Tag Archives: School Bus

camping, driving, Monroe County Parks, school bus RV, Skoolie, trip, Webster Park

A Rochester Trip

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So, we had to go to Rochester, NY for the Science Exploration Day that St. John Fisher College hosted.  As we needed to be at the college campus at 9:00 for registration, as our son was going as part of a group of Rochester homeschool kids, and thus we could beat the crush of buses bringing in regular school kids.

We briefly looked at hotels to stay in overnight, as it’s an hour and a half drive from Buffalo, but even with the College discounts at local places, it was still pretty expensive.  Given that, I of course took a look for campgrounds.  And, only 20 minutes away from St. John Fisher College, I found Webster Park, which has some areas of shoreline on Lake Ontario.

The campground itself has 45 sites and is nestled back about half a mile from the shore, surrounded by light to heavy woods for all but the big motorhome sites.  All the sites have electric, and while only five have dedicated water, there are enough taps throughout that about the farthest you’d have to walk for water is two or three sites.  While the price per night was higher than we’d payed for any of the Erie County or State sites we’d been to, it was certainly worth it compared to the hotel costs (and proximity to Rochester and Lake Ontario probably causes a lot of demand for sites).

So, even with the bus still having the hot start fail, we decided that it would be a short enough trip that we wouldn’t need to stop the bus unless we were in a place where it could sit and cool before we needed to go again.  We would start in Buffalo and get to Webster Park, then stay overnight. Then we would go from Webster Park to St. John Fisher and shut the bus down for the classes.  Then, when we were ready, head out from the College and back home.

The trip to the park was fairly uneventful, though I did a horrible job of trying to stay out of the way of fast-paced cars on the Rochester expressways.  It seemed like as soon as I moved over into the right hand lane to travel at the speed limit, the lane was ending, becoming an exit-only, or the exit we needed was a left-lane exit.  And, for that I apologize to those inconvenienced drivers.

But some of the drive was wonderfully scenic, like on the Route 104 bridge, some 45 feet up over Irondequoit Bay.  We found the campgrounds with no problem, though the stretch of Lake Road from Bay Road to the park is a lovely twisty, hilly section that motorcyclists must adore.

Checking in at the park was simple – since I had printed out my email confirmation of our reservation, all they had to do was see that and we were set.  Monroe County’s reservation site was nice, as it give pictures of the sites as well as the electrical, vehicle/trailer length capabilities, and such.  From that, while site 19 and 21 looked big and easy to back the bus into, I ended up choosing site 15, as just down behind it was East Creek, and I thought there would be a nice view downhill behind the site.

Site 15 ended up being even nicer when we got there.  It was easy to get the bus backed in, due to the curve of the loop at that point, and contained the end of a little geographical ‘finger’ so that at the north end of our site we could look down toward a swampy area, much like we could look down into a low valley to our east.

 

Down at the bottom of the ‘finger’ was a path that we could follow back along to the west and north, which brought us to the Kanatota Lodge which overlooks Lake Ontario.  It was a great sunny day to be there, with splashing waves and a nice breeze.  And the hike only took us about 10-15 minutes.

Part of the reason for a longer hike than it might seem for the distance was that there had been a windstorm that brought down a number of good-sized pine trees, so we had to pick our way around or over those.  But, since we could use fallen wood as firewood, we didn’t have to use any of our own wood for the fire.

We had a nice meal of beans (pre-cooked from dry at home), peppers, and tomatoes all cooked up in cast iron over the fire and some home-baked sourdough bread, and were joined by a dear friend who came up from Rochester to spend the evening with us.  Marshmallows were toasted (or burned) over the fire on the telescoping prongs’ first use, and scary stories were told in the red glow of the embers of the fire, accompanied by bourbon for those (adults) so inclined.

We cleaned everything up just as a thunderstorm rolled in, and we all slept well.  The temperature had dropped, so it was a bit chilly, and the sky was a little overcast after the storm, but the bathroom facilities were a warm, and we were able to set out on-time to brave the morning commuters along our route to the College.

I gave us an extra 20 minutes on top of what Google had suggested as travel time for us, and that all worked out – though again, I ended up facing the need to merge into a left-hand exit with rushing commuters doing the same.  My thanks to that pick-up who took pity on us and gave us space to merge!

The Science Exploration Day was a whirlwind of presentations.  The 40 minute presentations were followed by 10 minutes of trying to find the next one’s room.  Construction in one of the buildings, and different numbering directions in differing buildings made this a challenge, but our son got into some cool ones, and as I hung around outside the oft-packed classrooms, I overheard some good presentations.

We had parked in the back of one of the parking lots, and returned after the last presentation to our bus being surrounded by a myriad of national school bus chrome buses!  We stayed and ate some lunch while buses pulled out to pick up school kids, or loaded in the parking lots.  We got some looks, and had some homeschoolers come and take a look at our set-up.

One of the things we found was that the batteries for the linear actuator keychain remotes were dying or dead, meaning we only had one working.  But the batteries were easy to find, and replacing them was the job of a screwdriver and taking the keyring off, taking only a minute to do.  

After all the buses were gone, we packed up our lunch and headed out.  Our trip was a bit slower than our trip out to Rochester, as we got stuck behind … school buses dropping off students!  But we all had a great trip, and would be happy to go back to the Webster Park Campground.

