The search for HOGVAN

Well, first off, welcome to the Hog Blog... I'm doing a retrograde blog starting from the beginning. I've always wanted to have a school bus to transport people to and from the Skins game, camping, bars, bbqs, whatever the case is, there never seemed to be enough space and way too many cars going to the same place with no parking or expensive parking. Getting a bus, while individually more environmentally-unfriendly, bulky and sketchy, if you add up the emissions from the 5+ cars we used to take to games, the amount saved in parking passes and a little paint job, you've got yourself a pretty damn efficient transport vehicle.

With that thought in mind, I started trying to rally the troops and get dedicated skins fans to throw in some money for said bus. Varying amounts and logistical problems ensued. First, the driver of any passenger vehicle over 14 people needs a commercial drivers license. This would be a pain for multiple drivers to get as well as the insurance for a bus was astronomically higher than a regular street legal van/truck. There was no way to evenly break up the pot and make sure each investor could get a "return" on his investment... This being control over the bus for a certain time period based on monetary input. Also, insurance played a big role in the decision to have one person take sole custody of what was to become the HogVan.

That said, I started to hunt for vans and trucks that could hold a fair amount of people, actually ran, was in my budget (under 2k) and if possible, had a burgundy/gold paint job which would save costs on the backend.

After about a month of combing craigslist (DC, Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Pittsburgh, Raleigh), finally a promising conversion van popped up in Sykesville MD. Two weeks of back and forth negotiating down from 1700, the seller and I settled on $1350. Originially, I was to go up to Sykesville with Todd, a friend of mine who's a mechanic extrodinaire, to check out the van and help me bring it back, however, the sellers availability was before 11am on Sunday morning in Sykesville which is over an hour and half away. 8am Sunday morning I woke up groggy and called Todd, no answer. Called again, silence. Finally, I thought, who would be awake at this hour? Hey, Mom.

So my mother and I rode up to Sykesville in search of HOGVAN. The GPS gave up on us at a mailbox leading down a long farm road... We went down the road for about a mile where the forrest canopy opened up to a clearing in a large farm. Atop a hill, as if it had decended from the heavens, sat the potential HOGVAN. She was glorious. It looked like a match from the craigslist pictures, always a plus, and looked in overall good condition. After calling, Rick (the seller), we finally got to see inside the beast... The interior was in great shape for a 94 Chevy G20. A huge dog (named Ben for Ben Rothlesbuger) hopped in the van, along with a 7 year old girl who then started to tell me about the van. My fears of being murdered on a back country road with my mother present, took a backseat along with Ben and the 7 year old.

It started raining. The engine didn't turn over. Rick looked shocked. He then pulled his truck over and we started to charge the battery while the 7 year old climbed around the van, seemingly inspecting it and giving it a long good bye. Finally, after about 20-30 minutes, we got it running like CP. After a quick spin around the farm, we made the title for cash exchange and we were out of there... On the way home I learned that the windshield wipers actually did work, a huge plus, but the AC didn't pump out of the upper vents, no bueno. Plateless and achy, the van made it back to Arlington, its new home.

The next day was designated to inspecting/fixing the vans unidentified problems...