Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:42:56 -0400
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Vanagon "truisms"
In-Reply-To: <04c501ce3722$312c5dd0$93851970$@gmail.com>
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At 10:05 PM 4/11/2013, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
>. Everyone wants to pass a Vanagon, no matter how fast it is going.
>
>. Corollary to above: No one will let a Vanagon pass them.
These must be West coast things. Nobody on the East coast seems to
care one way or the other. Some people seem to speed up a bit if you
overtake slowly, but that happens in any car I drive -- I think it's
a sort of automatic reaction to having something slowly appear from
behind. Doesn't seem to happen if you overtake briskly.
Around Boston it has seemed to be a fairly common phenomenon that if
you signal that you're going to pull out to pass, the guy next back
in the passing lane will speed up so you don't have room to pull
out. But again it's not Vanagon-specific.
I did once in my life experience someone who really didn't want me to
pass, and could make it stick, Thanksgiving 1971. I was in a Fiat
128 and he was in an MGB, it was the middle of the night and snowing
hard. He finally couldn't go any more (halfway up a long hill on
Pennslyvania 81) because all the cars ahead were stuck, and so
perforce neither could we. By morning the snow was halfway up the
doors (all the way up his). I bet he was colder than we were by the
next afternoon. And that's the story of my 18 hours stuck in the
snow with the future fantasist Robin McKinley and her future former
husband, and not a pot to pee in. She seemed a mite preoccupied
toward the end, and was glad to stop in at my aunt's in Washington NJ
after we mushed the car down the hill to meet the Payloaders digging
cars out and sending them away one by one.
A lot of the people stuck were locals and not prepared at all. The
state came around in snowmobiles and a big 4x4 around noon, passing
out quarts of milk and medevac-ing a baby. We used their broken
trail, plastic chains, a couple shovels and that lovely light
smooth-bottomed car and made it out three hours later, the only ones
who tried. I don't know how long it took to get everyone out, we
didn't follow up. But Robin was grateful and it gave us something to
do other than wait. A Syncro Westy and a time machine would have
been nice. Or a 'Bus with a working heater.
Yrs,
d
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