How I spent my Thanksgiving…
9 minute read
November 29, 2025, 7:49 PM
This year, I spent my Thanksgiving on the road, volunteering my time and money for Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, a Roanoke-based museum that owns a collection of vintage vehicles, largely transit buses. Along with Elyse, I serve on the museum’s board of directors. On this particular occasion, I was transporting a recent acquisition down to its permanent home in Roanoke. This was a former WMATA unit, bus 6181, a 2006 New Flyer D40LFR, which Metro donated to the museum in February of this year. After the museum received the bus (I had no involvement in the donation process), I helped coordinate and fund a repair on a leaking coolant pipe, and I also took care of titling and registration. Once I got the bus registered, I took it on a quick test drive, running it up Route 1 from the parking lot in College Park where the museum had been keeping it up to Laurel, just to make sure that I was confident in its performance:
I pulled into a bus stop on the side of Route 1 in order to adjust a mirror. I was pleased to see that I was just as proficient as ever at servicing a bus stop, even though it’s been more than nine years since I operated buses regularly.
Parked at Corridor Marketplace in Laurel at the furthest extent of my test run.
That test run turned up a new problem, as we heard a sizzling sound coming from the batteries. That wasn’t good, so we had to rectify that as well before running it down to Roanoke. To that end, I partially funded new batteries for this bus, and someone else acquired a replacement power distribution module for the bus from a similar model at a local scrapyard. With that complete, the bus was in good shape and cleared to be transported to Roanoke after it participated in a non-museum fan event with several other vintage buses. I was not able to attend the fan event due to work, but I’m told that it went well, and as far as everyone was concerned, the fan trip confirmed that it was ready to transport.
Then Thanksgiving was the big day. To that end, I got together with a few other folks, and we went down to Bryans Road, Maryland, where the bus was being kept by then, and got started. We were surprised to find that the bus contained a decent amount of trash in it, mostly fast food bags, which were a concern largely from a pest management standpoint. We ended up dumping all of that in a trash can at a fueling stop shortly after we departed, so that immediate problem was solved, but my main concern was about stewardship, i.e. that the bus had not been returned to storage in the same condition as it had been when it was taken out. My thought was that you can admonish the participants in a fan event to take their trash off of the bus to dispose of it properly, but you can’t control what they do. However, the people who ran the event were the last line of defense, i.e. they were ultimately the ones who were responsible for ensuring that the bus was returned in the same state as they found it, and as temporary stewards of the bus, they failed to do that. That was disappointing, but we dealt with it.
Leaving Bryans Road, our route took us up Indian Head Highway and then onto the Beltway. We then took I-66 westbound, stopping at the Manassas rest area:
6181, parked at the Manassas rest area, which is outside of the Metro service area. Being outside of the service area was good, because that meant that no one would expect us to pick them up or get mad when we didn’t.
Selfie inside the bus. Note the hoodie that I am wearing, which I felt fit the part.
The next order of business was the Sheetz in Haymarket in order to give the bus a drink:
6181, fueling at the Sheetz in Haymarket. Now that we were out of the service area, we had a little fun with the signs, displaying some routes from the old bus network (Metro redesigned its entire bus network in June) as we headed down the highway. You never realized that the Y2 went to Haymarket, did you?
All in all, I was having fun, driving a 40-foot transit bus down the highway, and just communing with the road. Traffic, meanwhile, was light. None of these roads were unfamiliar to me, as I have traveled down them many, many times over the years, but it was a new experience doing those roads in a bus, and I imagine that I’ll never get to do this again in a Metrobus (next time I take a bus down this way will probably be in former CARTA bus 3426, i.e. my bus).
After doing about 100 miles in 6181, the next stop was a fun break: the Buc-ee’s in Mount Crawford, because of course you have to go to Buc-ee’s. We fueled the bus, moved it to a parking space on the side, and then had a proper Buc-ee’s visit.
6181 is being fueled at Buc-ee’s.
Kyle dispenses fuel into 6181. It is worth noting that you more or less have to hold the nozzle manually on 6181, because the way that the nozzle sits in that bus precludes the auto-hold function, and will make it shut off immediately. Of course, in all fairness, this bus was previously equipped with a fast-fueling system, which didn’t require human intervention other than attaching and detaching the fast-fuel nozzle. My 3426 has the same kind of fixture, which we’re retrofitting to take a standard fuel nozzle.
6181, parked in an RV parking space on the south side of the Buc-ee’s building.
The Buc-ee’s mascot character was out, so of course, I had to get a selfie with him.
