Help!! Jasons bus is being eaten by the Ocean!!

[lapeer20m]

I didn't pay the bill....one of my friends on teh trip with me paid the money with his credit card....so now i owe him $2,500 bucks!

I know us skoolie guys are all tightwads when it comes to money, but if anyone would like to contribute to the tow truck fund feel free to add a dollar or two to my paypal account @ mailto:lapeer20m@yahoo.com

Thanks

[vonslatt]

Hey Jason,

Man, I can't imagine what you must have been feeling watching that bus sink lower and lower into the sand !

I just Paypal-ed over my 1% - well worth it for the story alone! Love to see more pictures if you got 'em !


Cheers!

[lapeer20m]

Thank you for the donation. I really appreciate it!

[busone]

Sorry to hear about you misfortune Jason. Getting the moving truck stuck in the leach field was bad. I knew that we would eventually get it out but if I had my bus stuck I would freak out. I would have lost it with those bone heads. You should have not had to pay for their mistakes. Glad you and the bus are back home.

[lapeer20m]

I forgot to mention that if i had brought with me 1 tiny piece of equipment, i'm very confident that i would have gotten the bus out.......

Sitting at home on the barn floor is a hydraulic pump. Power up, gravity down. That little wonder could have saved the day if it were in the bus.

Inside the bus are 3 massive hadraulic cylinders...prob a 5" bore and 54" stroke. They're for the unfinished jacuzzi lifting project....If i would have had the hydraulic pump, i would have welded the cylinders to the bumpers of the bus and picked the vehicle 4 feet off the ground, filled in the holes where my tires had been, layed down some planks, lowered the cylinders and drove away. I did have my welder with me in the bus along with grinder, sawzall ect. I did have an air compressor capable of 250 psi, but i calculated out the amount of lift i'd get from the air in the cylinders and decided it wouldn't be enough, so i didn't bother.

[lapeer20m]

here's what happens when tow truck guy wants more money than you are willing to pay........







it's a poor quality photo, but i had other things to think about at that moment...

[wonderkaty]

could not for the life of me figure out how to hit up your paypal account (I think my computer circa 1999 has something to do with the problem )<-- not that I could have helped out that much anyway.... but here is a promise that I will definetly pickup the tab on a round of mt. dews if we ever meet in person

<-- really though, you should be telling your story on the bmw forum or some place where where people aren't wasting their lifes away as broke hippy wannabes (only speaking for myself here folks, only speaking for myself!!)

seriously, sell time shares to your hottub on e-bay and see what that does for you!

and what good is sam's club if they don't tow you? makes me glad that I never got in a pickle!

<-- and why didn't you recruit the spring breakers in exchange for beers or some sort of wet t-shirt contest? if people can move a beached whale.....


thanks for the story, glad there was a happy ending!

[the_experience03]

Sorry to hear your luck. I was afraid you might end up with some ill trained and ill equipped towers out there. Atleast you got the bus out...

So what's next? That salt water isn't going to do your steel bus any favors...Might it be worthwhile to just sell it? I know you have a lot into it and you're very handy...I'd just be afraid you're going to have problems.

Oh well.....expect my 1% when I have a chance to fix my Paypal account. I switched banks and it keeps hitting the wrong account (which is coincidently closed). I wouldn't want to send you a rubber transfer

It doesn't come free though.....at some point I'm sure our buses will cross paths and when they do....I want a can of 33 degree Mountain Dew. Code Red, Green, or Livewire are acceptable, but the black/purple **** tastes like cough syrup so none of that

Expect the money within the week.

[Roasting8]

Jason,

Sorry to hear about your adventure.

Seeming I didn't get a chance to get down to SP, and treat you to a case of Mountain Dew, I'll send you my 1% as soon as I get back to Houston.

[lapeer20m]

The ocean didn't get over top of the body at any point......except the front door Water was about halfway up the 2nd step.

Good news is that it rained for most of the first 24 hours on the drive home. That should have washed off a good deal of ocean salt. I plan to get a gallon of wd40 and using my paint sprayer coat the underside of the bus.

[the_experience03]

Ok...I sent my 1%. Let me know if you have any problems with it. Paypal and I seem to get into a fight everytime I use it.

Cool beans too....I just noticed I'm a full fledged "Member" now.

