Comments on: #74. Youth group vehicles that break down, blow up and in general suck.

By: Kim

Kim — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:42:40 +0000

A few of us from my youth group were almost to the airport(5 hours from our town) when the van's transmission starting acting really weird! Thankfully we got to the airport and got on our plane! When we got back from a week in Haiti we all just really wanted to get home, and totally forgot about our van until we got inside! So we prayed and prayed and prayed for that van to work! We started out and 10 minutes later it started in again, so we pulled over so the leaders could "fix" it! They actually did it and praise Jesus we all got home!

By: SoCalJesusLover

SoCalJesusLover — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:35:44 +0000

Our youth pastor seriously rented a van from http://www.rentawreck.com. And guess what happened? 100 miles into the drive to camp it broke down. Shocking.

By: SoCalJesusLover

SoCalJesusLover — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:35:44 +0000

Our youth pastor seriously rented a van from http://www.rentawreck.com. And guess what happened? 100 miles into the drive to camp it broke down. Shocking.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:04:58 +0000

Our church van was named "Jezebel." With good reason.

By: Ann.

Ann. — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:04:46 +0000

This reminds me of a story about our old church/school bus. Sometime in the 1970s or 1980s, the church bought this old city bus (which people would try to get on when we went to field trips in the city) for our Christian school. The bus was probably a late 1960s model. I remember going to many sporting events in the bus, but the best time had to be one night after our basketball teams played one of our biggest rivals. That night it started to snow while we were at the opposing team's school. Of course, the bus chose that night to breakdown entirely. After standing around the school for a long time, their principal decided to let us borrow their brand new extended cab Blue Bird bus for the trip home. That was the warmest and most comfortable bus ride we ever had. About a day later, our own old bus was towed back to the school. The church finally retired the old city bus when I was about a Sophomore in high school-they then purchased a regular school bus (ancient) of course. I think that bus was worse than the first and I'm not sure how many games we were late to because the bus driver was out tinkering under the hood while we all waited to get on. It was annoying then, but makes me smile now. I understand that church budgets are tight, but I think sometimes they put more money into these old vehicles over time than they would buying a newer one.

By: AEP

AEP — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:09:31 +0000

True story: on the way to IMPACT youth camp one of the other church's from my town saw another church bus on the side of the road and stopped to see what was going on. It turned out the other church was on the way to IMPACT too, so they just combined the groups and let them ride the rest of the way up to the camp. Before they got there, however, the church van that they were currently one blew a tire so they had to stop on the side of the road. For half of the group, this was the second church bus that had broken down in a few hours. Finally they got the tire fixed and both groups made it too the camp right as registration closed. They sure had a good story to tell when they got there.

By: Laisa Schweigert

Laisa Schweigert — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:37:23 +0000

Hahaa it's so true. Anyone ever locked the keys in the van a couple states away, and had to call the police
so they can use the coat hanger to open the door? great youthgroup times

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:14:11 +0000

Our yg first had a van that had springs and pieces of metal sticking out everwhere (several people have ripped pants and skin…the pastor's daughter has a scar from deep cut inflicted by the van.

Then we got a fourth hand bus that had no heat (which made trips to winter camp in the Poconos all the more fun). It broke down several times on trips, most famously we had stopped for lunch about 3 hours from home and at first the leaders were in denial about and repeatedly kept trying to fix it. After several attempts of fixing it, they finally called various parents willing to drive and pick us up. Another trip driving home one of the senior boys repaired the engine with some duct tape.

After I graduated I started helping with the jr. high yg and after summer camp we were driving back and the other yg we go to camp with were pulled over because their bus had broken down, so we gave them a ride.

By: Morgan Hamilton

Morgan Hamilton — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:02:37 +0000

one time we didn't even make it off of our street before the bus's brake lights weren't working, and the engine was smoking… good times, good times…

By: Jeff Burnsides

Jeff Burnsides — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:54:27 +0000

So…. I'm like 73 weeks to late on this post, but my youth group had "Big Bertha" that would start maybe 25% of the time. It would randomly eat belts or other various engine components. Eventually, the church outgrew that building and we built up the road and sold the old building. Part of the deal was whoever bought the building, also bought Bertha. I think she is still sitting there 10 years later, in the same spot we left her. Well, instead of buying more vans, we decided to rent, but we must have rented from Beelzebub’s Cars! Cars! Cars! because the rentals were always breaking down as well and would come with random odors and stains. We used to play "Figure out what died in here last time it was rented". Well, we then progressed to chartering buses for trips, but again, we chartered the cheap way. There is a local bus company who's entire fleet was built it what appears to be 1940. On one particular trip to Florida (from Tennessee), during the summer. The air on the bus went out. Instead of waiting for the company to send down another bus for us, the driver decided to just fix it himself. His solution… "Coke bottles propping open the windows". Apparently, the width of the vehicle made it possible to only open the windows on one side of the bus the width of one Coke bottle (the 20oz, not a 2 liter. Imagine the smell on that thing with a septic tank that had not been emptied in several decades, mixed with 60 sweaty teenagers. It was not pleasant, to say the least. One fun note to that trip, though, on the way home (we switched the bottles to the other side), we had a tire blow out. It was the tire immediately below the chemical toilet tank. Poo and pee spread all over the interstate. You should have seen the look on the poor family traveling behind us. They had to pull over and scrape the larger portions off the windshield.