 

 

Post Script: As far as the bus engine, it ran flawlessly, even for long periods.  And on our trip out, the ambient temperature was in the high seventies, and the running engine temperatures on the highway were approaching 200, and it didn’t falter.  I did try starting it hot at the campground after we parked, and it still hot failed. More on this later.

Door, Electrics, School Bus, school bus RV, Skoolie

Replacing a Linear Actuator

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So, you may remember that I removed a section of the bar that opens the manual door and replaced it with a linear actuator, which was then attached to a remote unit that meant that the door could be opened and closed by the use of a remote fob.  And the system worked really nicely for a couple of years.

Unfortunately, it was subjected to stresses that I hadn’t foreseen.  While I had looked at the 300 lb holding ability, and the 8 lb press (not 150, I came to find out – a labeling error) power as sufficient, I hadn’t prepared for a teenager who was trying to pull closed the accordion door while the hand-control was locked closed.  The back plate of the actuator snapped under the stress.

Faced with this situation, I obviously had to fix this, so that the door could be closed and secured, but still usable.  As a temporary solution, I had a piece of 2×10 that just fit in the bottom stair that would block the door from opening, and I could still climb in and out of the rear door which has the deadbolt lock.  I then set about trying to find a replacement plate.

Firgelli Automations no longer made the model that I had purchased, so had no parts for it available.  I then attempted to fab up a ‘sheath’ to enclose the back and secure the engine/shaft casing.  As I was finishing this up, the engine finally failed, which was very frustrating.  As I did some research, I found that many of this model had had the engine fail, and it was a usual end-of-life situation for it.

While this was disheartening, I contacted Firgelli’s support about getting specs on the engine to see if I could find a replacement somewhere, but no luck.  They make all their components themselves, so it was a special run.  They were able to point me toward a different model that was more rugged and had a more powerful (and durable) engine than the model I had.

This model is much more rugged than the original unit, and about twice as powerful.  And the connectors are an eighth of an inch bigger in diameter than the original, which meant that not only did I have to undo all my sheathing welding, but I had to fabricate new sockets too.  As we were right near the limit of when the inspection for the bus would run out, they’re, unfortunately, rough and unpainted.

It’s also an inch longer when fully retracted, and I was able to compensate for about 1/2 an inch with the adjustment threads at the door, but it means that the door doesn’t open quite as wide as the old unit allowed – but that’s just me being picky.  (It’s also cheaper to buy directly from the company’s site than through Amazon …)

While I’ve not got to painting the new unit, I do have to admit that the works are much smoother than the old unit. Check it out in action:

Allegany State Park, Bus Driver, camping, driving, horns, safety, School Bus, school bus RV, Skoolie, trip, Uncategorized

A Week in the Bus (Allegany State Park trip – Part III)

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(Continued from Part II)

The Red House area of the Allegany State Park is really nicely suited to biking. All the camping and major cabin areas seem to be connected with paved trails, and all the roads within the tent/RV area were paved, with the sites having gravel parking area and some grassy area as well. Our site was actually very close to level, but many of the other sites were not, and I helped one of our neighbors with the ‘lego block’ style levelers, which worked for him nicely.

Staying for the whole week was great, and we only saw one other rainy day than the night of our arrival. However, we didn’t take advantage of any of the hiking trails, though we did bike the ‘on road’ biking trails and canoe on Red House Lake. This was due to my wife having a project that she needed to finish (and with the back of the bus pointed south, she got great natural light from all the windows), and our son spending most of the days at the Dresser-Rand Challenger Science Camp that one of our other homeschooling moms heroically set up and co-ordinated for other homeschoolers. A bunch of the homeschooling families were also staying in the Red House area (several right in our loop!), and so the kids were able to work at camp, then come back and play, grabbing their bikes (and often the wrong shoes) to go exploring the local playground in the camp area, or the park toward the lake, or the treed area between some campsites, or the creek that ran alongside the campgrounds down to the lake. As a result, we didn’t see our son much that week.

But having all three of our bikes meant finding a place to store them securely. I have a long Kryptonite lock and cable, and it worked out that I could lock all three bikes to the bus by fitting the lock around the bottom edge of the safety cage of the fuel tank.

Our site Captain was from Bradford, PA, and lives right by a rail line, and noticed the Super Tyfon right away. After chatting with him a bit, I promised him that I’d sound the horns when we left, as I was concerned about disturbing other campers. Upon leaving, when I sounded the horn, I got a thumbs-up from the Captain, and a not-surprising number of looks from others nearby. I got a report from one of our friends who left after we did that lots of people in the campsite cheered and called for the horn to sound again, but unfortunately, I was already off on the road by then.

Our trip home was via the Quaker area, as we were due to meet friends there in October. This meant going over one mountain/ridge, and then back along the same route, and then out of the park over the mountain with the ski area and fire tower. This was probably the longest, steepest climb I’ve taken the bus on, and I ended up in third gear, doing about 25 mph and watching the coolant temperature climb. I gave the bus some time to cool at the top, then took it down the other side of the mountain (seeing some neat views from the overlook), really getting comfortable with letting the bus engine retard the speed, and using (gentle) stab braking.

(In case you don’t know what stab braking is, it’s when you push down hard on the brakes to dramatically lower your speed, then let off again, letting the engine and transmission slow you down, until you get over a speed where they lose efficiency, then you ‘stab’ the brakes again.  It keeps the brakes from overheating, and your vehicle well under your control.)