A final tribute to our departed friend 24/07/15

We settled back into the normality of the daily grind, with Paul and Calum being back at work, and your blogmaster enjoying some well deserved holiday away from adding to Rupert Murdoch's millions, with the buzz of 2599's first major event still in our minds. The blowing exhaust issue was causing us some concern, so with this in mind we sent the bus to Motor-Canics at Bilborough for our good friend Dom Guy to investigate.

Whilst away at Bilborough, I paid a visit to see Dom and check on progress with 2599, as well as to add the latest addition to the bus. As you will recall several posts ago, I spoke quite personally about the death of our good friend Tony Challons and the impact of this upon ourselves and our group. I had grown up knowing Tony, and he was certainly one of life's characters who told it how it was, and I still smile to this day about our 'quick visits' to his home in Underwood that usually ended up in several cups of coffee and sat about reminiscing and talking buses for hours on end, and I make no apologies for mentioning this again. His untimely and sudden death had come as a shock to us all back in May, and having been such a good friend over the years and done so much for us in providing crucial parts towards 2599's restoration, we felt it only fitting to do something to honour his memory.

So I was proud to have the honour of affixing a small plaque on 2599's cab bulkhead in memory of our departed friend Tony, who sadly was never able to have the satisfaction of seeing the bus in person or the pleasure of driving her as we had planned for him to do, but at least his memory will live on, and he can now ride along with the bus wherever we go. And I am not ashamed to admit after affixing the plaque standing there reliving the fond memories Tony and I shared and shedding a small tear, or to say that once again writing this particular post was somewhat more emotional for me on a personal level.

But for now, I find it fitting to end on a quote from our own leader Paul that has been used here once before- "R.I.P Tony, the lights are all green my friend"