From Buc-ee’s, our next stop was my parents’ house, and we took something of a roundabout way to get there. After all, some of our complement had not been around the area, and so I took them on a quick tour. Plus after spending enough time driving the bus on the Interstate, I was ready for a break from the freeway, ready to rope the wheel around some local streets. We got off of the highway in Verona, and then I took everyone through Staunton via Commerce Avenue (US 11), we went past the watering can, and then took Richmond Avenue (US 250) through to Fishersville and into Waynesboro. We then turned onto 340 in Waynesboro, and we went past the Walmart where I used to work. I never thought that I would bring a bus through the Walmart parking lot, but I did. That was fun. We then got back on 340 and went to my parents’ house in the usual way. And just like on the highway, for as many times as I’ve been on all of these roads in the past, it was a new and exciting experience doing all of them in a bus.
Arriving at my parents’ house, we parked it on the street in front:
The bus, parked outside of my parents’ house. You had no idea that the 70 went all the way to Stuarts Draft, did you?
My parents’ house is on a cul-de-sac, but there is no rounded turnaround at the end of it. The road just stub-ends after two houses. So in order to get in there, we had to reverse the bus to get in there. That was more challenging than I imagined, as I just couldn’t manage to get the bus in straight. I ended up going way back past where I wanted and then operating it forward in order to get it in the spot that you see here. All I could think of was that I suddenly had a renewed sense of respect for my old school bus driver, Kim Hartless, who did that same maneuver day in and day out with a Wayne Lifeguard school bus picking me and my neighbors up for school and then dropping us off again, and made it look easy. It wasn’t as easy as she made it look. But in all fairness, she did it in daylight, while I was doing it in the dark, and my parents’ neighborhood also has no streetlights. But all the same, mad respect.
When my parents got home from Thanksgiving at my sister’s in-laws’ house, we showed them the bus, and then I took them for a quick spin around the neighborhood in the bus. We went to the end of their street on the Ridgeview Acres side of the neighborhood, and then went around a few streets. Lots of roping of the wheel and having a blast doing it, while my parents got to see me doing my thing.
After dropping my parents off, we went down 340 to Greenville, and then took Route 11 down to White’s Truck Stop for a final pit stop. Then from there, it was nonstop to Roanoke. We took the bus down to the bus museum’s lot at the Roanoke Industrial Center, and then took the museum’s lot car, an old Toyota Camry, to our friend Andrew’s house, where we were staying the night. As far as the bus was concerned, mission accomplished. Former WMATA bus 6181 had been delivered to its new home at Commonwealth Coach’s facility in Roanoke.
Then the next day, the main goal was to pick up a rental car, take some measurements, and then go home. Once you get more than a couple of people, an Amtrak ride doesn’t make sense anymore, and a rental car becomes the most cost-efficient method. I ended up getting a black 2024 Nissan Pathfinder for the ride home from the Enterprise location at Roanoke Airport, and I would drop it off at the location in Gaithersburg near my house at the end of the day. This was the first time that I had rented and returned a car in the same day, but it worked out well. Also, it was not lost on me that I was driving the same model of car that had destroyed my original HR-V, even if this was a much newer version of the Pathfinder. I also can say with confidence that I would never want to own a Nissan Pathfinder of my own. It felt feature-poor, and a relatively high beltline made it feel like I was driving a tank, as it was hard to see around. But I managed.
As far as measurements went, I needed to get some windshield measurements on Biscuit, i.e. former CARTA bus 3424, in order to get new windshield glass for former CARTA bus 3426, i.e. my Biscuit (yes, both of them are nicknamed “Biscuit”). The windshield on 3426 is in rough shape, having been gouged out pretty deeply by the windshield wipers. Elyse and I are going to replace the wiper blades in order to stop the damage from getting worse, and then after we do that, we’re going to replace both windshield panels. In talking to bus glass vendors, I was asked to get horizontal and vertical measurements of the glass, and also note any markings on the glass. In noting the markings, I hit pay dirt, because 3424 had this:
Boom. OEM windshield still in place, with the New Flyer part number right on the glass. Now there is no more ambiguity about what kind of glass that I need. So once 3426 gets out of the shop next week, we can hit the ground running and get the windshield glass replaced.
Then the trip home was pretty uneventful. Leaving Roanoke, we stopped at the Panera location in Waynesboro, where we met up with my parents, my sister, and my brother-in-law, and we visited for about an hour. Not bad. Then we went back to DC via Charlottesville. Not bad.
When I got home, I was coming up my street, and I saw a car in my parking space. My train of thought went, wait, why is someone parked in my space? and then as soon as I finished that thought, I was like, oh, right, as I realized that I was driving a rental and not my own car, and that the car in my parking space was none other than the HR-V, which sat this trip out. Then I returned tne rental car to Enterprise and got a ride back, and that was that. Not a bad trip.
Then we’re going to do the whole trip again in probably a month or so, as I deliver another bus, a New Flyer Invero, to Roanoke, once that gets out of the shop for an air problem. That’s also a fun bus to drive, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Categories: Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, Roanoke, Stuarts Draft, Travel, WMATA
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