Date:         Fri, 1 Sep 95 17:04:07 +0200
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         darie@hasler.ascom.ch (Darie Duclos)
Subject:      Friday story..



Thought I'd share a little story with you, since it's Friday..

I bought my Westfalia '86 a year ago. One of its first road trips was
from Montreal to Toronto, a 6 hour drive at 4000rpm. If I didn't want
to drive all 12 hours, I had to teach my boyfriend, Brian, how to drive 
standard. We began this on the highway, the difficulty there lasting
only moments out of a few hours. Just as we got into Toronto, the
ignition switch blew. A local garage explained the problem, told us
that they couldn't get parts until Monday (this was Saturday), and
put together a couple of wires and connectors, explaining how we
could effectively hotwire the van by plugging the little connectors
into the ignition sockets, touch this piece to that thing, then
plug it back into the other gizmo.
Of course Brian still wanted to learn how to drive standard.. This is
how he found himself driving down Queen Street in Toronto during
Saturday post-shopping stop-n-go traffic, hotwiring the van back 
to life every time it stauled. I kept my hand near the four-way 
blinker switch. A couple of times he stauled it 3 or 4 times at a 
light just turned green, so that either we missed the green and 
had to wait for the next one, or just got through and left the long 
line of traffic behind us waiting at a red light. Would you believe, 
*not one* person honked at us the whole time! In Montreal if you don't 
have your car in gear as the opposite light is turning yellow, you're 
sure to hear a horn or two. Something to be said about Toronto
courtesy.. :-)
I drove the van by hotwiring it for a couple more weeks actually, since
it wasn't really much trouble. When my little wires were starting
to fall apart however, I got around to changing the defective piece.
It was nice having the radio back of course.

Cheers!


\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
/ Darie Duclos                  / "All my life I've wanted to be \
\ Unix Systems Infrastructure   \  somebody. It's only now I see /
/ Ascom Hasler AG               /  I should have been more       \
\ Bern, Switzerland             \  specific."                    /
/ Darie@hasler.ascom.ch         /               -- Lily Tomlin   \
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