Wranglers are riding the magic bus

Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

Returning an inquiry about the Las Vegas Wranglers' slick new bus, team founder and majority owner Charles Davenport promptly rang one afternoon last week.

"I'm riding on it right now," he said as the revamped 1998 Prevost luxury liner pulled into Phoenix. "This past weekend is a perfect example of why we did it."

After playing the Phoenix RoadRunners at the Orleans Arena on Nov. 10, the Wranglers hit the highway for games in Bakersfield and Long Beach in California and in Phoenix - 800 miles in four days.

"I'm trying to keep the team healthy," Davenport said. "We're pretty banged up this season, but it helps when they can sleep on the bus rather than riding on a passenger bus all night. Anything to help the team. Everything we do, we want to be the best."

Wranglers players can dream about hockey beyond the ECHL in a cruiser fit for the National Hockey League while watching any NHL game, anytime, courtesy of the conspicuous, roof-top satellite dish.

Goalie Mike McKenna said the players have already placed small wagers on when they might get tired of watching NHL games - on either of the large plasma screens in the front and back, or several smaller side screens - this season.

"I don't think we will," he said.

Davenport got the idea about upgrading his team's ground transportation from Phoenix chief operating officer Ray Delia, and the Wranglers and RoadRunners now travel in similar style.

Davenport bought the Prevost in Canada and had it refurbished by Vulcan Coach Corp., in Hueytown, Ala., over the summer. Total cost: $500,000. Arrow Stage Lines maintains the rig in Las Vegas and will lease it from Davenport in the offseason.

It sleeps 18 in the back half and 10 in the front, has plugs for wireless Internet access and cell phone chargers in each personal bunk space.

"Certainly, when you get older, it's nice to get on a bus knowing you'll get six to eight hours to curl up in a bunk and have lights out, almost like you're at home," Glen Gulutzan said. "And it's certainly easier for a guy" - like the coach - "with three kids."

After games, Gulutzan can analyze game reviews on the large front screen that each player can follow on his own smaller screen.

"It's quite a high-tech machine," he said. "It's a great way to travel."

Last season, McKenna spent some time in the American Hockey League, in between the ECHL and NHL, in Norfolk, Va., and he said he didn't see a coach in the AHL that compares to the Wranglers' new rig.

"It's a rock-star bus," McKenna said. "Pretty sweet."

He pointed out the tile floor, Bose speakers on the surround-sound system and leather interior. He deftly showed how the rear seating areas fold into six separate three-level bunks. He hit the automatic door to the bathroom like a kid on Christmas morning. (The rules of that area aren't suitable for publication in a family newspaper.)

Four air-conditioning and ventilation units atop the bus will no doubt work overtime to prevent the Prevost from smelling like a traveling locker room.

"I just thought it was great for our level, the Double-A level, to have that kind of a bus," Gulutzan said. "It's certainly very, very nice."

Davenport acknowledged that it does not have everything.

"We don't have a masseuse," he said. "Maybe on the next bus."

Mark Tapper, the 41-year-old driver of the Wranglers' 45-foot, ice-white sleeper coach, once shuttled the Chicago Blackhawks from hotel to arena to O'Hare International Airport.

For a stretch, NHL teams visiting Chicago were his assignment. After one of the Bulls' six championship seasons in the 1990s, he took them on a victory tour, police escort and helicopters included, that ended in Grant Park. In September, he drove the Colorado Avalanche, in town for an exhibition game, around Las Vegas.

Tapper, who moved to Las Vegas two years ago, has been driving buses for 24 years.

"This one's real smooth," he said of the Wranglers' new luxury rig. "They're definitely ridin' in style. In a regular coach that seats 50, everyone's head would be leaning against the windows trying to sleep for six hours."

Tapper received a tour of one of NFL television analyst John Madden's famous cruisers several years ago.

"He gets a new one every four years," Tapper said. "This one was real nice. It had a queen-size bed, a full kitchen where he cooks his Thanksgiving turkeys and a big shower, one that he could get in. He has two full-time drivers, whom he lured away from Greyhound."

