Texas Bus Roundup

TBR 2009

This years event was held on October 15-18. We had 26 coaches and their owners attending, our largest gathering of buses so far. The weather was much cooler and very sunny. It made for great fireside chats in the evenings.

My wife and I decided to head out to the rally the day before, as I had several phone calls from bus nuts that were early arrivals or were having problems with their reservation. I told my wife "I sure wish we could leave today", her reply was "I don't see why not", that's all it took! We had a wonderful drive and I was anxious to arrive on site. My wife still had to work but she was having problems with our air card signal. We stopped just outside of Fort Worth to grab a bite to eat, I decided to move the air card to behind the desktop drive instead of the front. It worked great the rest of the trip. We arrived at around 11:30 pm, hoping not to wake anyone up. Sonnie greeted us with his flashlight to help us get set up. I was anxious for the morning to come as this was going to turn out to be a great bus rally.

Morning arrived, grabbed my coffee and went to meet some early arrivals, a couple of MCI's, GM's and several Flxible's were there along with a few Eagles. Was hard to miss Bob and Sandi's red Eagle that was newly painted. Bob had sent me some pictures, but seeing it in person was a whole nother story, what a great paint job.

We ended up having four Flxible's show up, one Clipper, a VL-100 and two Hi-Level's. It was their first time at the rally, they had heard about the rally from another Flxible owner. What a great showing of some gorgeous iron. One guy came with his GM PD 4104, he was from Sherman. He had heard about the rally by work of mouth and wanted to see what it was all about.

Lots of new faces and buses, quite a few of them for the first time. We had several who had attended every rally, most notable was Sonnie, Mike & Brenda, Chuck, Larry and Christy were the faithful. The couple that were riding their bikes through the park last year came in their MCI, Kwan & Chun. I had no idea they were coming, so it was a welcome site to see they had not forgot.

We were able to get the reservation problems worked out, thanks to the folks at Eisenhower State Park. The are we always stayed in was almost full, only enough room for 30 coaches, but some spots did not have electricity or water. Several couples that were looking to buy a bus conversion also were there, asking lots of questions and taking lots of pictures. Wendy Crosby was there with her husband Jim Wilkerson, she is a professional photographer, I twisted her arm to be our designated "TBR Photographer" for next year. You can see her work here. The bus rally pictures she took here.

We held another arrival hamburger/hotdog arrival BBQ and also Big Ronnie came on Friday night and Saturday morning to supply us with vitals. We also had coffee and donuts in the morning, for those that chose to get up!

Enjoy the pictures as this was the best TBR so far! Click on thumbnails for a larger view.

Pictures are located at TBR 2009 2