Date:         Tue, 25 Jun 1996 10:22:54 +0930
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         busbones@praxis.net (Kevin Murray)
Subject:      Florida shows/meets (long)

Last Sunday was the date of the First Annual LiMBO "Busses by the Beach"
Extravaganza..  It was graciously hosted by a pair of Ft Desoto Park Rangers
"Peg (69 Dorm)" and "Ken (83 Van)" who had set aside a nice little stretch of
quaint Florida Beach for all us hooligans and our buses.

A couple of fellow listmembers who we'd hoped would show for the convoy were
unavoidably detained/absent so the troops who appeared for the drive were led
in my normal wandering way (need new tie-rod ends!) by Lemonhead, myself and
the S.O.

The turnout from groundZero:

77 BajaBus.... The SurfPups
68 Westie..... Mr. Eastern Imports and family
67 Deluxe..... Booger (don't even ask!)
65 SingleCab.. Didi and I


It was still a bit cool by Florida standards as we left the "Boneyard" just
before daylight. We hoped to arrive at the beach (125 miles away) sometime
during the actual day of the event, but as two of the vehicles sported new
motors and one a new wiring harness we felt adding a margin of error to our
ETA would not be a waste of time...

Lemonhead (65 Singlecab) was elated to stretch his legs a bit after a
lengthy hiatus having undergone exploratory surgery. We recently
transplanted his
delapadated wiring harness with our new "prototype" harness we will be using
in our future projects.  We were still a bit "off" in the final stages, but
were close enough to get one brake light,low-beams, and gauge lights working!

A tad over three hours later we arrived at the scene as we had stopped at a
few "shrines" on the way down and peeped at a couple of rusty double-cabs,
gawked at a handpainted 54 oval, and traipsed through a woodsy section of
farmland counting the buried hulks of dozens upon dozens of beetles..

We could tell immediately upon arrival that we would be welcome as our clan
spruced up the parking lot rather nicely extending the parameters of the
buses that had arrived before us..;-)

  A. The flyer mentioned nothing about it being a LiMBO event, but then LiMBO
     folk are just like us NEATO folk, only smarter, and have more money ;-)

  B. Of the dozen or so vehicles already at the park, Peg's award winning
     Dormmobile was the oldest (68)

  C. We were sure to win hands down ALL the top trophies for oldest,ugliest,
     drippiest and smelliest rides as everything we saw looked like showroom
     condition late model GL's and Westies...

Introducing ourselves to Peg and Ken we were warmly welcomed and quickly
recruited to translate to incoming folks driving, "You know, your kind of
buses!"  "Sure, sure" I replied "Just let me get a litterbox under my motor
and check on the surfpups!" (who I'd spied running after a pod of tourist
females)

After tasting the Gulf, have the obligatory seaweed war with the "pups"
and losing my shorts to the waves twice I returned back to the "scene"
and was pleased to find more buses had arrived..

We were leveling out the Vanagon/Breadloaf -vs- Splittie ratio and while
there were zero ugly vanagons (all you vanagon folk must be blessed with
perfect teeth and perfect children too! ;-)) there were a few "rough-gems"
in the bay window category.  A favorite of mine, spied often at the various
shows here in the South was a mint 62 hardtop westie with a resto-custom
SO-42 interior.  Dark metallic green and Black...sweet
I lost the "oldest" category as a fella brought his 59 "EmpiBus" to the
event. I believe he would've taken the most stickers award had they given
one although there were plenty of stickers on most of the vans we saw.
We (the pups and I ) conducted an informal contest to see what vehicle
donated the most dinojuice to the parking lot surface. Anticipating that
one of us would "handsdown" win we were surprised that the winner by a
landslide was a pretty 86 Westie. Granted, it had been there since early,
but it had left a standing dinnerplate sized puddle of goo under it. I came
in third (behind the highway patrolman who parked next to me) but only
because I spilled a few drops of oil topping off my level once we arrived!

All in all, a great day. Total turnout including a few gorgeous vintage
beetles was close to thirty VW's and they were still coming in as were
were driving back over the causeway on our way home sunburnt and happy!


Kevin


p.s.  Sorry for the length. I'd been meaning to post a paragraph or two
on our upcoming 2nd Annual "Love-Bug Off" happening in the middle of August.
Will mention more in a later post....