Hawkwind Tour supporters bus?

[Arin Komins]

:Subject: Hawkwind Tour supporters bus?
:
:OK, new topic for the party animals out there...
:
:Back during the last tour I was chatting to Arin and idly speculating
:about a better system for following a tour than booking hotel rooms and
:trains planes and automobiles. Not only is it expensive, but it takes up
:more time to travel, find a hotel, find the gig and the bar and so on
:than it does to spend time enjoying the tour.
:
:Bands and roadies get around this by hiring a tour bus and driver. So we
:thought, what would the economics be of hiring another tour bus
:(presumably there are idle tour buses to match idle bands at any given
:time?) to accomodate fans travelling around parts of the tour. Clearly
:there's a certain cost per day of hire of the vehicle, running costs,
:and to pay a driver. However, a number of people would fit in. It'd be
:less comfortable than most hotel rooms. On the other hand, it'd be a
:case of sleeping through the travel to the next gig and saving on those
:travel costs. The community spirit (or beer) would make up somewhat for
:the discomfort. It'd essentially be a rolling party.
:
:So the questions are really of interest and economics. Would enough
:people book enough bunks on enough nights to make the costs (including
:some empty bunks on some night) work out.

needless to say, but I'm all over this idea.  Having just done the
whirlwind tour around the UK, I really must say that this is far far
better to do with company.

Might get more overseas fans to come over with this kind of setup, since
the annoyance value of figuring out all of your own transportation isn't
an issue.

Of course, we'll all need to be decent friends, given close quarters, but
that might be able to be worked around.

Kris -- if you are reading this thread, did you arrange the tour bus
stuff?  Can we hit you up for info?

:Sp does anyone have any idea of costs per day to run a bus? How many
:people could be accomodated? Can anyone get numbers from the band? How
:many people here would be interested in principle if the economics
:matched or were cheaper than normal hotel or travel costs?

Most of the random web sites, I've been coming across are "email for more
info" (alas.)

http://www.atlantic-coast.com/neoplan/
210 per day, 1 per mile, accomodates 8 people.

http://www.star-line.co.uk/

A good phone book (over in the UK) might have better information...
I'm coming up a bit sparse on web hunting.

Arin
(who has been looking on and off for this kind of info for awhile now, as
Mike can attest ;-) )
--
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Arin Komins                                   akomins at uchicago.edu
Manager of Web Systems Architecture
University of Chicago/NSIT                      tel: (773)834-4087
1155 E. 60th St. #302B Chicago, IL 60637        fax: (773)702-0559
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