'Neso The Blue-Moon'

The outermost moon of Neptune, known as the Wandering moon because it takes more than twenty-six years to complete a single orbit, is called...

- Jeremiah Polynone

And that’s what I named my long term bus project shortly after buying it in Eugene, Oregon in 2017. From what I could piece together about the bus’s history, the last time it was registered was in 2003. Around 2013 the original owners took it to a shop to see what it would cost to get it back on the road. The price was too high for them, and so the shop offered to take the bus off their hands. This is when the title was transferred for the very first time.

The shop owned it for several years, they had removed the windows, made a start on the rust repairs and put it into epoxy primer. However, the engine wasn’t touched and the bus was never put back on the road. The interior was intact but had become dingy from sitting outside in the Oregon weather. Luckily the bus had been wrapped in plastic while it sat outside with no glass.

I had previously worked on a ‘79 Riviera for a customer. I really liked the unique layout with the tambour doors, Penthouse upper bunk and the appliances behind the drivers seat which give an unobstructed view when driving. The rear-facing jump seat by the sliding door which houses the chemical toilet was something I thought really clever. I’d been searching consistently for ‘Rivi’s’ on Craigslist locally and on The Samba website. One day I saw on Facebook that one of my VW friends and fellow Riviera owner, Tracy McGee was traveling to Oregon for the summer. I was aware that this was where the Riviera originated, I asked him to keep an eye open and mentioned that I was in the market to buy one.