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PAINTED LADY

This is the place to discuss all your tricks and tips of bus life. From how to pack everything you need, to the best on the road recipes.
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BoxcarOkie
Posts: 538
Joined: Thu May 21, 2009 7:42 pm

PAINTED LADY

Post by BoxcarOkie »

Painted Lady

One of my favorite commercials on television these days is the poor sap, sitting on a bench at the sea shore, and a huge shark comes onto the pier and starts chewing on his shoulder blade. He of course is oblivious to all of this, as his cigarett urge has kicked in. I know this is somehow sort of sick, but I can relate to this guy, the shark on the arm and all, it often for me, just feels kind of natural.

Perhaps I am developing the mental mindset of an “Old Tymer”(sp) and do not know it. Life has it seasons, it has it reasons, we are all but unwilling participants in The Grand Ride of A Lifetime. Such is life on the Great Plains, replete with its share of aches and pains.

I am now entering my ninth week of a paint job that was “supposed to be completed and out the door in three.” I find myself struggling with mixed emotions. Walking around with glazed over eyes, moving from one mood to the other. I do not find myself eating up the pavement on a new adventure.

In other words ... “C’Mon shark!”

Having just finished talking to Andy Wright and cancelling out on the Black Hills thing and giving up my spot to someone else, I am kind of miffed. Last year I spent most of the summer in the shop, which was well documented. This year it is a collision specialist and another vendor black hole is consuming me.

This in turn has a tendency to frustrate me.

They say the proof is in the pudding. Often all of this bus renovating or re-building, is really hard work, the logistic’s of it all, the labor, the skill involved. I truly envy those among us, who have the patience to restore a bus, to do a frame up restoration. I sure wish I was geared that way, very few of us are so inclined to pursue a mechanical endeavor such as that.

It is not easy watching your dreams slowly die and I find myself struggling to make sense of it all. Last week for instance, on Wednesday, I stopped telling people “to have a nice day” as I was fairly sure I might kill someone by Saturday. This is the river of my emotions, too many bad days, with oodles of gloom in between, can take a toll on a guy. It almost has a tendency to warp the soul.

But not all the news is bad. “To my astonishment, this was the year I beat 70 percent of my fear of success and dissolved 80 percent of my tendency to sabotage my junkyard foes and those who do me wrong. Not only that. I have almost reconciled my checkbook twice. To my great satisfaction, I shed 70 percent of my martyr complex, lost 45 percent of my fascination for glamorous suffering, and smashed 85 percent of my perverse attraction to the victim archetype. I am only marginally afraid of the dark, and can for the first time in years, sleep with the lights off, three hours per night. I started walking two miles per day, and as of last Tuesday, I was 11 miles outside of Amarillo.

I'm pleased that this year I've met many new people and expanded my network and reached a bigger audience. Truly life has been kind to me, I no longer fear pasta made from semolina and shaped in the form of slender tubes. I'm ecstatic that I have deepened my connections with pragmatic idealists who share my core values on this and other boards throughout the New World, some parts of Asia. And I'm proud that I have honed my messages and scribbling so well that I'm having a more profound influence than ever before. It has been literally weeks or possibly months since I have been chastised or reprimanded for my attitude.

There is also the distinct possibility that my applications at McDonalds have been approved under the new McDonalds minimum-wage-work until you die plan. I can now finally put my G.I. Bill bachelors of Liberal Arts degree to good use …… You want fries with that?

And lastly, I may have been approved for a paper route in my neighborhood!

Been an interesting year, and it is only half over. If I can just get this old hoopie painted by say ... “Thanksgiving” ... this could prove to be one of the best years’ ever!

C’Mon shark!

BCO
No I didn't say that ... Must have been some other guy.
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