Welcome to our site, Bus to Home, in which we will document the progress of our MCI Bus conversion to a Motor Home.

As this is the very first post in the Blog, it stands to reason that some history is in order.

David is a mechanical savant, in Joy’s opinion.  At least, he can fix anything she breaks, usually, or diagnose the problem and assess how much he’ll have to pay someone else if he can’t do it himself.

Way back in the late 70s, David had a new motorcycle that he took apart one autumn, and he put all the pieces in a few cardboard boxes and stored them in the kitchen of our apartment.  Over the course of the winter, our cats found small parts to use as kitty toys, batting them across the floor, chasing them and hiding them whenever possible.  Joy swore that this motorcycle was forever destined to remain an expensive waste of a cat-toy…. as the snow melted and temperatures warmed, the pieces were reassembled.

Amazingly, it started on the first try and ran fine.   Joy never doubted his mechanical ability again.

Now, where David’s focus is on function, Joy covers the aesthetics.  Crafty by nature, Joy is pretty skilled at making David’s work look good.  So, that’s the plan with this bus, and efficiency, environmental friendliness and cost-effectiveness will be our guiding principles.

David has been shopping for buses for the past 3 to 5 years, at least.  Originally, the bus was going to be a boat.  Maybe someday the boat will happen.  If David lives long enough and finds the resources, the boat is likely next.  But, having lots of land-locked relatives, particularly our two children living in TX and AZ, we felt the boat could wait, and the bus was way more practical.  Yeah, we realize that our practicality is iffy in most peoples’ views.  But it works for us!

There are a number of people buying and selling buses: church buses, school buses, used Disney buses and more.  Links to David’s favorite sites are forthcoming.  With all those wonderful resources, we still turn to eBay, and that is where our bus was finally located.

David started watching the auctions for a number of MCI buses in 2008, and by the end of the year, ours was listed at over $10,000 for the starting bid.  David estimated it was worth a good bit more than that, and kept watching.  It was located in Jacksonville, FL, and since we love FL and any excuse to go there, this was a definite plus.  Only a bus located in NH or a nearby New England State would be preferred.

Weeks passed, the auctions ended with no bids, and each time the bus was re-listed the price went down.  Finally, in late March, it was listed for a starting bid of $7,000.  Someone bid on it.  It was time for us to make our move.

We made the arrangements necessary to obtain the funds to pay for it, and sniped the auction. We won!  For $7,300, the bus would be ours.  We started organizing our plans to fly down to Jacksonville and pick up the bus, but first there were several steps needed to drive it back.

As a bus, it would require that David have a Commercial Drivers License to drive it north to NH.  However, as a motor home, no CDL would be necessary. In David’s research, he located a company that does bus conversions as a business, and is versed in the process of re-titling the bus to motor home status.  So, for $250 and the cost of overnight delivery back and forth, we were able to have the title of the bus revised to that of a motor home, and obtained the temporary plate needed to get it home legally.

All was in order, and we purchased our one-way plane tickets to fly to Jacksonville on May 15, 2009.  The adventure was about to begin!