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BUSES ARE FOR DRIVING
We have been driving. 5000 miles in about 20 days. It really feels good knowing we escaped house arrest and isolated in our coach having multiple changes of scenery.
My first leg was a solo trip to the Grand Canyon and it accounted for 3700 miles. Di hates and is terrified of heights and she just could not be convinced to go. So we agreed if it was going to happen I was going alone. I have to admit it felt good relaxing at my mind bending speed of 62 MPH, trying to not get upset at other drivers, and only driving until I wanted to stop.
When I got home we reloaded the bus to include Di’s stuff and within a few days we were on the road to New Orleans with a side trip to Orange Beach. We ate like kings getting food delivered, rode around the French Quarter on our scooters and enjoyed the change of scenery. In Orange Beach we stayed at Pandion Ridge, got our fresh shrimp, did a little shopping and ate a lot of Doc’s Seafood house fried shrimp (pickup).
We burned 770 gallons of fuel for the bus, generator and webasto, saved a ton of money with the TSD fuel discount program, and wished we had escaped house arrest sooner. The bus ran like a champ and I think I heard it say Thank you last night when I backed it in the garage, where the poor thing will stay now until January.
Make your bus happy. Go on a trip.
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14 Replies
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Jon,
Don’t travel alone. Let me know next time.:)
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On Monday, the Liberty is heading westward along I-40 to California!
Its 1,750 miles door to door and the weather is showing perfect on the extended forecast!
Can’t wait to get back in the bus! The odometer is going to go over the 60,000 mile mark!
Mark
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Jon, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! We pulled out of Grand Canyon Village in Oct. and saw an XLII with a PC tag on the back parked in the campground. Looked sort of familiar but it’s back was turned to us, likely because we now have a Renegade, so we kept on going. Was that you? If we’d known we would have stopped to say hello and help clean up all the beer cans. Dang.
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I was there on 10/23 from very very early until about 3:00 PM.
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Jon do you Take bus out for short stints each month to exercise it when between trips?
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The bus never moves between trips.
It is about 8 1/2 years since I bought it, and I have added 100,000 miles so it gets its exercise, but generally once it is parked the beginning of May it doesn’t move until after Labor Day.
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Did a little figuring, starting May of 2015 with the first bus ’til now with 0591 we’ve logged about 85k miles. Planning on another 10ish by spring, we’ll see.
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How many of those trips are for the queen’s new shoes?
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Jon, that wasn’t you we saw in the campground. WE left on the 24th. Must have been another PC member with a similar color scheme. Weird. So I take back my beer cans comment.
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Tom, I’d say half……..she’d probably say “All”….
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We drove about 6000 miles this summer and my wife bought 8 pairs of shoes. That’s 375 miles per shoe!
If we keep this up, I’ll need a 45′ bus soon just for the extra shoe storage.
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I’m at Prevost Grand Prairie getting the bus ready for our T-day trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It’ll be about 3K miles total. I love the long trips too. We finally sold our house in CA so no more trips there…. which I’m happy about because I always got annoyed having to go 57 in a 70 because I towed a Jeep. I’m glad that’s over with!!!!
though… mom is still there so I’m sure I’ll be back…. until the bus gets banned that is!
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Do you have some tips for driving that much in a day. I find it to be tiring mentally – paying close attention to driving, merging cars etc.
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First of all how you drive determines how tired you get.
If you are not just about the slowest vehicle on the road you will be coming up on and passing other vehicles. I realize using turn signals and changing lanes is not physically exhausting but it adds to the work load, makes you anticipate lane changes and the little bit of added speed forces you to think further ahead and adds to the stress level.
I’ve ridden with some people and never want to repeat the experience. They tailgate. They don’t anticipate what others are going to do and they are on the brake, on the gas, on the brake. The drive is not only uncomfortable it increases my stress as a passenger. The driver must be wearing himself out.
I tend to zone out. I am a classic Type A personality, but decided the day I got the bus that as soon as I got behind the wheel I was on vacation and I made an effort to not let any but the total morons get to me. I expect most other drivers to be and act stupid, and when they don’t do that it becomes a gift.
I am steady. At my blazing speed of 62 MPH most traffic is in a hurry to get around me and I am OK with that. I can go for hours never taking the coach off of cruise control, just plugging along, watching fast drivers who have gone past me 2, 3 or 4 times during the day end up where I am going at just about the exact same time.
Others will likely criticize my speed, but after a 4500 mile cross country trip in my car, in which my objective was to maintain a speed 10 over the speed limit, many many times I would get stuck behind a truck passing another. Remember, the truck doing the passing was the fast one, and many times the speed he was going was 65 MPH or less. On a couple of very rare occasions the passing truck was around 70. After 30 years of driving that 62 MPH speed I see no reason to go faster.
Go slow, don’t tailgate, anticipate needed changes of speed long in advance, relax, and don’t let anyone intimidate you and you are on the way to not wearing yourself out. The bus size can by itself be intimidating and if that is part of the problem the solution is to get used to it by using it. A lot.
Do not allow other drivers to push you. If narrow construction zones scare you, slow down. If heavy traffic starts pushing you, ignore it. And if you are tired stop driving.
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