Nashville, Tennessee
Sleeping in the wilderness (big spiders remember!), you get up when the sun and forest life get up. I managed a perfect night’s sleep in my hammock. A few of the others that slept inside the bus were relieved when I moved, as I had conviently placed my hammock across the cage door, blocking the exit. I was pleased with a good night’s sleep, they were pleased with being able to go to the toilet.
The campsite looked completely different in the daylight. The trees were covered in massive cob webs, and I mean massive. A trip to the toilet and I was greeted with a large swarm of spiders huddled in a nest on the ceiling… think I’d use the other toilet block. I was glad we hadn’t seen all these spiders the night before.
A few hours later, everyone had showered and dressed. We hung out by the bus shooting bottles and cans of beer, throwing a American football around and having a wander around the forest and lake. I could never understand American football. The ball was smaller, but we all had a go at throwing it like a true American Quarter Back.
Back on the road, we were all excited to reach the state of Tennessee.
The excitement was short lived, after a quick Wall-Mart stop to fill our faces with junk and supplies for the drive, we hit a major problem, not that the brake failure wasn’t a major problem, this one could be the end of the prison bus road trip. In the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, the gearbox had seized in first gear, this gave us a maximum of about 8MPH, and that was pushing it.
First gear on a dual carriageway is exciting! Slowly but surely we managed to drive up to a nearby garage. Our hopes were dashed when we walked into the garage to a group of men with “no chance” written all over their faces. It appears the prison bus was ‘too big’ for car garages to bother looking at. It was pretty much the same story at every garage we found. We were starting to look at dumping the bus and finding a greyhound bus stop to finish our journey, when we approached a Ford garage. The garage was a new car dealership, we had given up hope of asking for someone to fix the bus, but rather asking for any help in finding some bus garage nearby. The garage was closing, and the salesman was more interested in going home to his family than helping us.
Sat in the carpark of a car garage, we weighed up our options. We had no idea where the nearest bus station or train station was, but this was pretty much our only option. While we were talking, a pick up truck arrived at the garage to collect an old car parked up on the side, so thought worth asking if the guy knew of any garage, or where the bus or train station was. He took one look at the bus, and said follow me.
We had no idea if he said follow me because he was taking us to the bus station, a garage, or some shack right out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre… but we followed, in first gear, giving the engine all it had to keep up with the guy. I feared the engine would pack in, we were pushing 15MPH as the engine screamed down the road in first gear. We finally pulled into a huge lorry park, the pick up guy directed us to the large workshop. I spoke to one of the three mechanics and explained our problem. He said he would take a look shortly, and went back to work on a lorry. The 15 of us gathered outside and talked about what could happen.
After a few hours, the mechanics began to look at the bus. Another hour or so later, we were called in for the verdict. They were keen to point out we had driven all the way from the east coast in a clapped out old prison bus, and gave us a lesson in tyre pressures and the importance of them! Opps. I was told to take the bus for a test drive, and was overjoyed when it changed into the other gears. Back at the garage, we gathered together to collect some money to pay for the work. We figured if we all put in $20, that would give us $300, if it was anymore, we would then work it out. I walked over to the 3 best mechanics in Tennessee who were know knackered, with a wedge of 20’s. They waved at me, and said no charge, just hope you make it. We were overjoyed at their generosity, after a few pics with them, and many many thanks, we left for the nearest motel. It was late, we needed a beer, and needed some sleep.
It was another heavy night on the beer, sat around the motel happy that our adventure was still alive. We had brought a crate of beer for the mechanics, and made that our first stop of the day. It was weird seeing 3 mechanics turn shy when I walked in with the beer. We promised to send them a postcard from LA. We left on our way to Memphis with big smiles on our faces.
Written by Richard Smith
