After years of periodically checking in, I have finally registered and joined this select body of oddballs & misfits (and I mean that in the most complementary way!
) Rudy, your stories & activities here have coaxed many of us to increased participation.* Since I've registered, I thought I'd post a little introduction here, instead of the Guest Book in case anyone wanted to reply to it...I got interested in buses as a kid when my uncle bought an old transit bus and fitted it out as a homemade camper. (sorry don't remember any details about it, this was the early 70's) I remember thinking 'you mean normal people can own a real bus, not just hippies in old school buses?' (Course looking back, maybe Uncle Enos isn't so normal after all... don't remember when he sold it.)
Then in the late 90's my wife & I and then toddler son started attending bluegrass music festivals. Didn't take long to get tired of packing / unpacking a tent. bought a minivan. Then one of the first things I did when I finally got an internet connection at home was search (remember alta-vista? this was pre google days...) for cheap campers & buses. I came across the "Bus Barn" and this guy who was raising the roof on one of those cool old Crowns. Been coming back for more ever since. Sharkey is to be highly commended as someone who can both WRITE and DO.
So anyway, I finally bought my "bus" in 2004, it's a 1995 Roadtrek, a factory built camper built in an extended chassis Chevy G30 van. But my boy is going on 17, & almost 6 foot now, so it seems much smaller than it did back when we bought it.
In answer to Rudy's question, I don't play myself, but I love bluegrass & related 'roots music' and have many musician friends and I'm now getting involved in putting on live music events. I hope you don't find my screen-name too presumptious, I expect to get around to learning little banjo sometime (I do own one), but at 53, I find its a little harder to pick up new skills than it used to be... (a sort of underlying theme touched on in several other threads here.)
I was laid off and without a job for 9 months in 2006, so I could identify a bit with Rudy's situation. But since 2007 I've been blessed with a good job but not a lot of free time. I was gonna' ask my wife if she had a "CROCK-POT" (R)
recipe book she could spare so that I could send it to Rudy, so then when the online recipe link showed up on the Roadtrek list, I just had to post it in the Getto Pot Roast thread. Fortuitous, it got me to finally put up an introduction here. So I'll be around, but no promises how often I'll be able to post, takes me longer than it should to get stuff like this written. Now maybe I should try to find a photo of our little 'bus' for this thread.For now, Best to all,
BostonBluegrassBoy
* I did guest post before in this thread when Sharkey hit a hard spot a while back. A huge Thank You to Sharkey for maintaining this website. Don't forget the Tip Jar occasionally.