Date:         Tue, 10 Jan 1995 13:26:18 -0800 (PST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         David Schwarze <schwarze@superc.nosc.mil>
Subject:      Pfeiffer report (yes, another one!)


Here's my account of the weekend:

I was worried about the drive up, and not making it there until late,
so I decided to leave Thursday night and get past Los Angeles to minimize
the chances of getting stuck (last time I was delayed for 3 hours in 
traffic!).  Left San Diego about 11pm and drove North to around Ventura
and camped on a dirt road at 3 a.m..  Got up at 8:30 and drove up 101.
I experienced almost no rain or wind, and arrived at the campground abut
4 pm.  While I was talking to the ranger type at the front gate, Steve 
and Linda Johnson drive up.  We drive through the campground together and
find that we are the first to arrive.  We decided to put up camp in an
open area to the rear of the campground, having been assured by the ranger
type that we could move later if we wanted.  There were a total of about
eight other campers in the whole campground!

Next to arrive was Dave Garth, and the four of us parked in three adjacent
spots and sat and waited for others to arrive.  Fortunately, we had Dave's
van to keep us entertained.  Let me say that the quality of this guy's work
is top notch!  The vented catalytic heater and hot water setup had us all
drooling.  

After about a half hour of waiting, I decide to try out the showers, cuz I 
had slept in my van the night before and was feeling kind of grungy.  The
showers were coin operated, 3 minutes per quarter, so I put in four quarters
and lather up my face real nice, and then the friggin power goes out!  
Fortunately, it came back on after about 10 seconds, but of course the
water stays off and my dollar is history.  So, I dig blindly in my bag for
another quarter and get my face rinsed off, and 30 seconds later, the power
cycles again.  JEEZ!!!  This repeated itself a few times until I finally
got out of there with a 2 minute shower for about $2.00.  How annoying!

So around 6 p.m. we start getting more people in - Bradley and Jeff,
Martha and Sarah, Tobin and Christa, John H, Bill Abbott with his
SahWEEEET Corrado VR6, and Steve Wall.  Did I forget anyone?  A light
rain is falling and we (well, mostly Bradley and Dave Garth) got a fire
going.  Dinner was centered around the seafood goulash (?) prepared in
Jeff's dutch oven.  Turned out wonderful!  We tried to spend some time
around the fire but got rained out shortly after dinner, so we took turns
visiting each other inside the campers and getting quite tipsy.  All in
all, a very pleasant evening despite the rain, and it wasn't that cold
(Martha, you tease!).  My thermometer went down to a comfortable 50
degrees overnight.

Breakfast was supplied the next morning by Jeff and his dutch oven - Thanks
Jeff!  Thank God other people know how to cook, cause I am sorely lacking
in this category.  We spent the (overcast, sprinkling) day talking around
the fire, playing frisbee, kicking the hackeysack around, and taking small
unorganized hikes around the area.  We all watched in amusement as a huge
motorhome pulled into a site near us and spent an entire day there and
almost never leaving their rig.  Oh, they had the generator running the
whole time too.  I think they were watching movies on their widescreen
inside.  Poor slobs!

As the day wore on, people started leaving and we were left with only
five vans for the remainder of the stay - mine, Martha's, Tobin's, Bradley's,
and Steve's.  With rain threatening, we decided it would be kewl to pull
all of the vans into a single site and string up tarps over them.  We were
actually able to pull this off, and the result will surely be entertaining
to the rest of you once I get the pictures developed and scanned.  I hope
to have them up on the web by late this week.

That was about it - we packed up and left the next morning before noon.
My trip back to San Diego was uneventful, except for the continual down-
pour that I drove in.  What saved the day for me was being able to listen
to the Chargers fight back to beat Miami in the playoffs!!!  

Thanks to everyone that participated, especially the following:

Bradley, for bringing the manly-man axe and chopping all the wood, and
draining his battery over and over again to provide us with floodlights
and power for the hairdryer/firestarting games.

Jeff and Linda for the excellent cooking!

Martha for bringing Sarah and letting us burn her sweater.

Dave Garth for answering questions about his van over and over and over.

Bradley and Jeff again for drinking as much beer as I did, if not more.

Everyone, for participating and making this thing fun despite uncooperative
weather.  I look forward to doing this again ASAP!

-David

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David Schwarze                  '73 VW Safare Custom Camper (Da Boat)
SAIC Comsystems                 '73 Capri GT 2800 (Da Beast)
San Diego, California           '87 Mustang Lx 5.0 (Da Bruiser?  Soon...)
schwarze@nosc.mil                http://papaya.nosc.mil/~schwarze
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