374 Miles, 7000 Foot Summit, and 100 Police Officers

The first day of my trip was a true test on my buses abilities.  First it needed to withstand my lack of experience in shifting a transmission that requires double clutching.  In some older vehicles you have to put the clutch in, take it out of gear, let the clutch out, put the clutch back in, then shift into the new gear.  This is for both up shifting and down shifting.  Up shifting is not so bad.  But if you want to down shift, there is certainly an art to it.  I certainly ground down the gears some.

Second I got caught in a police stand off.  A guy goes screaming past me at about 130 mph shortly followed by the highway patrol.  He narrowly missed me and clipped a car up the road.  I must admit that I'm thinking I hope he gets off the freeway.  Didn't happen.  Just up the road they lay a spike strip and stop the car.  I end up about 300 yards back stuck.  It turned into a massive police response.  Police everywhere with assault rifles and swat with sniper rifles.  The guy claimed he had a gun and there was a small child with him.

After about two hours of sitting there the police finally decided to evacuate the freeway.  They orchestrated everyone to drive backwards up and on ramp and sent us on a detour.  This detour was a steep two lane road that crested a 7000 foot pass.  The bus made it just fine.  It went up some of the hills at 25 miles an hour.  Some of folks in the cars that were following me weren't to happy.  But I didn't even want to go there and would not have if I had any choice.  After following the detour for about two hours I get back to the freeway about 40 miles down the road.

Naturally this put me a little behind my schedule.  Not to mention all the fuel I eat up going up hill for miles at full throttle and 25 mph.  I finally ended the day parked at a Walmart in Springville Ut.  What a day.