I titled this section the “in between” because we weren’t still living in our house, but we weren’t really traveling yet. We parked the Busse Bus at Fish Beach Campground on April 26th and weren’t scheduled to depart until May 19th at the earliest.
The three week delay was due to numerous factors like: the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship, Katrina meeting with the equipment manager’s of the NBA, financial review of Renegade Brands, selling cars, out rigging the Jeep, getting driver licenses, and minor other activities.
Our niece, Macy Jerger, is a junior at Florida State University where she plays beach volleyball. They qualified for the NCAA Tourney Championship which is held in Gulf Shores, AL. Beautiful revue, beautiful beach. FSU didn’t drop a match and headed for the championship game on Sunday May 6th. Unfortunately, FSU came up short and finished second – great year! We plan on being back at Gulf Shores next year to watch her and FSU win the championship.
The next day (around 12:30am once we landed back at ORD) I drove to Cleveland, OH to receive a financial review of the company that Katrina works at and one that we are invested in – Renegade Brands, USA. They provide cleaning solutions for the athletic fabrics that is green and really works. Sweat X. Try it. After the update I felt like the company is headed somewhat in the right direction but that they need better leadership to propel them in the marketplace. Great products with sound financial backing.
Katrina met with NBA Equipment Managers on May 17th and 18th selling Sweat X to the professsional teams. She has already closed about 30% of the teams and is trying to get the remaining 70%. So when you watch the NBA and comment on the brightness of their uniforms – it’s Sweat X.
Ariana’s car transmission decided to give out and the replacement cost was greater than the blue book value so Ari decided to purchase Katrina’s car. We were going to complete the transfer on May 21st. As Katrina and I were enjoying much needed R&R sitting by the campfire roasting popcorn and watching the Cubs game outside we heard a loud bang on the other side of the Busse Bus. Running over we saw a car pulling away who had just backed into a picnic table and pushed it into Katrina’s car denting the front end. We called out to other campers to stop the car and caught up with her a few campsites over. The drunk driver stumbled back to her unit leaving her car in the drive. Three cars of Lake County’s Finest and an ambulance later we got her driver’s license and insurance information. Now we just had to get the car fixed so Ari can purchase it.
You might think that towing a Jeep with the Busse Bus would be easy to do – it is. The hard part is getting the Jeep configured to be pulled. Took me two full days of waiting and $3,500. Needed a tow bar, light connection, air connection, safety chains, safety brake to all work together. The Busse Bus has air brakes that now also controll the Jeep braking system. Takes us about 15 minutes to hook the whole thing up ensuring that the Jeep is straight onto the coach and close enough to connect. The Jeep is manual so in order to tow it you have to put the transmission in Neutral, take the brake off and leave it in gear. Kind of counter intuitive. It’s weird towing the Jeep as it looks like someone is tailgating you in the rear view camera.
Other minor activities completed, all we needed now was to get our Class B non-CDL driver licenses to be legal.
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