I met Pete Kane on Tinder in February 2015. We frequently hung out. Eventually he introduced me to Nick Powley, whom he met at the Hackers and Founders group on Meetup. I needed a place to stay and Nick had an open room. I lived with him and Simon, another roommate. A few months later, I was laid off. I collected a few personal items from my work desk and headed out of the office. I was told I could work for the remainder of the week if I wanted to say my goodbyes, but my heart was heavy and I couldn’t get out of bed.

Pete had been looking on Craigslist and saw retired yet functional Metro Transit buses being sold for $3,500. Pete asked, “Will you go in half of the cost of the bus? Since you don’t have a job anymore, we can take it on the road.” Having just received my severance check I said, “Okay.”

We drove to St. Cloud with a couple of friends and made a swift decision to purchase it. The gas tank was filled with about 150 gallons of diesel, and burned at 4 miles per gallon. I couldn’t wait to gut the 1999 Gillig bus and convert it to an RV.

We borrowed tools from my roommate Nick to dismantle all the seats. Almost half of the metal framed seats were rusted on the bottom. We laid the metal framed seats, seat cushions, and metal bar handles on the front lawn of Nick’s house on Burns Avenue in St. Paul. At last, after several weeks, all of the seats were finally removed. It took many buckets of water and rags to wipe the dirt from that 15 year old bus. We went over each area at least a dozen times before there were any signs of progress.

Pete named the bus Chao Moua, and we furnished her with rugs, a bed frame, a mattress, two couches, a coffee table, and a large mirror. We parked Chao Moua outside of Pete’s parents’ house in West St. Paul for two weeks, which annoyed the neighbors. Pete’s father had all the tools we needed to complete the project. I custom built two benches to cover the front wheel wells and taped the edges of the windows to prep the exterior body for the spray paint. Pete and his father built the back shelves and seats and spray painted the exterior.

“Let’s take Chao Moua to the Bay Area and live on the bus,” Pete said. He wanted to be close to the startup scene there. I, on the other hand, had no interest or any connections to that area, but I caved in. I had invested more than half of my savings into the bus already so why not. In the end, I packed up my suitcase and we headed off. I told my parents I was going on a road trip to California. Little did everyone know, I would make the Bay Area my new home.

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