Cheers!

[Schmuck]

Hey, Jason,

I'm Phill's friend Mike, who helped him with the skoolie a little bit. We talked a couple times on his Yahoo IMer.

This totally sucks! I'm pretty broke, but I sent my last 5 bucks to your paypal... (okay, not literally, but darn close. That's why I don't have my skoolie yet.) It's okay, I get paid tomorow, and I might have my income taxes back today.

[the_experience03]

I like the Wayne Cambell quote

[wonderkaty]

well, paypal and I had a bit of a rumble (I still can't figure out how the darn things works.... who pays for it, how it knows everything about me... etc.), and I think I finally won <-- expect my .02%
and stay away from oceans and steep dangerous cravasses in the future.

[lapeer20m]

Thanks to everyone who has donated toward the tow truck fund so far! And i'll stay a lil further from the ocean in the future......

[the_experience03]

Now you're only stuck with about 96% of the bill.

Did the tow truck driver atleast give you a kiss? I like to be kissed when someone s giving it to me between the cheeks.

[Eric von Kleist]

At the moment the picture above was taken, I'd have been tempted to put the bus in reverse and jam that little throttle holding stick into place...let it back straight out into the ocean with the tow truck attached!

There's 1% on the way from upstate SC...and to think, I was toying with the idea of being down there with you...there but for the Grace of God go I...

[wmah]

I think them tow guys most likely jerked you around on their price a bit. They probably were told to get at least $1500 to $2000. And they may have also been told to try to get what ever extra they could get on top of that. I have heard that some owners of tow companies tell their drivers to charge the minimum amount plus what the driver feels their extra effort was worth.

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted by Eric von Kleist

At the moment the picture above was taken, I'd have been tempted to put the bus in reverse and jam that little throttle holding stick into place...let it back straight out into the ocean with the tow truck attached!

There's 1% on the way from upstate SC...and to think, I was toying with the idea of being down there with you...there but for the Grace of God go I...

That would've gotten him arrested if he was lucky, and pounded into a pulp by three enraged tow jockeys with prybars if he wasn't (messing with a tow jockey's equipment is not a safe thing to do). Even if he somehow escaped permanent maiming or jail time, it would take a long time to pay for an $80,000 GMC Top Kick wrecker.

Also, I doubt the truck would've budged with locked brakes.

And yes, not so good sam & the tow company screwed you. I would seriously think about disputing the CC charges, and possibly even a lawsuit.

This tow jockey would have quoted ~$2000-2500 for that (it's a heck of a lot easier to quote high & bill low than vice versa)...and Chuck (Da Boss) would probably have sent out me in the F-800 rollback (31,500lbs of winch anchor), and him in the International S1700 hoist (24,000lb hydraulic winch). Sounds like you had a crew of real idiots...unfortunate, but typical (witness the guy I watched winch an S-10 onto a rollback by the front axleshafts).

Assuming no equipment breakage (and a chance to check out the jacuzzi bus ), the bill would've been "negotiable".

I suggest taking it to a truck wash (failing that, rent the biggest pressure-washer you can) and blasting every inch of the underside thoroughly. When you're done, take it to the towing company & pressure-wash the crooks who pulled it out.

[phillbus914]

I thought the rest of the trip was great...

We started out camping on the beach, which turned out to be less of a spring break crowd but more a male Mexican crowd.. Wait make that horny male Mexican crowd throwing beads at every woman that passed by.... not cool, not cool at all.



After 2 nights of that we packed up and went to an RV park which was much closer to the spring break action.



Most of us went to Mexico on Tuesday; we caught a trolley to the market & had some dinner at some restaurant. The food was good but Jason didn’t eat all of his soup for some reason…




That’s Jason in the middle & me just to the right of him... notice we all brought our own water. The 2nd pic is Jason's soup, yumm looks good doesnt it?



Usually in the evening we all kinda hung out in my bus, some of us went to the bars. The RV Park we were in was not much of a "campground" as we weren’t allowed to have campfires & no tents. It was a nice place though, there was a nice pool, wi-fi Internet & $44/night split 7 ways wasn’t too bad since it was right across the street from all the spring break action.

I had a lot of fun on the trip, the weather was awesome & other than Jason’s bus nearly getting swept into the ocean it was great.