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Bus people, who number no more than 3,000 at present, are growing by a couple of hundred a year. They try to avoid attention, but that's difficult in a vehicle that's about as subtle as a parade float. Curious highway patrol officers sometimes pull them over just to get a peek inside. Celebrity hounds, hoping to cadge an autograph off some rock star, sprint across parking lots and bang on the doors, demanding that the occupants identify themselves.
There are a handful of celebrities among them, but overwhelmingly, bus people are ordinary. They are mostly married couples over 50, either semi- or fully retired. The one attribute that distinguishes bus people from the crowd is that they are obviously rich enough not to worry about tossing away money like bun wrappers.
"It would be cheaper if we were hooked on cocaine than on these buses," admits Ron Pallin, 53, of Eugene, Ore. Unlike a condo in Tampa, Fla., or La Jolla, Calif., say, a bus depreciates quickly, beginning with the first turn of the wheels. It loses about 15% of its value the first year on the road and an additional 10% every year following. A set of tires costs $5,000, and a wash-and-wax job runs about $360. On average a bus travels about seven miles on a gallon of diesel fuel. To paraphrase J.P. Morgan on the subject of yachts, if you have to ask which way fuel prices are headed, you can't afford to own a bus.
Few bus people were born rich. Some are retired corporate executives or professionals. Largely, however, they are small-business owners, entrepreneurs who struggled their way to success--and that experience, more than anything else, seems to explain why they became bus people. They toiled so hard early in life to establish the trucking company or insurance agency that they never had time for excursions to the Grand Canyon or Washington.
"I didn't know what sunshine was," says Steve Ceccanti, 48, owner of two restaurants near Portland, Ore. "My wife and I were on the job every day at 11 a.m., and we closed at 10:30 p.m." Those who traveled rarely had time to enjoy the scenery. Their memories of America are of rental-car lots and airport gates, as they pressed on from one assignment to another. They have vowed never to rest their head on a motel pillow again.
Because they were preoccupied with their jobs, bus people had little time to make the commitments to the volunteer fire department or school board that bind other people to their hometowns. Bus people have children who are now old enough to take over their businesses. But otherwise they are footloose. Their best friends are the other bus people they meet again and again on the road during the annual circuit.
At Outdoor Resorts in Indio, most of the sites belong to individual bus owners who have paid up to $200,000 for a 75-ft.-long, 35-ft.-wide lot. (Transients can rent an unoccupied lot for $50 a night.) There is not much privacy, but that's O.K. because bus people tend to be outdoor extroverts. "The difference between us and condo people," says Pallin, "is that at 5 o'clock, condo owners go inside, and we come out for cocktails."