Connection Between The Bus And Ted example essay topic

The BusI have this friend named Ted. Ted has an old school bus all spray-painted and beat up looking. This in and of itself is not that big a matter. What makes this bus different is he attached the top half of a Volkswagon van on top of the bus. This bus has been around for around fifteen years or so and has looked about the same if not worse the whole time.

See, Ted used to live in this bus. It's a project he has been working on for some time now. Numerous people have asked him why he won't get rid of the ugly thing. His parents don't ask him to, they tell him to get rid of it. I have wondered myself why he has a bus such as he does and why he bothers putting so much money into it.

I do notice a slight difference in Ted's eyes when he is working on it though, so there must be something about it worth saving. Ted Jensen was born December 29, 1969 right here in Vancouver, Washington at the old Memorial Hospital (now a clinic I have been told.) His parents are still alive and kicking along with his brother and sister. I met Ted as my neighbor when I first moved to my current home. He has a strong sense of what's right and fair, as I feel I do.

This must be the biggest reason why I like Ted. That and he would not intentionally hurt anybody without them deserving it completely. He may be a little headstrong at times, but he is very easy going most of the time. If I ever need anything, and I do mean anything, Ted is the guy I go to.

If he does not already have it, or have access to the item or information I want, he can usually tell me who does. The year is 1986 and the location is a Grateful Dead concert. As Ted was enjoying the festivities of such a concert he came across a vehicle that pulled him to examine it closer. It was an old school bus that had been rebuilt and remodeled into a motor home of sorts. Ted knew then that he had to have one and proceeded to investigate his options.

As luck would have it one of his friends needed some cash flow for a lawyer and had a 1976 school bus for sale to get it. This was the way Ted wanted to live, in a converted bus, and for four years he did just that. So began the life of the bus with Ted. A month after the bus was acquired another friend of his had a 1965 Volkswagon van to get rid of. The friend gave it to him and they immediately began getting it ready for major modification. The van was hauled up to the hills where Ted had chosen to set camp with the Bus.

Ted had set up a hoist, way up in a few trees, so he could lift virtually anything he wanted off the ground. After attaching the straps to the four corners of the van, they got out the torch and proceeded to cut the van in half right at the middle joint. After it was removed from it's bottom, the top of the van was hoisted up on to the bus. Ted positioned it towards the back of the bus so that it was facing backwards.

This was so he could open the van's back door (which still had good hydraulics to hold it open) when he was at a drive-in, party, or concert, he could have a little deck to walk out on. Most of the van's features still work like the lights and the windshield wipers. The bus had no generator for electricity inside other than when the engine was running, but the alternator would only supply enough to run the bus's original wiring and no more. Ted needed a power source. Conveniently located by a river was a barn that belonged to a local farmer. The barn had power to it and was not far from the water's edge, which was exactly where the bus was parked.

After doing a little midnight mission, the bus had power and things were a little easier for Ted. The cops ended up telling him he had to move the bus for ordinance reasons. The river he was parked next to happened to be the county line. So he moved the bus to the other side of the river so he was still legal. Everything seemed all right until somebody needed power.

The power was across about 100 feet of water and at least another 80 feet of grass. Ted was and is a thinker. He cleverly ran a very long extension cable across the river and then quietly dug a shallow trench back up o the barn. No power just was not an option to Ted. There were various changes and / or modifications made to the bus throughout this time.

For example, the whole wiring system had to be rebuilt, which wasn't too bad, except that all the original wires were solid white. Now, I don't know the general persons' knowledge on basic troubleshooting of a wiring harness, but this made the task extremely more time consuming and opened the door for chances of error. He had to come up with a method of a testing to see which wire end connected to which. One really long, about fifteen feet longer than the bus, continuity tester was built and with teamwork and a lot of wasted time the wiring problems were reduced. The seats were mostly removed along with shelving being put in their place. Then one time, Ted made and attached a relatively small cannon to his bumper.

Some guy owed him a lot of cash, I guess, so he thought a scare was needed to persuade the person into paying. Well, by the time the smoke cleared and the ringing in his ears went away Ted was long gone. He later found out what damage he had caused after shooting his new cannon. First I should say the bumper on the bus will probably never be straight again. And of the trailer house he shot at, well, the metal rod he fired stopped only after going through and / or destroying a refrigerator, toilet, shower stall, a few mirrors, several walls and finally into the base of a sturdy waterbed frame. No person was seriously hurt, but there were some nicks and scraps from shrapnel.

Some time had passed since the cannon, and a court lawsuit Ted had been dealing with was coming to a settlement. Ted won the lawsuit and received around $750,000 as his payment. Now, I should mention that this was a time when Ted's quality of life was at a low, if not downright unhealthy stage. He was already using various drugs at the time and now had a lot of cash.

Things didn't change because of the money though; instead they were intensified and then amplified. After a month had passed and all his money was gone he still took a year of living in a very unhealthy manner before he got a clue and started cleaning up. As a part of starting over, he moved out of the bus and into a house to try to begin again and not make the same unhealthy decisions. It has been about 10 years since this time and Ted has decided to restart his project. He's already gutted a couple travel trailers for parts and painted the whole thing a single shade of gray. It appears no matter what may have happened in the bus or what might happen in it's future, Ted will be right there with it.

All the while, making the most of whatever comes across his way. There is definitely a connection between the bus and Ted, a very elusive connection. When asked why he won't get rid of it, he says it's a thing that has to be done. He has spent so many days and nights living in this bus that it would be wrong not to finish. It has become a passion for him.

It's not that there are many reasons to keep it, more so there are many reasons not to get rid of it. Appendix Writing this essay was a difficult task for me. The hardest thing to do is figuring out where to start. After that it's only a little easier. While I was formulating where to start, I would talk with Ted or his friends and family. As they would tell me things they knew I would start to think of ways to start the essay with the knowledge they were telling me.

This would be good if I stayed on track of what they were talking about. The typical scenario would consist of asking questions and half way through what they were saying I would be formulation new paragraphs and ideas and miss the second half of their story. The other thing that I have found to be difficult is getting the information you have down on paper, hopefully in an intelligent and understandable way. Once I get a steady flow of information coming from my fingers I found that by staying there and not stopping for anything, I could write about a page and a half. After that, I would begin to lose where I was in a deal and either re-write it or forget to write something all together. All in all, I am rather happy about this short essay about Ted and his bus..