Bus or Boat?
by
George Harper
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| Craig and Bev Bowen with dog Trouble |
The Bowens
We have been very fortunate to have Craig and Bev Bowen of Villa Rica, GA as guests of Charles and Elaine McGarity at the New Orleans rally and now in Orange Beach, AL. Craig and Charles met through their work in the transportation and logistics industry.
This is the story of a very hard working couple with an interesting retirement dream. Craig manages a transloading facility in Fairburn, Georgia, where freight is off-loaded from the CSX railroad onto trucks. Bev works for Delta Airlines where she builds the flight schedules for Delta in and out of Atlanta. She determines what aircraft will fly what route and when. She builds the schedules three months out, so at the time of the interview in mid-March, she was working on the June schedule. Both Craig and Bev often work 7 days per week. In addition Craig works a second, part-time job earning "bus money" cleaning and inspecting food grade grain-hauling rail cars at another facility. He is actually an inspector looking for insect contamination in the grain cars.
Craig and Bev met through mutual friends, and now have three grown sons living out of state, and five grandchildren. Bev had some RV travel experience when she was a teenager, but it is not the fondest memories for her; there are things a teenage girl had rather be doing than traveling with grownups in an RV. Nonetheless, she now enjoys traveling in the bus with Craig.
The Project
Bus or boat? That is the question Craig Bowen confronted about five years ago when he began to think about a retirement hobby. Craig grew up learning how to work on and build things. He has always been handy and he loves to work with wood. He finally decided that a bus would be more practical because he and Bev could go more places.
Craig grew up in East Liverpool, OH, on the Ohio river where he was always around boats. The famed Delta Queen paddle wheeler was a frequent sight, and his particular love was wooden boats. The beautiful mahogany wood used in the construction of the classic Chris Craft yachts was an inspiring example for Craig.
Craig took a fork in the road and chose a bus, but he expressed his love of boats by incorporating a marine theme for the interior. In this picture we see some of he beautiful mahogany Craig chose for the bus. Craig commented, "I love wood and I wanted it to look like a yacht."
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| Craig and Bev in the bus's Salon |
Here are some more examples of the African mahogany wood chosen for the bus. This picture shows the ceiling with 3/4 in. pine marine lap on the sides. The custom A/C vents had to be made to an exact size in order to properly distribute the air flow:
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All Lighting is LED
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When asked what feature of the coach are you the most proud of, Craig said, "The island galley, and the water closet with hand made copper sink ." Bev said, "I really love the dark wood." One of the biggest frustrations for Craig is finding time to work on the project considering his demanding work schedule.
Note the pipes are copper too:
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| Hand Made Copper Sink |
The vanity sink is pure copper as well:
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| Hand Made Copper Vanity Sink |
The bus is a 1995 MCI 45 ft commercial motorcoach that was in charter service. It was involved in a fire that damaged the roof and was acquired by a Mr. Raymond Cox. Mr. Cox, now retired, was a 2-cycle Detroit diesel engine guru and go-to guy after Detroit Diesel discontinued the 2-cycle engines. Mr. Cox bought the bus after the insurance settlement with the owners and re-skinned the roof with new aluminum. He completely refurbished the chassis and painted the exterior. Considering that MCI rates their commercial chassis @ 300,000 miles or 30 years, Craig and Bev should be good to go for a while.
When Craig bought the coach about five years ago, the interior was an empty shell. One of his first challenges was insulating the shell with spray foam which had to be trimmed to fit:
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| Hand-Trimmed Foam Insulation |
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| Pantographic Compartment Doors |
Craig can adjust the horsepower of the Detroit Series 60 engine via software and currently has it set at 435 HP. Note one of the large cooling fans is dedicated solely for charge air cooling.
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| Hefty Detroit Series 60 Engine |
The 20 KW Power Tech generator could power three or four coaches, and Craig plans to set up such a mother ship configuration to supply traveling buddies with power when they are in dry camp situations.
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| Power Tech 20 KW Generator |
What amazing craftsmanship has gone into turning this commercial motorcoach into a retirement dream. SECC is fortunate to have Craig and Bev join our rallys from time to time, and we hope to see more of them. We will look forward to seeing project updates and look forward to the day when Craig and Bev can retire and enjoy traveling more in their beautiful retirement dream.
