Day 56: Bus Breaks Down

Yup, after a summer of (mostly) smooth running thanks to our amazing mechanics and engineers, after a couple weeks of planned vacation in case anything went wrong and we had to go to a shop or reschedule events, during the two days in which we were down to one bus engineer…the unthinkable happened.

The day began bright and early with me waking everyone up (one of my bus jobs) so that we could clean the bus in time for our events. Although camping on the bus is fun, it takes a toll on its cleanliness. We moved the bus up next to the house, and started dumping dirty laundry, dishes, food, etc. into the house so kindly loaned to us by the Kamai family (don’t worry, we clean houses as well as buses). On schedule, the bus looking freer of debris than normal, we turned the bus on and…nothing. Jules, our remaining mechanic, spent an hour tinkering and, with the ancient technique of hit-the-problem-with-something-heavy, eventually succeeded. We were on our way!

Then let us take a happy interlude also known as the Dartmouth Alumni Association of Silicon Valley annual Big Green Bus and young alum pong tourney! We picked up Whitney and Andrew Flynn (both ’07) and the alumni club’s pong tables and headed to Scott and Rachel Safadi’s house, the location of this speial event. [Hold on a second. This alumni club has THEIR OWN PONG TABLES How cool is that?] We spent an idyllic afternoon playing pong and Cornhole, and I’m only slightly ashamed to say I lost all games I played.

Trouble reappeared when we tried to drive away around 6 pm, and yours truly was the lucky driver for the rest of this tale. I’ll spare you the gory details, but after much time and a few miles, new vegetable oil filters, a tired mechanic covered in engine grease (Jules, you’re amazing), trying to push the bus by hand, we ended up at 11:30 pm stuck for good on a side street. By some amazing stroke of luck, we were stalled a few houses away from another Dartmouth alum, Jeff Crowe, and his family. At this point, only the girls were left on the bus – Laura, Meegan, Hannah, and myself – since everyone else was on vacation or out and about San Francisco. Jeff and his daughter Molly, a ’15, let us stay over.

As I’m sure you have noticed, the best parts of this story have to do with Dartmouth alumni. Repeatedly throughout the summer you have welcomed us into your homes, fed us, given us beds (and couches and floor space), made us laugh, and generally been our backbone. Thank you!

Buslove,

Jen