A spirited vision

How we converted a retired school bus into our World Cup adventure mobile.

Trevor Husted

Every World Cup presents another opportunity to refine the way our team shares our passion for music, travel, culture, and, of course, football (or "soccer," for the U.S. and the handful of countries still clinging to that name).

For me and our crew—The Home Team String Band (@hometeamstringband), a collection of friends and strangers brought together through a shared love of the World Cup—we've always searched for a unique way to combine our strengths and inspire people to embrace travel, adventure, music, and storytelling. Every tournament has become another chance to build on that vision.

In 2010, at the World Cup in South Africa, I was completely new to the scene. After the friend I was traveling with had to unexpectedly return home, I randomly met a crew of troubadour-style hooligans from Lake Tahoe, California, at a hostel. That chance encounter would shape every World Cup that followed.

I missed the festivities in Brazil in 2014, but reunited with the crew in Russia in 2018, where we crossed the country aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, playing music and collecting stories along the way. In Qatar in 2022, we packed foldable bicycles and explored the tournament by bike, performing in hidden corners and unexpected gathering spots throughout the city.

When the World Cup finally came to our home continent—with the United States hosting alongside Canada and Mexico—we knew we wanted to create something special. We wanted to experience the tournament in a way that reflected who we care while getting others excited about one of the world's greatest celebrations of culture and sport.

There were plenty of lessons learned, failed experiments, and small victories, but eventually our bus started to resemble a budget tour bus

Somewhere during our brainstorming sessions, the idea of converting a school bus landed on the table. Despite some spirited debate and a surprisingly close vote, the idea won out. Before long, we had fully committed to what was either our most ambitious or most boneheaded project yet: transforming a retired school bus into our rolling soccer headquarters.

After finding our steed—a 37-foot 2001 Blue Bird in southern Oregon—a couple of team members drove north to pick it up and brought it back to our home base in the Reno-Tahoe area. That's when construction officially began.

There were plenty of lessons learned, failed experiments, and small victories, but eventually our bus started to resemble a budget tour bus. We built a lounge in the front, added a compact kitchen, and installed seven bunks with enough room to sleep up to ten people—just enough to carry nearly the entire street band. A strict deadline kept the pressure on, but when kickoff arrived on June 11, we were finally ready to hit the road.

From busking on the streets of San Francisco to celebrating with Egyptian fans in downtown Vancouver, our journey carried us up and down the West Coast of North America. We wound our way along the Pacific coastline, brought hydration-break tunes and daily World Cup watch parties to the High Sierra Music Festival, welcomed old friends and new aboard the bus, and even found ourselves dodging riot police in San Jose after a particularly rowdy Mexican victory celebration.

Like every World Cup before it, this tournament revealed a new adventure and reinforced our faith in community. Watching people from every corner of the globe come together in celebration created an atmosphere unlike anything else. For a brief moment, the barriers created by politics, borders, and the business side of the sport seemed to fade into the background. The energy of the people—and of the game itself—took center stage.

From underdogs like Cape Verde standing toe-to-toe with football's traditional giants to Norway's long-awaited return to the World Cup for the first time since the United States hosted in 1994, surprises seemed to wait around every corner. Each one was another reminder of what makes the tournament so special.

Every time we fired up the Blue Bird or struck the first chord of another street performance, we tried to capture that spirit and pass it along to everyone we met. That's always been the mission.