Date:         Mon, 28 Feb 2000 21:13:37 -0800
Reply-To:     robyn and heather <rudisill@USWEST.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         robyn and heather <rudisill@USWEST.NET>
Subject:      rant. longer.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

I just wanted to rant a little.  This has very little vanagon content, but
I feel entitled to waste everyone's time.  It's therapeutic, so bear with me.

I would like to go 30 days in a row without some one denting my 91
Westy!  I feel nuts for caring as much as I do, but at the same time I get
pissed because some people just don't seem to care where their doors swing,
whether they are wholly in a parking space or how close they park their
piece of crap next to my beautiful Westy.

The latest offender was Carter VW in Ballard, of all places.  They backed
my van into something and mangled my rear mounted Yakima rack and put a
dent in the door where the rack foot rests on the door.  God knows what
would have happened had the rack not been there.  I spoke to the Service
Manager and I quote, "if you say it happened here then it happened here and
we'll pay for it." Thankfully he was a smooth talker that answers his own
phone.  While I dialed the number I was really gearing up to give him
hell.  I was pretty pleased with our verbal detente.  Of course, this was
before I realized the door was dented as well.  I don't feel like the dent
warrants bodywork, and that it would be more a hassle than it's worth. It
makes me so angry.

This is the last in a line of automotive calamity that follows me whatever
I drive... a few weeks ago, a woman rolled back into my front bumper while
waiting for the Fremont Bridge in Seattle. While waiting for the bridge, I
had time to get really excited.  Luckily my gnarly bumper guard laid a nice
black smudge on her brand new turquois character-lacking grocery getter,
otherwise I would have been staring at a split in my fiberglass bumper that
her insurance company couldn't begin to atone for.  In an attempt to
diffuse the situation, I told her she could probably just wash off the
paint, and she looks at me and says, "I just better get your name and
number in case I have to replace my bumper."
        "Are you nuts!" I cried.  "You rolled in to me! Knucklehead! Do you think
this vanagon defies gravity? I know it functional, and has more character
than that thing you drive could ever have; even if Christ himself drove it
around the block, which I know for a fact he would drive a Westy and
probably a syncro, but really, rolling up hill at a stop light!"
        Meanwhile next to us in traffic is a cabby with his open window just even
with my theatrics, and he is laughing so hard he can barely speak.  The
lady, seeing him as a key witness to her injustice asks him what really
happened. He could hardly get out how funny it was that this lady would
roll down a hill into some one and then be crazy enough to ask them to pay
for the damage.  The bridge comes down and he drives off muttering
something that sounded like, "Christ driving a volkswagen he hee he."

I could go on, but I will spare you all.  Let's just say that I have owned
almost as many cars as years I have been driving, and I hope to get the
number of years bigger than the number of cars some day.  I, like most VW
lovers, have owned more than my fair share of cars, many of them VW's, a
few Fiats, a 1954 Lancia B24 Spyder and many others.  Most of them have
ended in disaster (the Lancia was sold rather than destroyed, but it ruined
my driving record before we parted ways).  I feel like I need to preserve
my Westy before something really bad happens to it.  But for now, it is my
daily driver and I take my chance every morning and evening trying to
determine where the next dent is coming from in order to limit its affect
on my blood pressure.

Thanks for listening.
robyn