It's a bullet, it's a rocket ship?? No, it's a bus!!!!! And thanks to Dave Ramsey's infinite wisdom, a bit of hard work and a Total Money Makeover we have paid it off!! See how at www.daveramsey.com

The Bus!

August 2, 2010 marked five years since we moved into our shiny, new to us, happy home on wheels, just a mere 3 months after we hit the road, and we are still loving it and the lifestyle of full-time RVing with all it's quirks. Knock on wood, our fabulous bus hasn't given us any major problems since it's inception into our family, which is amazing considering how many miles we have put on it. The only issues that have come up are little ones that Frank, in his infinite wisdom, has been able to figure out and repair. He is so handy to have around, and he loves poking around figuring out how everything works. Aside from a few oil changes, transmission fluid changes and the 10,000 mile services that we have to do a few times a year, and a few parts that wore out due to age, our little house on wheels has been better to us than the brand new Monaco we had before. The birds love having their own space, since they are now in the bedroom and not in the middle of the living room. They love going to bed once it gets dark, and they especially love sleeping in. Their only complaint is that they hear the motor noise, so a few mornings when we have to wake up early to drive they get a bit grumpy, but we can always leave them covered until they cheer up.

When we began our search for the perfect Prevost (pronounced Pray-Vo) conversion, we started out looking on Marathon's webpage every week or so along with about a half a dozen other sites since early 2005 when we were planning our voyage across the country. There are about 6 different companies that convert buses into motorhomes, but since a lot of them only do a few a year because they are so pricey to do our first choice was a marathon since they do about 100 a year and have the best reputation and the best quality product. We searched and searched and searched and had truly begun to give up on the idea that we would ever find "the one". Frank found many that had a great floor plan, but I would usually veto them because of the pink fuzzy couch (YUCK!), or the plaid chair with matching floral ottoman. DOUBLE YUCK!!! We of course did find a few that we both loved, but they usually ended up being in the $400,000 - $500,000 range or were sold before we ever called on them. The later 90 models were very nice to look at, but we've decided against selling our house to buy a bus (yikes!). The years of buses we had been looking at were in the early 90's. Even though it sounds a bit old, the buses built back then were built very similar to how they are today, and since they are all built to drive hundreds of thousands of miles on the original engine they are almost the same as the newer buses, only without the 1.4 million dollar price tag. The 2005 and 2006 floor plans that we looked out (just for curiosity sake) were amazing to see. They too had a few scary paint jobs I will admit, and the interior left a bit to be desired on most. Some, however, were beautiful, and decorated better than my house back in California ever was, but then again my house in California was a bit less than the sticker price of a brand new Prevost (for the time being at least). We can do without sculpted carpet and super fancy mirrors on the ceilings (our mirrored ceiling is done very subtly -ha ha). We had visited a dealership in Tennessee, and one in Oklahoma. And Frank diligently continued to search the Internet daily every week. Finally on the weekend of the Fourth of July 2005 we came across one on the Marathon Coach website that looked perfect. It had a new paint job that didn't have a single stripe of pink or purple. The interior was a nice beige with sage green accents on the couch and La-Z-Boy. It had two closets, which is great because we could put the birds in one, and clothes in the other. We had struck gold, except for the fact that it was in Oregon and we were in Missouri with no plans of heading to the West Coast for almost a month. We were sure that it would be snatched up long before we could get a chance to look at it. We continued on our search, and Frank kept checking Marathon every single day to see if it was still there. We finished up the Denver event, and headed to Seattle Washington. We had only a day and a half to get there, so there was no time then.

After Seattle we again only had a very brief time to get to Sonoma, Ca, but we drove all night long to look at this bus that appeared to be perfect. I, which goes against my optimist attitude, was sure it had to be an enormous typo and was sure it would turn out to be 2000 and twice the posted price.I even told Frank that I was going to sleep in, and to come and wake me up if it looks anything like the pictures. He of course came back within the hour and told me that it was even prettier inside than the website had shown, and I must come and see it. That it was. The interior is amazing. The previous owner, who also was the original owner, had taken excellent care of it, and had redone pretty much everything inside in the last few years. The paint job is only a couple years old, and it is a wonderful light beige with a greenish swirl, not scary at all! The salesman showed us all around, and then we started talking price. To our surprise, it was well within our price range, in fact it was less than some of the new motorhomes, not buses, we were comparing it to. We made them an offer, gave them all of our info, and left to drive to Sonoma to work. After quite a bit of thinking and negotiations we came to a very nice deal, and agreed that we would come back up to Oregon before heading to Brainerd, Minnesota. Since Marathon only deals with bus conversions we thought that they would have a problem trading in our Trek, but they gladly took it and did all of the financing for us as well, until the Fourth of July 2008 when we paid it off. Wow, I never realized until now that the day we found the bus and the day we paid it of were the same! Marathon has been a wonderful company to work with, and we have not had any issues at all with the bus so far. I'm not sure how many of you read Frank's complaints on our last motorhome but the list was long. We had 30 issues with that Trek within the first few months of owning it, and it was brand new. This motorhome is now 18 years old, since it was built in 1990, and it drives like a dream and is built better than we ever imagined. The bus rides on air bags so it feels like you are in a hovercraft going down the road. The Trek let you feel every bump in the road, while the bus just glides over them. The windows are huge, and take up the entire front and back, so when the blinds are open you can see the beautiful countryside from any seat in the house while driving. It feels as though you are at an IMAX theatre and not just a 8 foot wide vehicle. We are truly at home!!!  And now it drives even better since it no longer has a payment. I swear it gets better gas mileage without the anchor of debt!

Now that we have our fabulous bus, see where we've taken it and what we've seen in the past few years!