Bus Painting BBQ :: Conversion Day 2

We had our bus painting bbq party on Saturday, and several producers came out to help paint the bus. It was a long hot day, but also a lot of fun. It was really cool of so many nice folks to come out and lend a hand. Some folks had donated online, and this was the first time we met face-to-face.

Here are some more pics:

washing and cleanin the bus for paint...

after lots of prep, we started priming:

bbq break:

sarah grilled while levi made ice cold fresh squeezed lemonade/grapefruit/mint juice.

back to the bus

the below pic reminds me a bit of this pic from the animation painting party...

when i take breaks, i like to just sit and look at this bus, and think about all the people who helped this project get to where it is. we almost finished priming by the end of day. we cleaned up as it got dark, and loaded all the gear into levis truck. the remaining volunteers took off- some helped for over 12 hours! Levi and I loaded into his truck and started home; as we paused to take one last look at our bus, his truck broke down again- though not on the freeway this time- it still totally sucked, as everyone had left. sarah came back and we had to load all the gear from levis truck to her car. then unload back home. we were all pretty exhausted...

we rented a paint sprayer the next day and finished painting the blue. levi rocks the face sock.

our bus did make it to blue, our camera batteries ran out before we did. you can see more pics on our Road to Oprah bus conversion flickr set.

big big thanks to all the volunteers who cam out and helped!

We will be painting again this Saturday (lettering and logos) for those who would like to help paint our Road to Oprah bus.

I'd also like to welcome some of our newest producers from around the world:

#	username	Producer Name	$		why?
7696	rich	Richard Walsh	10
7695	shirley a	Shirley A. Anderson	1.01
7694	kai0_tika	Kyle Tom	10
7693	rhys100	http://www.Violinkid.com	1
7692	Alexander Camarillo	Alexander Camarillo	10		Jules Engel, and my mother.
7691	LisaAndMatt	Matthew & Lisa Corvo	100
7690	jakeacc	Jake Mathew	10
7689	Ben Zolno	Ben Zolno	1
7688	elise belknap	Elise Belknap	10
7687	pollie	Pollie Davis	5
7686	Greg Slaney	Greg Slaney	3

Thanks everyone for the support! We really appreciate/need it :)

We are planning a big meeting tomorrow night for everyone on the Road to Oprah Crew to sit down together for the first time and see where we are at in terms of budget and scheduling. We are running out of time, and there is still a lot to do, and we are honestly a bit behind our fundraising goal. There are a lot of complexities in planning a trip like this with 8 people taking time off jobs to try and make it happen. It will be good to geteveryone together to talk.

I'll let you all know how it goes.

best,

n