Many thanks to...

This guy was bold. Late one night, in December of 2009, he found his way into one of the buses (Ned) through an unlatched window. After digging through all the compartments he found a hidden key, which we never really used and had forgotten was even there. For about a week we started to notice that the bus was warm in the morning and smelled mysteriously of pachouli.

Apparently, he would wait until everyone was gone, let himself in with his own key, lock the doors, and idle the bus all night so he could sleep in a dry, warm, safe place. I have to say, I admired this tightrope walk of taking advantage of the situation, yet not simply stealing the bus outright. I still wonder why he didn’t just drive off into the darkness, which is commendable. Homeboy was not a thief, just an opportunist.

We found out exactly who he was when one morning we found a backpack left on the back row of seats and inside was his flash art for tattoos and a few ‘Dr Skin’s and the Tattoo Blues Band’ demo CD’s. We listened to them immediately and I remember in the liner notes it said they had played with the ‘Almond Brothers,’ and this was before autocorrect was a thing.

Finally, on Christmas morning Pete was perplexed when he came to work and the bus was idling in the lot. He opened the drivers side door, killed the motor by reclaiming our key, and told a sleeping Dr. Skinz to get lost. A few days later the Doctor came by to apologize and wondered if he could get his backpack because he was supposed to do a tattoo for someone. It was peculiar to speak to him and have him confess the whole situation.

I gave him the bag, and we never had any trouble from him again. That is, unless he stole the Salomon RV. I really doubt it, but it was definitely a proposed theory back then. But if he didn’t steal the bus, why would he steal the RV? Who knows.

During our very last week at the office the Salomon Motorhome had just come back from a tour that Chris Mulcahey had been hired to drive. They had their own vehicle and their headquarters was just two blocks away so naturally they would park it at the Greasebus lot, which had tons of space.

I think it might have been the very last night we moved the last of the stuff out and so probably the last day of some month, spring 2010. I always wonder if a spare key got tossed into the dumpster in some office crap we had to get rid of in our last dumpster service. Although, the tour was their own thing, it wasn’t a Greasebus vehicle, so maybe not.

I don’t know if they ever caught the people who stole it, but I remember hearing it showed up at all gutted and parted out somewhere on the Oregon coast. Fratelli’s I’m betting.

This was definitely the most stressful experience of all the entire five year program. We got hired by DC to supply transportation services during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. We would bring skiers and snowboarders from downtown Vancouver to Grouse Mountain, about a half hour route, which we would loop all night. The ridiculous idea they had come up with was that people would head up for night skiing and party all night, so they would keep the lights on and the lifts running twenty-four seven throughout the Olympics.

They didn’t want to advocate for drunk driving and they were certain the parking lots were going to be packed, so better hire a bus and why not a sustainable one at that. This is just so weird when I think back to it, who thought this would work?

Either way, we were going to get paid really well to drive an empty bus around all night, party at the Olympics, and stay in a fancy apartment that overlooked the city. I was nervous that if we had any kind of issue we wouldn’t have a back up bus, which we typically had in Portland. So I asked if they would add our other bus onto the customs paperwork and told Ricardo, at Clif Bar that we could take Lucky, with the Clif wrap, and do some sampling while we were up there if he wanted to support that. So Lucky and Ned both went.

The first few days were awesome. The weather was dry, we looped the route, a few people rode the bus, but not many. Snowboarding at Grouse was actually really fun though, they had a fun little park with a crazy view of the city below, it’s a pretty remarkable place and the city, parks, islands, and noodle places are amazing.

The marketing crew at Grouse had arranged for a story to print in the local paper and a spot on the local news to showcase the bus and how it runs on grease from Grouse’s French fries. The very next day it started to rain and didn’t stop until the end of the trip. The local transit authority, tipped off by the news coverage, and the Sheriff, or Peace Officer I think they call it, pulled us over and told us we couldn’t run a shuttle bus on an existing city bus route and if they saw us again they would tow us back to the impound.

Well, we didn’t want to do anything to let down DC or Clif Bar so we tried again the next night and I think it was Ryan Spellman who drove up to an actual barricade on the access road. They even had the tow truck ready to go and everything, it was amazing. Once I got there I told Ryan I was disappointed that he didn’t crash through the barricade and he cried, no I’m just kidding. I was freaking out.

Meanwhile, Mulcahey broke his ankle skating in the city and was hobbling all over the place. Since they had towed Ned we decided that we’d take Lucky to retrieve him. Then Chris and I would bring both buses back to Portland and he could get an X-ray in the morning.

So technically we weren’t ‘kicked out of Canada’ but you get the point, we felt fairly unwelcome, let’s put it that way.

When you’re crossing international borders with a shuttle bus, customs officers have you get out as they x-ray the entire vehicle. First they would scan Lucky. Chris parked Ned and hopped in with me. Once we were on the pad, and it was time to shut it down and exit the bus, Chris and I started joking about the idea of him laying in the back so we could x-ray his ankle at the same time. I can remember laughing so hard with him as we climbed out and he was using me as a crutch. We were so happy to be done with all that drama and start making our way home. It was around two or three in the morning by now and we still had a five-hour drive ahead.

The rest of the crew got to stay in the fancy apartment for the rest of the week and go to all kinds of Olympic sporting events and parties. Bastards.

This one was ridiculous because we weren’t even on the radar for this but a competing shuttle bus (fossil fueled 🤢) had recently been asked to get their taxi certification and the administrator actually told us, “He calls every day saying if he did it, then you have to do it too!” So I’ll try and take the high road here and not mention any names, but suddenly we fell under taxi oversight in the eyes of the City of Portland’s Transportation Board.

Fine, whatever, we jump hoops sometimes. We had about eight CDL drivers and we all had to study to take the taxi test that had questions like, ‘What’s the fastest route from the Hilton to the Airport?’ It was ridiculous, inapplicable, and it cost us five grand all said and done. But whew, what a relief, we all passed, and at the next weekly staff meeting we celebrated and laughed at all of our laminate pictures.

A week or two later I got an email from our insurance guy saying our premium is going to double because of the taxi garbage. I couldn’t believe it.

When I got the news that the insurance had doubled Maegen and I were in the midst of our first baby, and halfway through building a 1200 sq’ addition onto our 420 sq’ home. Around this time I also got word from Bobby Meeks that Nike was unfortunately going to pull the plug on the snowboard boot program and so resources from our title sponsor would come to an abrupt halt.

As I worked on the house I thought about all the possible ways I could still try and make Greasebus work. At some point, just as I was beginning to lean towards the possibility of shutting Greasebus down, Maegen let me know that she was pregnant again and I thought, ‘Okay, yup. Shut it down.’

I sold Dusty to a band that had heard about the Piebald tours. Lucky went to a guy who wanted a vehicle to live in at the coast because he scuba dove for sea cucumbers for a living and he was hyped on vegetable oil. And Ned got sold to HCSC, but Nike paid for it because they were going to do one last summer of promo, if I remember correctly.