5pm at night. Kids are off playing at the neighbours so we take the moment to head off to empty the tanks, driving confidently towards to gate. The gate is narrow, a 90 degree turn and I'm thinking that I need to swing wide to have a chance of getting through. Putting one set of wheels onto the grass I innocently think 'so long as I keep one set of wheels on the hard surface I should be able to pull us through'. Errr Wrong. Ain't no diff lock baby! Well, so now I'm told.
You'd be right in thinking I should have learned this lesson by now. It's been 2 years straight of driving the 12 tonne bus, but alas there is always something new to learn.....the hard way.
So the result is one rear dual wheel sunk down to the wheel rim, that, when acceleration is applied, puts on a great show of mud flinging. The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, and...round.
So after a lot of standing around staring, we give up and sleep on it. Next morning with the aid of the nightime distilling of ideas, we arise early and set to to start the newly invented - busjitzu. Yes busjitzu.
So how does one actually perform this wonderous performance of bus removal from mud. When nobody around has a tractor to pull you out you start Plan a - Strop and car. Fail. Plan b - Child pulling on strop. Fail. Plan c - 4wd on strop. Fail. Plan d, e, & f do I even bother to mention. Plan g - Well, you place any number of small planks of wood, bricks and gravel below the wheel, drive forwards, (don't even dream of getting those pieces of wood back out - 'thems planks' going to be well sunk into the earth by this point), dig, place more planks, drive backwards, place planks and drive forwards. Then, revert to stage one because you got overexcited at the small progress you made and become cocky thinking you no longer needed to perfom busjitzu, drive backwards, sink to wheel rim height and begin all over again. 6 hours later...you emerge with one bus out of the mud.
Sounds so simple right? It's not. It is dreadful, it's time wasting, no not character building. Don't.get.stuck.
But we got there, we rose to drive another day, to the dumpstation. Sometimes life on the road just ain't that glamorous, ya know? But now we have experienced trusty busjitzu to pull us through. If you need a detailed 'how to,' get in touch - we'll happily exhort the merits of busjitzuing aka "un-sticking" your bus. We could talk for hours about it, 6 in fact.
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Through facebook and the blog you are being very reflective in your practices, I wonder what your children would have said about how you handled the 6 hours?
"Mum?" as stands beside the stuck bus with parents both obviously concertrating on task at hand....
"Yes"
"Can you read my book"
Incredulously, "NO!"
"oh". "Dad?"
"Yes"
"Can you read my book"
Not sure if they are incredibly selectively blind or so used to us being in crazy situations it's worth a shot asking!!!