With bad weather on the way we decided to tuck in to a campground in Kanab, UT for a night. An hour after getting there a Bum friend we hadn’t seen since a lunch in Portland many years ago drove up. We talked and made plans for the next day.
The next morning we told the kids the plan for the day—that our friend was going to take us to see some pigs and horses at a huge rescue shelter (Best Friends) down the road that his friend works at.
So he shows up, the kids say hello, and then he jumps in his truck and we follow. Lowe was watching his truck as we went down the road. He looked like he was thinking about something, then he said, “We have a lot of friends everywhere we go.”
Our kids don’t know about this website yet. We look at it together sometimes, but they have no concept of internet. So the reasoning for why we have friends all over the world eludes them—to them it’s never seemed out of the ordinary. Until today, when the gears were obviously turning in Lowe’s mind—how do we have so many friends all over the place?
These days we hardly go a day without meeting someone who follows the blog. Usually it’s just a couple of minutes of saying hello, other times it’s a lunch or drinks after we put the kids to bed—but whatever it is, when the kids ask who that was, the answer is always, “That’s a friend of ours.”
We stumbled across this little state park one afternoon when we didn’t really have any plans. Always nice when that happens.
We spent a couple of hours filling out Junior Ranger workbooks, and walked around the lake filling up a couple of bags with garbage. Then on our way out we stopped in to get sworn in as Rangers. The lady looked confused, then made a phone call, and told us we needed to go to some other state park nearby to get the badges. Take a left at the light, then a right at the next light, and it’s on the left.
Eight miles later, in the wrong direction, I hit the brakes and turned around. I was the only one in the family who was pissed off about this wild goose chase. The kids were like, “Whatever. What do you have for me to eat?”
So, continuing on with the theme of this post—friends.
Mesquite, Nevada. We were driving along today, headed for the Valley of Fire when we decided to stop for some tacos. When we left after lunner we could only take a right out of the parking lot and I commented something along the lines of, “We’re out in the middle of the f’ing desert and they force us out onto a one-way like it’s New York City?”
At the end of the block we were then expected to make a U-Turn at the light to get headed back in the right direction. If you were driving a Smart car the U-Turn would be doable, but in the bus there was no way. I switched over a lane before swinging the turn way out wide, but it didn’t look like I was going to make it. As I was about to shift into Reverse, a guy on the corner who was waiting to cross the street waved me on and said, “You got it, you got it.” I knew it was close, but figured he was standing right there, so…
Psssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
All the air blew out of the tire. We had just scraped the curb by maybe an inch. But the curb right there had a sewer grate, and because so many cars had not made the U-Turn the cement covering the edge of the grate was all busted off, leaving an exposed hunk of metal which had just sliced our tire in half.
It was my fault, obviously, for listening to the guy in the first place, so I wasn’t jumping out of the bus pissed off. But just to be sure, Ali reminded me in a very firm tone that it wasn’t his fault.
When I got out he said he was sorry, he didn’t see the metal. He then pointed over to the nearby Ford dealership where he worked and told me he’d call and have a guy come up to help me change the tire.
I was assessing the damage and weighing my options when I heard, “Pat? Pat? Bumfuzzle?”
My first thought was, “Oh no, not now. This is not a good time.” But when I looked up I saw a familiar face. It’s a long story, but you long-time readers here might remember. When Ouest was born we needed two witnesses to come down to the birth certificate office with us to get all of our paperwork for her filled out. We didn’t know anybody in Puerto Vallarta, but two Bum friends had shown up two days earlier for a vacation and had offered to take us out to eat.
Well, instead of dinner we all went down to the office together and stood around for a couple of hours doing baby paperwork. Their names are on Ouest’s birth certificate.
We saw them one other time in P.V. after Lowe was born, but hadn’t talked for a couple years. In that time they had retired and moved to Mesquite, Nevada, just up the street from where we were now stranded.
We said a quick hello, but we were in the middle of a busy road with a busted bus, so I told her it looked like we had things under control. She also had a friend in the car who was probably mortified when, after she had said, “Look at that bus?” Becky had replied, “Oh my god, I know those people. That’s the Bumfuzzles.”
Five minutes later a kid showed up with a jack and an impact driver. Five minutes after that Becky’s husband showed up on the scene in his golf cart. And five minutes after that some sort of fake cop Community Patrol guy arrived and started asking for my license and registration. When I told him no, that I was kind of busy at the moment, he called for backup. Ali dug the paperwork out, and I decided to give the guy his glory. I’m trying harder to control my “authority” issues.
A few minutes later I overheard him calling in our registration (probably to his wife). He said, “I don’t know about this, something doesn’t look right.” He obviously thought he was about to crack a cold case wide open. CSI investigators got nothin’ on this guy. Despite the circumstances, this made me smile.
It took some doing, but an hour later we had all managed to work together to get the spare on. Changing a tire on this bus is no small task. The wheel wells require that you jack up both the body and the axle separately. Even under good conditions it is a big job. Parked on the side of the road right alongside a curb with a tire so far gone the bus is sitting on the rim, it’s a full-on project. Oh, and we had one floor jack that couldn’t hold the weight of the bus, and one tiny bottle jack that could. At one point we had the bottle jack balanced on a piece of wood which was balanced on top of the fully extended floor jack. It’s a miracle I have all my limbs.
Of course, we didn’t actually have a good spare. The one strapped under the bus has actually never been taken off of the bus before. So we put it on and I wasn’t entirely sure the weight of the bus wouldn’t just make that one explode too. But it didn’t, so we spun around and drove up to our friend’s house, with him lugging the flat tire in his golf cart.
