Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 21:04:32 -0400
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: feets1st@ocala.com (Kevin Murray)
Subject: Adoption...
A short note on the orphan rescue I posted last weekend.
The 67 "Deluxe" found a home! I had taken a couple of polaroids
for reference and showed them to a friend (with a beetle ; )) who
although interested, showed little hope in actualy buying it. Well,
this morning he calls and says "Hey Kev! I raised the scratch for the
bus. Wanna take me down and help me pick it up?"
This on the day before I leave on my own personal wilderness adventure
(see earlier post) of the U.S.. But, being the bus kinda guy I am...and
liking to add to the collection of "first Bus stories" I have, I said sure.
The trip down was fairly easy once we figured out how to wire a car trailer
to a volkswagen Rabbit with no harness.. This should have been an indicator
however as I have trailered my share of vehicles behind my share of vehicles
and never have I towed anything like this behind anything like that..
90 wet miles later (did I mention that it poured Florida wetstuff all day?)
we arrive at this guys farm.. 12 miles from a paved road, rain gullies that
carried small animals floating downstream like the mariel boatlift of 84.
Water in places up to our shins and I'm trying to tell the guy that we have
to tow the bus with the rabbit and not vice versa.. He smiles a kinda toofless
grin (his words folks) and says "H'yuk, yuk..sho go ahead...be ma guess!"
Dougie (the new owner of said 67 bus) peels off 480.00 to the guy and sniks
the title from the mans (happy/nervous) sweaty hands while I look at a mint
pair of jailbars thinking how nice they'd look on my bus...Commission? Naw..
We swap the flat rear tires for a pair of spare moon rims capped with a nice
pair of radials to ease the ride back, come-along the van up and onto the car
dolly and proceed to try to tie down the front wheels with the harness we
brought with us....Hmmm, Doug? Doug, did you bring the 15" harnessess, or the
compact harnesses?
Little bells are starting to chime in the back of my head......ding-ding-ding
We finally suceed in tieing down the front wheels by letting all the air out
of them, snaking the harness over the rumpled tires, hooking the collar to the
far side of the wheel tray and then racking down on the rachet till the straps
are taut and then re-inflating the tires with our portable air tank till we
think it is about to explode. All this while someone way up pours buckets of
warm water all over our part of the world...
The tie downs kept popping off until we got to paved civilization...and at one
point as we navigated a slight off-camber dirt berm we almost sent the bus over
the top of the rabbit as it tried to climb upon the trailers spare and do the
vulcan mindmeld with the towcar....
You never realize how many hills are in Florida until you come crawling up to
them with an elegant elephant grafted to your butt as a caravan of rushed
Southern Babtists cite the scriptures to you for not only being heathens, but
also for being hippy bus toting, long hair deadhead sticker waving, slow pokes!
Ahh, the joys of VDub...
Now I gotta find a buyer for that guys Barndoor...... ;/
Kevin Murray (cinematographer) -FeetsFirst Films
*59 beetle ragtop* 66 Beetle, 65 SingleCab(sold), 66 Deluxe Samba(soon)
67 Panel Bus, 67 Beetle, 69 Beetle Baha, 72 Bus, 74 412 Station waggin
-------------****** Sparks through the Rubble ******------------------
