PAINT.....enough said.

Whew, I'm tired. That was a long four days, but oh what a difference four days can make! I'm too exhausted for lots of words, so we'll let the pictures do the talking.

Dubs. Let's start with some dubs. Ok, not exactly 20" rims, but they're our wheels and they used to look like crapola with layers of flaky black paint. Jeanell picked up where Rob left off scrubbing.
After lots of toxic paint stripper, wirewheels, and hand scrubbing, just about all of the paint was removed.Taped up and primed.
Now we're rolling in style.The back bumper also looked like poopy-doop so that was stripped down. In hindsight I should've stripped the front one as well.
Those white wheels look badass, but we've gotta do something about that yellow.And so it begins. Tape, tape, and more tape. Let's not forget about the tape.I am now the doctor of mixology. Not the bartending kind, although I can throw together a margarita when the need arises. Four parts primer, one part reducer, one part hardener. Time to say goodbye to the scout troop 99 transport vehicle. The Hoopty is about to be reborn.Pimped and primed.The first of about a million coats of color are starting to get sprayed. Before we move on with this, allow me to rant a tad. The paint is not nearly maroon enough. More like a dark red. It turns out picking car paint is the same as picking house paint only more expensive. In order to choose a color to cover about 60,000 square feet of bus, I have to look at a paint sample that is the size of a hummingbird booger. But hey, this one looks just right through the microscope but let's check the name because paints usually have cryptic names like "angry ocean amnesia". Turns out this paint has a reasonable name - "MAROON". Yes, maroon. That's what I'm looking for. Strangely though, the name was indeed cryptic. By "maroon", they really meant "dark red that hopes to grow up to be a real maroon one day". It looks better in low light so we can only go to night games and 3:30 games......well maybe.After two days of painting, the Hoopty is ready for its unveiling, or at least an untaping.The Hoopty is taking shape with all the tape and paper removed (except that little piece above the windshield). So I really should do a final buffing/wet-sand to remove all of the orange peel, fish-eyes, and bugs stuck in the paint, but I just don't have it in me so it will have to do, as is. So here she is in all her glory. Trust me, the pictures are better than the real thing, but it sure is better than the yellow and what do you expect for a $650 short bus.
The rear bumper has some maroon overspray, but we'll just pretend I meant it to be that way, and I got a tad overanxious and taped up the bumpers too early so the tape pulled some of the gloss off of both bumpers - still looks going down the road.
So we're getting much closer to being ready for Cincy next weekend. Hopefully we can get some signage on, and I still need to install the mirrors. I'm not sure if there will be another posting prior to next week's game, but there will definitely be one showing the fun of the tailgate. See you there.

Regarding football - two words - "Western Michigan".