In late October, a team of 6 recent high school graduates set sail for adventure on the Missouri River in a boat they designed and constructed themselves. The Boys with a Bus' Instagram account documenting their 5-day journey and other adventures has attracted the attention of over 2.4 million followers on Instagram. Their vessel didn't resemble the barges Louis and Clark used to travel the Missouri River or the raft Huckleberry Finn and Jim used to travel the Mississippi. It's safe to say their boat was entirely unique in the annals of Big Sky Country exploration craft. However, the spirit of adventure in the hearts of the young men perfectly mirrored that of the pioneers who preceded them. The 3-story raft, complete with a functional crow's nest, flew a pirate flag next to Old Glory.
The Mountaineer began sharing the story of the Boys on the Bus several weeks ago in our coverage of Big Sandy High School's assembly to hear the story of their adventure on the Missouri. The adventure really begins with a group of friends working on their senior project at Milton Academy, a boarding school in Milton, Mass.
Ben Rhodes-Kropf, explained "We met there, I think in middle school, and we've kind of been a friend group ever since, actually there's five more of us that are not taking gap years, that are also part of the friend group. They did the bus with us. That friend group's kind of been doing crazy stuff for a while now." The larger group of boys built a bus for their senior project and set out on a cross-country adventure trip.
Ben went on to explain: "Our high school actually does a thing called a senior project. The last month of our senior year, we get a project to do anything, really, anything we want, as long as we get it approved by the school. So a lot of our friends chose to do films, research papers, building drones, learning instruments, and we had the brilliant idea of building a bus, of course, because that's what comes to your mind first. The plan originally was just to build a bus to go on a cross country road trip just for ourselves." As the project progressed, it gathered a substantial following on Instagram, which prompted 5 of the young men to take a "gap year" between high school and college to document the ongoing adventures of the boys on the bus.
When I asked where the idea for traveling the Missouri River on a raft originated, none of the boys could pinpoint an exact source. Ben explained that the idea came about: "...the same as with the bus... We're all talking and joking around. Someone says one idea we kind of just like, ping off each other and create something super special. And then the next question is, always, 'Can we really do that?' And most of the time it's, 'You know what, Let's see if we can. Let's go for it. Yeah.'"
Three weeks after asking, "Can we really do that?" the boys on the bus had designed their boat, paired up with YouTuber David Rule to construct the craft and take on the journey, traveled to Montana, and built their 3-story boat with materials purchased in Montana the day of their trip.
Ben, who will be going to MIT next year, created a digital model of the boat as a first step in the adventure. "I used Fusion 360. It's kind of a 3-D like computer aided design tool. I looked at a bunch of other people that were building what are called barrel barges or barrel float docks. A lot of people are using these designs to have a dock for their boats. I built off that and modified it a little bit just to be able to take some rougher waters, making sure that the barrels are more locked in. A lot of these designs come off the internet and then modifying them, moving things around, figuring out how to get 12 foot poles up, and then making sure it'll stay sturdy."
The finished vessel cost $7,000 to construct and weighed 7,000 pounds. The initial plan was to buoy it with 30 plastic barrels. Each barrel is capable of supporting 440 pounds of the boat on the water. When the young men arrived in Montana, they encountered their first challenge: their vehicles' capacity for hauling barrels didn't quite match their design specifications.
"Funny story, I think we wanted 40 barrels, but his truck and trailer could only fit 33..." explained Kevin Hahn. Ben went on to explain that design allowed for a "happy margin" of buoyancy. So, cutting to 33 barrels was fine. This was the first instance of many when the young men would identify problems, adapt, and overcome on the fly in order to continue on their journey.
Some of the adaptations came about as a result of advice from locals. Ben explained that "Every single local or forest ranger we talked to always had a good idea. At first, we were thinking about putting a motor on it. They're like: 'No chance. Your motor's gonna ground out. You're gonna lose it.' Then someone else comes along and says, 'Have you thought about using poles? You know, that's what Lewis and Clark did. They made it down the river just fine. It's only eight feet deep at its deepest spot.' It's really beautiful, because a lot of the ideas were crowdsourced. We've learned a lot from everyone. Just all the lore comes together, and kind of crowdsourced a lot of the information to build it."
The boys explained that their goal was to travel the river in style. When I asked about the decision to build the boat three stories tall, especially given the excessive winds in the area and the challenges it offered in the design process, they explained: "Honestly, that's the biggest we could build it with the limitations we faced. We wanted to build it big. I mean, David kept saying: 'We've got to go smaller. Ben, we're not going to fit under the bridge.' And I just kept pushing it. And we made it just barely under the bridge. It was a good, happy balance."
The final product of their construction project was going to be ambitious. "It's a sort of a three story design. The first floor is an open floor plan. It's open to the elements, more of a gazebo vibe is what we were going for. It's got a table, we built some shelving for all of our storage, and there's an electrical system as well. There a place to charge all of our stuff, along with the generator. The second floor is mainly one big room where we all kind of store additional stuff and sleep. Then you've got your third floor, which is kind of the grassy place where we all hang out of top and sunbathe." Perched above the third floor was the crows nest, which came in handy during the journey as the boys took turns watching for submerged rocks and other obstacles.
The story of their exciting adventures will follow in part 2 of this series in next week's Mountaineer. You can also check out their Instagram page @boys.on.the.bus.
