Parking the Bus – an Unexpected Challenge

As brand new bus owners, I can tell you there isn’t anything very much more exciting than bringing the brand new bus home; unless your neighbors are the worst. In hindsight, we probably should have had a better plan set in place for when we brought the bus home, but the excitement overcame us and once again we jumped the gun. In my defense, I did call the local police department ahead of time and ask what the parking laws were for the school bus and was told that according to our city ordinance, we could not park anything over 22 feet long on the street. He then mentioned that as long as nobody complained about it, they wouldn’t bother us about it.

Beware of Grumpy Neighbors

We were renting the house that we lived in at the time and our neighbors in every direction are elderly and retired. The second day we had it parked on our street the police arrived stating that they had received a complaint and we had 24 hours to move the bus. Argh! These are neighbors that also complain to our landlord when our grass gets “too long,” which by the way it has never exceeded the length that the city considers to be “too long.” Anyway, needless to say, we are counting down the days until we can finally move into the bus!

So here we were, with no choice but to remove the bus from our home. Fortunately, I had a friend who was gracious enough to let us park it behind her house for a couple of days while we came up with a better game plan. We ended up discovering that we needed to sell this particular bus because of the amount of rust on the undercarriage, as mentioned in a previous blog. Shortly after this occurrence, we moved it to a friend’s house who lived out in the country where it would remain until our buyer came to pick it up.

Finding the Right Parking Space

After picking up our new bus from Missouri and taking to Social Media to find a solution to our suddenly very big problem, our friend Tommy let us know that we were welcome to park it in his driveway. He owns his home and happens to have two kids that are similar in age to our kiddos. It ended up working out very well and he and his wife, Cherith, have been a huge part of our bus conversion thus far!

So what is the moral of the story? Make SURE that if you decide to undertake a bus conversion project, that you have a solid plan in place for where it will be parked while you make your renovations!