Date:         Fri, 10 Nov 95 0:50:58 EST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         jag@cs.rochester.edu
Subject:      Going on a 2 month trip in the Westy!

Going on a 2 month trip in the Westy!

Next week I'll go on adventure. My SO and I are planning to take
a two month trip in the Westy. The westy is probably feeling very
excited right now. She knows something must be happening, since
she has received so much attention lately. The little diesel feels
stronger than ever, despite 118k hard working miles on it. Despite
no apparent lack of power (relative that is ;-), she smokes a bit,
and I'd like to know why before we go. I'm taking the injectors
to the Bosch-shop tomorrow to have them checked, and see if that's
the problem.

The excuse for the trip is that I have two conferences in Florida
this winter, one in the end of Nov, the other in beginning of Jan,
and my SO has one. Well, why bother go home to cold and boring
Rochester inbetween the conferences we though. My advisor wasn't
quite as quick as we were to realize how obvious this conclusion
was, but he didn't protest too much.

We haven't planned in detail what we are going to do between the
conferences yet, except that we'll be staying in the south, probably
in Florida. Suggestions are welcome! We'll be bringing a Hobie Cat
and will try to find nice places to go sailing, beach camping and
hiking. Two years ago we went to Biscayne and Everglades national
parks (see pictures on my WWW-pages). This year I'd like to see
more of the Florida west coast (which, I've heard is not as commercialized
as the east coast), and the thousand island region. John Pennecamp (sp?)
coral reef would be nice to visit also, but getting a camping
spot in the small land portion of the park seems hard. Also I
fear that the Florida Keys may be a bit too expensive for our
student budget.

It will be interesting to see how fast the diesel can go while
towing the catamaran (trailer and boat is about 700lbs).
(-Hahahahah, towing with a diesel, I can already hear laughter)
Fortunately Florida is flat, and so is much of the road leading
there, (Guess I'll avoid Pennsylvania, and Shendoah this time ;)
and we are not in a hurry, so we won't envy the wasserboxers zooming
by.

(But just wait until after I graduate next year. Then I'll
put a hotted (110 ps chip) 1.9 TD into the camper and I can
keep up with all of you, while still getting 30+ mpg!)

We'd be driving down south along the coast (no hills). First
near, (but not necessarily on) I-90 and I-87. South of Washington I-95.
Any advice of scenic routes, places to visit etc... along the route
would be appreciated ...and also on good vw and diesel garages if something
should go wrong. (The storage under the rear seat is full of my tools,
but I can't anticipate every problem) 

Cheers,
Martin
--
Martin Jagersand                 email: jag@cs.rochester.edu
Computer Science Department             jag@cs.chalmers.se
University of Rochester          Fax:   (716) 461-2018
Rochester, NY 14627-0226         WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/