Faith restored..

My trip to Van' hadn't been completely wasted but I still wanted to get as much out of it as possible so I decided to see if I could view another bus I'd had my eye on for a while as I'd be passing close by its location in Chilliwack. It was a long way out of my budget at $15k but it was intriguing because it was claimed to be an Arizona import. Having seen the amount of rust on yesterday's bus I wanted to compare.
I found the ad' again and was surprised to see that the original offer of two near identical units at $15k each, with a deal to be had if you bought both, had changed to just the one at $20k!.. While struggling to make any sense of that I contacted the seller and asked if I could just drop in to view it and to my pleasant surprise he was happy to meet me. I just had to let him know when I was 5 mins away and he'd pop over from wherever he was.
I met Neil at 1.30pm at the back of the Chilliwack Travelodge where he had 5 buses of various makes and models that they used for charter services. The one I wanted to look at, an International, was taking workers up to a local LPG construction site that had limited parking.
He was happy to show me around the bus, once we'd removed a homeless persons stuff from inside the entry. Apparently he had a regular problem with them using the buses as storage and sleeping accommodation. The bus was 12 years younger than the Van' bus but the rust difference was startling - not a sign anywhere. I started thinking seriously about importing one - a little hassle to begin with, including having to leave it at the border for 3 days while paperwork is checked which was new useful info to me, but a much better platform after. I discovered that all the buses he had there were imports and interestingly, he showed me a Thomas from Missouri that was similarly rust free. I'd heard that all Mid-West buses were rust-buckets due to the amount of salt they use on roads in winter but this one seemed to disprove that.
Also interesting was learning about the differences between regular school buses and 'activity' buses which essentially look identical but have larger storage lockers underneath and wider spaced seating - the latter is of no interest to me as they'll all be coming out anyway but the former is of definite interest - if you're living in 320 square feet storage options are gold.
 Neil was super-friendly, seemed as honest as a stick and a gold-mine of useful info having been a driver for years. I left with my faith in humanity restored and a better feeling about continuing my search.