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Here Comes the Bus
Mon., Apr. 23. 2007 12:57pm EDT
 Karl Messner from ApologetiX here, coming to you live from Dallas, Texas with your weekly bus update.
I have great news. The first milestone in our journey has been met. We've been raising funds to replace our Terrible Van with a custon tour bus. The first step was to raise enough to get the old bus to refurb. The bus "shell" should cost about half the budget of the project. We've passed that, and even though we thought we knew what bus we were getting, we prayed and believe God led us away from that deal. And to a much better situation.
 After riding in the Rental Van (the expensive body double for the Terrible Van), all weekend, and playing three shows, I flew to Dallas Monday morning to get the bus. Superfan and good friend, Larry Davis from Ohio, took a couple vacation days and his first flight on an airplane to come to Dallas to help me drive it home. Sporting my thoroughly researched inspection checklist, we inspected about 20 similar buses to find the best bus in the bunch.
We narrowed it down to several test drives then chose a 1994 MC 12. The engine is a recent replacement and was the most solid one in the lot! Click the photos for an extreme closeup.
 Now, the real work (and expense) begins! We have to tear the seats out, and begin turning this old greyhound into the ApologetiX tour bus. We're going to save tens of thousands of dollars by doing it ourselves and hundreds of thousands of dollars by not buying a brand new tour bus.
This weekend we saw our first "Build the Bus" shirt on a fan at the concert. We were really humbled to put a face to the massive help we've been receiving.
And thanks to the donation from a certain someone :) we can now officially tell you that we've received donations from all fifty states and from eight foreign countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK.
And a big Texas thanks to Texas for being our #1 contributing state, besting even our home state of Pennsylvania with nearly 25% more funds raised by the Lone Star ApologetiX Fans!
 If you're reading this Tuesday, we're, Lord Willing, driving it home! There is much work to be done and anyone who wants to help is welcome. We'll be setting up some fun days where fans can come and help out (maybe even camp out at the Messner Farm... But we're getting ahead of ourselves.) The biggest need right now, is to begin to buy the materials for the renovations. If you've been thinking about helping out and haven't gotten to yet, please do consider helping us...
I Want To Give to Help Build the Bus!
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