Date:         Sat, 8 May 2004 22:16:29 -0500
Reply-To:     Joel Walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject:      Re: State of the List... State your ages!!!!!!! :<)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> i think it would be a cool thread to see the average ages of people
on
> the list...

hmmm. lemme see here now. it's 2004. - 1746 = 258. yeah. that feels
about right. when i was about ten years old, got to hang around with
ol' Ben Franklin, when he'd come back to this country after
galavanting around London and Paris and places fer East. pretty cool
dude. kinda stupid about playing around with lightening, but he was
never the one that got singed!! :)

> > and why you like vw vans, or why you bought your van..

ok, been fooling with vw's since about 1956. first one was a beetle
with semiphore turn signals. and a rag sunroof. thought it was great.
only other cars that were half as neat were the MG's. and very few of
them. the 56 beetle was bought from an air force officer who'd brought
it back with him from germany. there was an air base close to home,
and we saw a lot of strange cars. like DKWs and such.

a bit later, got a T3 squareback. bigger and better. but somehow not
big enough.
was still yearning for more room in back. so i'd started leaning
toward the T1 Microbus. but Vietnam interrupted that dream, and while
i was there, i got to hang around with some Aussies who had a 1968 T2
Bay Window Bus as their company transport vehicle. it was odd, to me,
with the sliding door and steering wheel on the "wrong side", but in
Vietnam, it didn't seem to matter which side of the road you drove on
... on what we would call a two-lane highway, there were very likely
to be at least five threads/lanes of traffic. :) anyway, i didn't like
the bus ... compared to the split window, it was strange.

jump ahead to 1970. out of the army, needing vehicle. wander by the vw
bus. 1971 blue 7-passenger bus. fell in love. just goes to show ya:
time wounds all heels, and Love are Fickle. bought it. i drove it hard
and i drove it far, and i loved the feel of a great big car. ;) it was
great.

years go by. people age. turn gray. get fatter. along comes Road &
Track magazine with their article about the New Better Swoopier
Transporter of 1979. uh oh ... fell in love all over again. worse
thing was, when it showed up on the dealer lot, i kept going back
every week to look at it and drive it. it felt and drove sooooo much
better than the old 71, i just had to have one. serious guilt about
getting rid of the 71, but i managed. didn't get toooo badly burned on
the 80 bus ... but i could have gotten it cheaper if i hadn't made
such a pest of myself at the dealership. :(

a few more years go by. at dealership one day, buying parts for 80
bus. new 86 bus, with air conditioning and fold-down rear seat/bed.
power mirrors!!! oh, God, have you no mercy at all!!!???  well ...
didn't get toooo badly burned on it. but it had fuel injection
problems that vw and the dealership couldn't or wouldn't fix properly.
so after two years, i got rid of it and bought a H*nda.

well, that was a mistake. not that H*nda are bad cars or anything like
that ... they aren't. they are good cars. but ordinary. no personality
at all. like little Japanese butlers, they do everything just so and
whenever you want it to, it will. but just kinda bland ... not like
vw's or porsches or british cars, all of which have definite
personalities to either complement or conflict with the driver's own
quirks. :)  that lasted four months. i admitted to myself that i was
hooked. i was a certified bus freak.

back i go, into a new 1988 bus. still got it. but the added weight of
gray hair and rounder roundness decided to add their pain and agony to
already damaged knees (one army, one motorcycle racing) and hence the
search was on for an automatic transmission. so now i have two 1991
automatic buses. both purple. more or less. :) one has a bum
transmission, so i'm using it to replace parts on the other one, til i
can afford to fix it up eventually. don't drive the 88 much at all
anymore ...it's a garage queen now. :(

the 71 was called Blue Goose. like the old song "i wanna go where the
blue goose goes ...". ;)
the 80 bus was der Bus. even made graphics to go on the sides and rear
hatch.
the 88 is Gus Gus the Bus Bus.
one 91 is Moby Grape.
and the other one is Otto the Ottomatic fer der Ottobahn. :)

and there were other buses (73, and a 1968 double-cab pickup called
QuasiMotor, the Humpback of Noted Fame, and an 87 camper who was just
Camper) that passed through the yard over the years, along with
various beetles and a porsche and a mercedes and even another honda
(kept it for a year almost).

don't make as many trips as i used to. new boss, new job, new working
hours and so forth. make more money than i ever have and seem to have
less of it to spend on foolishness. :( old age sucks, kiddies. better
have fun while you're young enough to enjoy it.

which reminds me: did i ever tell you guys about my Social Security
scheme? when you hit 21 years old, you are given tax-free one million
dollars. that's it. that's all you get for the rest of your life.
uncle sammie's one-time shot. when it's gone, you work until you are
dead, dead, dead.
i figure it would cost less and stimulate the economy a lot more than
the current system. and if you just happened to be smart, that
one-shot million could last you the rest of your life, never having to
work at all. even if you paid your way through college. :)

oh, yeah, buses: why i like buses.
they remind me of a lot of things i like. UH-1D helicopter, M-113
personnel carrier (well... sorta). C-130 (just a little. sorta. maybe
not). i like the headroom and shoulder room; i like being able to get
up from the driver's seat and walk back between the front seats and go
into the back and lay down or lift the engine hatch and dry out the
distributor or something like that, even if it's raining. or if i'm
stopped on the side of the road. ;) it's just like those big cardboard
boxes we used to play with when we were kids ... just a lot of fun
space inside.
maybe cause it's unique on the road. but there are a lot of boxy
vehicles out there, and none of them come close. in my humble opinion,
that is. about the only vehicle that comes close is the Pinzgauer, and
it's just not a very comfy highway vehicle. neater'n hell, but just
not comfy. made by the same folks that made the vanagon syncro stuff,
too. :)

what do i like best about my bus(es)? driving 'em. i can't tell you
why, but it just gives me a LOT of pleasure to just cruise around the
countryside in a bus. not going any particular place, not trying to be
anywhere at any time, just 'sunday driving'. no hurry, no worries.
even on a rainy day, it's soothing and relaxing.

that's my story and i'm sticking with it. :)
unca joel

oh, yeah, I've been 'on' this list every since i
badgered/conned/cajoled Gerry Skerbitz into starting it, back in 1994.
he's moved on to Eurovans, but i stubbornly stick to the T3's. :)
(kept bonking my head when getting into Eurovans). i can recall when
there were a lot less than 100 folks on this list. and when it split
into the www.type2.com folks (who kinda got tired of hearing about
head gaskets and coolant leaks), and then most of the Eurovans left (i
think ... don't hear much from them, so i assumed they went off to
their own list). and the syncros kinda hang around over there by the
smoking tree, just off the school property. ;)
it's been ten years now. and nearly 1000 folks subscribe to this
mailing list nowadays. lots of crazy folks out there. :)
i can also recall when www.traderonline.com (auto trader) had less
than 100,000 vehicles for sale. now it's creeping up to 2,000,000 and
there are usually 80 to 100 vanagons for sale at any one time.

what a strange and wonderful decade. for us on the list, anyway.
hopefully, we'll have another decade at least as wonderful, and
hopefully a bit less strange (you know who you are!!). :)