The wheels on the Bus

The last stop of our Tour of the South, was in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. We had friends from back home spending a month here, enjoying the sun and playing golf. We had planned on taking in another NASCAR race at the famous old track in Darlington South Carolina, nicknamed “The Lady In Black”. I had arranged to take our friend to the Sprint Cup race and he had another friend who also wanted to be introduced to the NASCAR experience.

Darlington Pit Lane

Regis and I drove to the track on Friday and it was not a bad commute, but is almost 2 hours away depending on traffic, so we decided to take a shuttle bus on Saturday leaving us free to enjoy a few beer as we watched the race. The bus was great getting us to the track. It picked us up at the designated location on time, and we had a relaxing drive to Darlington.

Not so much on the way home . . . . . the trip started out good, and it was nice to allow the bus driver to fight the traffic jam as thousands of people tried to leave the track at once, but about half way back to Myrtle Beach, the bus slowed and the driver pulled off the road announcing that her bus had “Quit”. After a couple of failed attempts to get the engine started, she left to confer with the driver of the other bus driving with us. Together, they tried a couple of things but to no avail.

Not exactly as Illustrated

Then the other driver pulled his bus (Full of people) out onto the road and pulled up beside our bus to attempt to jump the batteries. As a constant stream of traffic funneled into one lane around the two busses, they made a couple of attempts to fire the bus this way, but no luck. Finally the other driver closed his door and pulled away promising to come back for us if we did not get going. We were left on the side of the road in a dark bus, with 4 way flashers steadily growing weaker and dimmer as the poor batteries drained away.

By this time we had figured out that they knew this bus had a bad alternator and could not possibly make it to Darlington and back so they arranged to park together at the track to recharge the batteries, but this did not work properly. Our driver announced that she had a gas generator and battery charger, but with the busy road was not keen to be standing on the road setting this up as vehicles whizzed by her at 100 kph. I’m sure this is not standard equipment for “Operational” busses . . .

Finally someone suggested she call the police, and in the ensuing phone conversations we discovered that there was a serious question about who’s responsibility we were, because she was not exactly sure which side of the county line we were on. She knew we were next to the slaughter house, but not much else. This was starting to sound like a plot to a low budget horror movie – deserted road, broke-down bus, slaughter house . . . . .  They seemed to be arguing back and forth about who might come and help us.

The Fuzz

Finally we ended up with not one police car, but four sitting behind us with lights flashing. This did finally slow traffic down, and I’m sure that with four sheriff cars surrounding the bus and the highway full of police officers and passengers milling about it looked like a major drug bust or some serious crime.

After setting up the generator & charger the batteries took a charge and the company owner arrived and after some fiddling managed to get the bus running again. We were back on the road again.

Now the company was very apologetic about the trouble, and they brought the second bus to speed up the process and at our first stop everyone going to Lowes got off and went with the other driver. Now he did not however know where he was going and our driver had to keep him on the phone to give him directions. Sometime during the trip our driver checked to make sure we were all on the right bus, and asked “Are there any people going to Lowes?” no response.

“Ok good, so you are all getting off at Dick’s Sporting goods?” This was followed by lots of positive responses.  “Great!” she answered over the bus intercom, “You are all Dicks!”

This of course got an immediate response and she suddenly realized what she had said. Oops . . . .

And the wheels on the bus go round & round!