I started calling around, and of course, the big box tire shops all scoffed at the idea of changing a split-rim tire. Sissies one and all. But eventually one of them pointed me to an old-schooler who immediately headed over to the house with a new tire in the back of his truck. This guy looked like he ate split-rims for dinner.
In two hours, on a late Saturday afternoon, we went from driving down the road, to totally disabled, to hanging out with old friends in a town that is new to both of us, to having our tire fixed in the middle of the street of a retirement community.
We shared some dinner, and some drinks with old friends. And today we added yet again to our arsenal of “small-world-Bum-friends” stories.
“We have a lot of friends everywhere we go.”
32 Comments on “Bum Friends”
And you have friends in Canada too! What a great story!
The community you’ve created with this blog is better than any I’ve experienced on Facebook or similar social networks. Thanks for sharing your life experiences with so many known and unknown friends. I enjoy following your travels and adventures. My husband and I traveled in a bus for about a year and we hope to do so again.
I gotta tell you, in that situation I would’ve had authority issues, too. C’mon. Lovely that you had people to help, though.
What a wonderful story. I’m not sure I would have been able to hold back on the pseudo cop. My anger would have had me using some non kid friendly words. You did good. And I got a good chuckle out of your description of the tire guy. You guys are celebrities!
Glad you had help with your tire. Mesquite is a great little town.
Someday your kids are going to write for a TV series using your blog, books and videos as inspiration. It will be a combination of “Lucy” meets “Full House”, and I think Ali will be the one who saves you whenever you are about to have a run in with the law.
Add in Dukes of Hazard, and I can picture it perfectly. 🙂
“Just a good ‘ole family
Trying to avoid jail
Been in trouble with the law since the day they set sail”
With apologies to Waylon Jennings
More problems in the US than Mexico so far 🙂
Nice pic with the male next to his stranded bus, but my favourite is the rearview mirror one in the Welcome Wagon post 🙂
Ali: “you’re going too fast”.
Pat:”dont worry, honey. I got this.”
10 sec later, the defeated male returns to his bus with the ticket :)) the blurry image in the mirror, priceless. :))
Way more. I wish we had monitors on showing our heart rate every time we see a cop car in the U.S. and could compare it to the steady rhythm we had in Mexico.
Wow…what a day! So I assume the badge-heavy rent a cop went away quietly?
Just another day on the job. 🙂
You guys need to buy Zero2cruising’s Catamaran and get back out on the water to the BVI’s for a couple of years! 😉
Why would anyone need a sailboat for the BVIs? It’s like five miles from one place to another. 🙂
Why would a flat tire require license and registration in the “land of the free”?
Everyone is a threat, Will. Is Will your real name? Sounds fishy.
Glad you got help in our little corner of your world. The corner you talk about is a nightmare. Who ever designed street patterns in this town was a moron. I have been reading your blog since the first trip around the world. I never expected I see you in Mesquite NV. Sorry about the police ,that”s small town living ( nothing better to do). May your travels be safe and happy.
Iceman
Mesquite NV.
Seriously, right? Like they had a contest at the local elementary school to see who could draw up the coolest plans for their town of the future, when one million residents will call Mesquite home.
My old Winnebago also has split rims. I taught myself to change them, could do it at the side of the road – preferably in chilly weather because of the exertion. We also had to jack up the frame and the axle to change a tire – so carried two bottle jacks, chunks of heavy lumber plus the tire irons & the maul. But we also carried TWO spares, tucked up under the frame behind the rear axle, and two 7.50-17 inner tubes – just in case.
My ’56 Chevy school bus/camper had split rims. We had a flat tire in middle of western Kansas and took the bus to a local (and only) gas station. This was back when gas stations had two bay garages. So this yahoo looks at the tire, calls his friend and they proceed to try to take the tire off the “other way”. This included but was not limited to giant crowbars, hammers and (I’m not making this up) a pocketknife. They gave up when he posed his friend standing on a short crowbar while he inserted a 4′ long crowbar on the opposite side. He then (and again, I’m not making this up) stood on a stool and jumped on long crowbar. This sent his friend shooting into the air and on his back where he was sufficiently injured to stop “helping”. We ended up staying in the parking lot next door so the daytime help could come fix the tire.
These split rims do require the right man for the job. Those were not the right men. 🙂
Being “friends” too, we only missed you in Valley of Fire by 10 days! Coming through Bend, OR?
Bend? Possible, though not probable. But there are only so many ways to get to Portland, so we’ll see. We’ll give you a shout if we head that way.
Synchronicity at its best! Loved this post. Be safe out there 🙂 Still loving your story after all these years…
My husband and I had seriously, very seriously, planned to move to Kanab, Utah. But we never made the move.
National Park Week free entrance fees April 16th-24th…. How many parks can you hit on one week?
Seriously? Crap. I think I’d rather pay the fee than deal with the crowds.
The NPS claims this is out of season and the crowds won’t be as big as in the summer months. At least spring break is over and maybe everyone is too busy with school to travel 🙂
The Bumfuzzles rock. Love following you guys! Been following since you went around the world. What a life you have.
Oh my goodness, what an ordeal! Maybe I should move to Mexico.
Years ago, when I was a cubicle dweller, I stumbled across your blog – you were buying a boat and getting ready to sail around the world. I followed along, dreaming of my opportunity to do the same. You had some amazing adventures! I finally made my own break and in that, lost your blog (or lost time). Today I stumbled on it again and you are in a beautiful bus with two beautiful kids. For me, it is kind of like finding lost friends. I will be following along again… hope you don’t mind.
So awesome. I so enjoy these road stories, and they are my Walter Mitty mental get-aways during long work hours.