Thread: Need help on bus origins.

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SAY IT JB! SAY IT!


Is that clear enough??? 8-)

Those blokes are far too dense to catch the drift of the name alone, so you've GOT to spell it out!! Maybe......

Baby Elephant.jpg
The Baby Elephant
So named because the obfuscation and recalcitrance of NZTA
Ensured that this project took longer than an elephant to gestate!!!
With sincere thanks to the folks from Fair Go!!

You've got it!
That's pretty well exactly what I had envisaged.
With perhaps a few signature bars of 'Baby Elephant Walk' from Daktari.

As an aside; Matt Donaldson told me that the engineer told him that that bus was the cause of an internal audit in NZTA.
True or not; I can't say.
But I'd like to think so; so that no other poor bugger has to endure what we did.

Also: re the reference to the top of the gear lever; it came off a Corsair that Dave Howlett actually flew (and crashed) during WWII, and upon him becoming late it was gifted to me.
So it's a piece of nostalgic history that will mean nothing to anybody else; but it does mean something to me, and even though Dave may be late, his memory will be kept alive.

Let's see if this works..

That's it!
Thanks for that.

I note it's from the movie 'Hatari',not 'Daktari' as I called it.
There is a reason for that; it's called 'senile decay'.

I do remember now that Daktari was a 'made for tv' programme, and Hatari was the movie.
It's a bugger getting old!

Our 50th wedding anniversary is just a bit over three years away . . . I'd better remember that!

(Now what's my name again?)

Originally Posted by johnboy

That's it! Thanks for that.

I note it's from the movie 'Hatari',not 'Daktari' as I called it.
There is a reason for that; it's called 'senile decay'. It's a bugger getting old!

Our 50th wedding anniversary is just a bit over three years away . . . I'd better remember that!

(Now what's my name again?)

Ya know.. I don't think I really know your name!!! and you HAD BETTER remember that anniversary date! :-)

Originally Posted by 34_40

Ya know.. I don't think I really know your name!!!

It's still the same; I've not changed it in nearly seventy years!

Originally Posted by 34_40

and you HAD BETTER remember that anniversary date! :-)

What date?
What anniversary?

HAH! Let me know how that works out for ya!!!

Seems to me that no matter what side of the earth you're on.. A wife will react the same if you miss the wedding anniversary!

Then she'll give you the "LOOK"! And then you're done for!!

So jb, how's the progress on the bus? Ran across this picture, and wondered if maybe you'd changed plans a bit....

Changed plans?

Ummmm . . . no.

I'm a gabby / mouthy sort of fella.

But that has me speechless.

I don't know what to say.

I don't even know what to think.

In all probability the fella that built that . . . that . . . that . . . that whatever it is; had a very deprived childhood and needs a mother really badly.

Crikey!
That experience left me all shaky!
I don't know if my heart can take shocks like that!

Seriously though; the bus is making progress, albeit rather slowly, there has been the long Christmas / New Year break, and of course the Donaldsons had projects that had been booked prior to the eventual certification of our machine.

The anchorages for the seat belts have been engineered, mounted, and certified.

The floor is all done, and while not level, it is all now on one plane, sloping slightly to the front.
That was a surprisingly major job; as it varied as much as 5/8" in several places.
But it was achieved with string lines about a foot apart, and many packers of varying thicknesses.
Straightforward enough, but time consuming.

When we saw it last (about three weeks ago,) the wall panels from the windows down were being affixed to the walls.

Arrangements too had been made to have the graffiti that the kids of Billings Oklahoma High School had written on the ceiling to be photographed and then transferred to the new ceiling.

We're now about due to take another run up to Thames to check it out again.