Sorry, got distracted with food....
Ok so the camper van goes BANG !
Hmmm, that didn't sound good, kinda starting to smell burning oil, look down and the temp gauge is off the scale, look in the rear view mirror and we are leaving a trail of smoke like a saturn 5 rocket taking off, ohhhhhh nooooooooooo.
Blown the motor, big time, now we are in the mountains, miles from anywhere, daughter due at the airport expecting us, it's her first trip alone and she will have no idea where we are, got no phone signal, things are looking grim.
I stuck the bus in second gear, asked my wife to roll me a cigarette fixed a determined look on my face and pressed onwards, I swear i willed that thing to get to the bottom of those mountains without seizing up, the white smoke was so intense as we crawled into this little village it was freaky.
So we broke down basically as we pulled into these peoples driveway to get off the road, the bus made this awful squaking noise, shuddered and stopped, that was it, dead.
First thing I see is a bloke about 50 walking towards me playing a ukulele, I'm not kidding.
He has a huge shed next to the house, it is filled with ukuleles, all sorts, old ones, new ones, custom ones, hand made ones, half built prototypes, body and neck blanks scattered to the 4 winds, painted ukes, heart shaped ukes, CRAZY original design whacky amazing ukes.
I reach behind me for the blue dolphin and smile.
This guy and his wife totally took over the situation, one phone call and a friend with a nice new car is coming to pick us up and get us to the airport and bring us back to the dead bus and the uke man and his uke universe.
"Now that's all sorted" he said, "lets have a cup of tea and play all of these ukes !".
Just magic, perfect, all the tension worry and stress dissolved in 3 minutes flat amid a sea of ukuleles, smiles and friendship, true community, why It's fantastic to be a human, why the world is not such a bad place after all.
We collected our daughter and went back to their place and played and laughed and sang and cried and played some more until the wee small hours, crashed out in the old camper van for the last time still holding the blue dolphin, grinning like a cheshire cat.
It gets better, in the morning I decided to walk into the village and try and find a bakery or something and shout everyone breakfast and there sitting by the roadside 300 yards from where the bus died is a little Ford bubble car, FOR SALE, 2002 model, great little thing, it has 2500 ono in the sign and I got it for 1500 bucks cash on the spot and a handshake, had the transport problem sorted before 8am, before anyone else woke up !
"fantastic stuff, good effort" says our host, reaching for a uke, "lets sit here in the sun and play a little bit more before you head off, there's hot buns and coffee coming right up.
3 hours later we hug, declare our lifelong friendship and pull out of the driveway in our new car, the bus can stay there for as long as it takes me to work out what i'm gonna do with it, it's all cool, the wife loves the little bubble car, my daughter is sitting in the back playing the green dolphin and the last thing i saw as we left was this guy waving a ukulele in the air to say goodbye.
There, wasn't it worth waiting for that story