A Model Citizen

When we first bought our bus last summer, I started poking around to see if there happened to be any GM 4106 scale models or toys out there.

But all references I could find with a quick search included the words ‘rare’ and ‘expensive’.

Seeking out a toy model would have to be a project for another day and I went back to helping Chris get our real one on the road.

Flash forward to earlier this summer when serendipity led us to meet up with mega GM busnut, JLV. He’s the super sweet fella who gifted us a corner marker light for our bus.  When we were hanging out, I noticed he had a bookcase full of models of various GM buses (but no 4106) – and I was salivating all over them.

A couple weeks later, I had an e-mail from JLV introducing me to Dave Dearstyne of MackBuses.com, an accomplished bus modeler and former 4106 driver for Trailways. Click through to his site, it’s full of fun photos from his collection.. I can only imagine visiting Dave’s house is like going to Bus Legoland.

We struck up a conversation, and he not only happened to have a few of the rare 4106 O-scale resin casts made in the 1970s, he offered to custom paint us one!

I was so giddy, and simply asked for .. blue.

Silly me.

He requested pictures of our bus and any history I knew of her, and the project became a custom model of what our bus might have looked like while in service with her original owner – Citizen Auto Stage.

(My clever wit in naming this post might be clicking now?)

And that’s when Dave surprised us by e-mailing a photo of our bus in service.

Woah.  He had a photo of OUR bus…  and was able to custom paint a model of it for us???

At this point, I didn’t care what he quoted us.. we would have paid it.  His trivial price however, was nowhere near the ‘expensive’ I encountered in my initial search.

A reminder – when we make room for serendipity, it tends to remove obstacles.

He said it’d take him a month or so to get it done. He finished it back in August and sent us pictures, and we’ve been anxious to get to Florida to have it catch up with us.

And it did.. earlier this week.

I present to you.. A Model Citizen.

It is beyond gorgeous and perfect. A true treasure.

Not a Model Citizen

Our cat Kiki, by the way is definitely NOT a model citizen.  We prepared our absentee ballot requests to send off to South Dakota, and she shredded them!!  D%*N Cat!!!

Reminder: If you’re a nomad like us, and want to vote in the upcoming general election – get your absentee ballot requests sent in!