Event: PDX LAN 10 - LAN Party Event Date: 08/31/2007 Written By: Warhawk / Ocho Date Written: 02/15/2026 - 09/??/2007

Ocho’s family owns a secret lair in the Bay Area where they store and work on a variety of project vehicles. At one point Ocho announced that he was going to purchase a “short bus” that would be used for LAN trips.  After a bit of searching, Ocho finally acquired a beat up old 10 passenger van/bus (with broken wheelchair lift). 

The plan was to fix it up and use it for an epic road trip to PDX LAN. There was talk about giving it a TMC paint, but there never ended up being time to get it done for this trip. After a bit of TLC, the TMC bus was declared roadworthy, and plans were made for what would be quite an amazing journey to PDX and the mecca of LAN parties. 

The following story is Ocho’s account of what happened. 

PDX LAN 10 - 08/31/2007 - 09/03/2007 By Ocho

Bags were packed, computers were loaded and 72 hours of nonstop LAN party had just finished. For the most part things went well, [TMC] had won table decoration event and overall one out of every 2 member had won something more than a door prize at PDXLAN 10. The only thing left was the epic 12 hour drive home in the epic short bus. 

For the most part we didn’t think we’d have and major issues coming home, after all the bus made the 700 mile trek up. Yes, the bus was slow. Yes, it wasn’t the most comfortable vehicle to be in. However, having 7 good friends together in one vehicle outweighs the minor discomforts. The random discussions, sharing of GPRS internet off of Kraz’s cellphone while on the road, the jokes, the stories told, and all the other random stuff we did to keep us entertained you can’t script ahead of time. We did it LIVE, and that was the motto of the trip. All we knew was we finished an awesome lan party and it was going to be a long drive home.

On the drive up we had known that the bus gets a little bumpy when going more than 60mph. We knew that the driveshaft wasn’t balanced and the faster it went the more vibrations it caused. This was all normal to us. What wasn’t normal was couple hours after leaving Portland was the feel of the bus and how it was getting bumpy at lower speeds. We pulled over a few times just to double check that things weren’t falling apart but for the most part it looks like it was “good enough”. 

The more we drove it the less it felt normal. About 4 hours into our drive things just didn’t feel right. We ended up pulling into a small town and decided to inspect closer underneath the bus. With closer inspection we spotted that the transmission mounts looked dead. We figured that the vibrations were too great and with lack of mounts it’s why the bus vibrated more at lower speeds than before. So in a brilliant (or not so brilliant) idea, we decided to ratchet strap down the transmission to the frame of the bus. 

The idea was rather than have the transmission bouncing around freely it’d be better to have it solid to the frame so that everything would stay together. So while we felt that the motor/transmission was better the vibrations were magnified now that there was no absorption of the engine and drive shaft movements. So while the bus moved, it didn’t feel good at 40mph. Being gutsy we pushed harder and tried to keep it at 60mph. After all, the motto of the night was “DO IT LIVE!”. 

10 hours later we had made it into California and were making our way thorough the mountains in the north. We were limping it really slow and already past our ETA. 10 hours, we should have been approaching Sacramento but instead we were stuck in the north near Yreka. It was probably around 3-4am and the only thing on my mind was we have to keep pushing. Kraz has to get to class later today and we have to keep moving. All estimates weren’t looking good. Limping at 30-40mph would have put us back home way past Kraz’s start of class time. It was first day of class so we had to try and get him there ASAP. 

It was around that time we made the fatal decision. The mentality went from let’s limp this through to : “Let’s do this LIVE, and get Kraz to class we’re going to make it or break it.” Needless to say, going faster didn’t make it better. What got us to worry wasn’t the large amount of vibrations we’ve been enduring for the last 8 hours, it was the loud “CLUNK” followed by a lack of forward moving power of the bus that got the “OH SHIT” alarms to go off.

I was able to pull the bus over to a turn out on the freeway. Took a peak under the bus and it was all bad news. In the dark at 3-4am I saw one of the worst things possible. The starter motor that should be attached to the transmission was dangling and hanging only by the power cables attached to it. The transmission was cracked and the mount that the starter should be attached to was still on the starter motor, but not on the transmission. 

The worst part that sank into my mind was not that the starter was hanging off to the side but that I had turned off the bus. At that moment I realized that even if we were to drive real slow back home I have no way to because the only way to start the bus back up was not attached to the critical part it needs to be in order to make it turn the engine on. 

Kraz never made it to class that day. We were all exhausted and dumb founded. It was a feeling of “why the hell were we in this death bus to begin with?” Luckily I was able get us towed to my uncles ranch in Red Bluff and he was kind enough to loan me his truck to drive us home. Everyone eventually made it home, about 8-10 hours later than planned but we were all safe, and most importantly our computer equipment (although that was a bit sketchy and that’s a story of it’s own and probably not known of by the members of the trip).

PDX10 road trip was an epic drive and I still would do it again even knowing it would be a failure (Round 2 in the bus almost was fail too, but that’s another story too). Good times with good peoples. And to think back, every PDXLAN road trip has had some issue during the trek. Some a bit more disastrous than others.