuation area were we got shuttled to our shelter by what you ask, well of course a school bus.
So there is the story of my first sckoolie's last days. She did well as a tour bus and I'll be on the look out for another as soon as we can raise the money.
-Mike
If it were me and I was wanting a bigger bus anyway and given the money you have gotten, I would find another to redo. I lived thru the floods of '93 here with the missisppi river and to get that smell out you would have to gut it all the way out. so wether you do a new conversion or clean out the old one you are facing a complete gutting out of the interior. plus the electricals, gauges, switches will be full of muck as well. the insulation will be soaked with it behind the walls and ceiling. start fresh and learn from your past experiences when you are laying the new one out.
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