The Wranglers' new ground transportation might be missing an amenity or two, like a shower fit for a defenseman or a grill and adequate ventilation system to cook a few dozen T-bones on a midnight run from Fresno to Phoenix.

The most valuable omission, however, might have been sound-proof cushions for equipment manager Brian "Elvis" Garcia.

When the bunks are arranged and the Sandman grips Garcia - who sleeps up front, where 10 bunks can be arranged, no town the bus passes is safe from his world-class nasal noise.

"He's a human buzz saw," said Wranglers goalie Mike McKenna.

THE BUS

Make: Prevost

Year: 1998

Length: 45 feet

Height: 13 feet, 6 inches

Engine: Detroit Diesel 60 Series

Markings: No logo, painted ice white

Miles per gallon: 5

Fuel tank: 220 gallons

Sleeps: 28

Cost: (including renovation) $500,000

OTHER FAMOUS BUSES

Double-decker bus: As former British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone once said, "The way to see London is from the top of a bus." As long as the soccer fans on the bottom are behaving themselves, that is.

The Madden Cruiser: Deathly afraid of flying, the NFL broadcast analyst John Madden crisscrosses the country in an $800,000, 45-foot luxury coach fitted with everything from a sauna to a gourmet galley. The cruiser will travel 1,000 miles on a tank of diesel - the fossil fuel, not John Riggins, the fossil running back.

Rosa Parks bus: Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., on Dec. 1, 1955, was the fuse that ignited the civil rights movement. The bus that Parks rode - a 36-passenger diesel built in 1948 - was retired in 1971 and sat in an Alabama field for 30 years. It was restored for $300,000, part from a grant to Save America's Treasures, and is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

Greyhound bus: Founded in Hibbing, Minn., in 1914, its famous name and logo are based on the Greyhound, the fastest breed of dog used in dog racing. Unfortunately, instead of chasing a mechanical rabbit, a Greyhound bus stops at every dot on the interstate, meaning you may or may not get home by Christmas.

Jerome Bettis: The former NFL running back was nicknamed "The Bus" because his black-and-yellow Pittsburgh Steelers uniform made him look like one. He began a charity called the Bus Stops Here Foundation to aid underprivileged children in 1997.

Madison Avenue bus: Ralph Kramden, the New York City bus driver portrayed by Jackie Gleason on "The Honeymooners," drove routes along Madison Avenue for the fictional Gotham Bus Co. The 1950s TV sitcom and Gleason's character are so ingrained in popular culture that the real transit company, the MTA, renamed one of its Brooklyn bus barns as the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot, put up a statue of Kramden outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal Depot and renumbered the official Jackie Gleason bus as No. 2969 (a Madison Avenue route). If you look closely, you can even spot the show's "face on the moon" logo on some city buses.

Furthur: The original psychedelic hippie bus was a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 for $1,250. The Merry Pranksters remodeled and repainted it, and Neal Cassady, the hero of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," drove them across country. That trip was immortalized in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." True to form, Kesey let the bus rust on his Oregon farm rather than turn it over to the Smithsonian Institution.

Partridge Family bus: The actual bus (1957 Chevrolet) from the popular TV series lived for years behind a taco shop close to the USC campus. But when the taco shop repaved its parking lot in February 1987, the bus was sent off to a junk yard. It was in horrible shape - windows broken, tires flat, all Partridge Family ID (such as the family name on the side and the "Caution Nervous Mother Driving" sign on the back) painted over in white, and the rest of the bus was miserably faded. Sort of like David Cassidy's career.

"The Magic Bus": Is Pete Townshend's 1968 song about sex or drugs? Who cares? The song's push-pull lyrics (Too much, Magic Bus) and the driving Bo Diddley beat are pure rock 'n' roll. The Who classic drove into the Baby Boomer graveyard this summer, becoming the soundtrack for a minivan commercial.

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