Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:32:14 -0400
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: kelphoto@mail.bright.net (mark keller)
Subject: A 91 Carat Super decoder-ring!
It's Friday,
As I promised Jim Digennaro, here is my journal entry from the Vanagon
acquisition process. I emailed it to him a three weeks ago with a request
of net silence until the deal was done. I got the title Saturday. So here
it is uncut, a little correction or two, my psychosis of Bus fever.
April 25, 1997
Lots to write about. Yesterday I received the photos of Big Red.
I'm gonna feel dumb from here on out but if I don't get this out I'll be
an absolute lunatic today too!!!!!
I can't begin to express the elation I experienced yesterday and
boy today is a pretty good start. I am absolutely "ga-ga" over this
wreaked bus. Why? Well I feel it the best example of a VW Vanagon ever
made. Why? In a word, OPTIONS. I like "loaded, special editions", and this
one is. PLUS it is in my absolutely favorite childhood color of REEEEDDDD.
It looks soooooo coool to me. Big Red and "chiney." While I am not
exactly in love with the "gray" interior, it isn't bad.
So why all the nuromeltdown. I missed two appointments: bowling,
and sewing. I got so focused on the pictures, because I was starved for
the information and I completely lost control of my self. In reality this
vehicle has occupied so much of my mental energy for the last seven years
and if one day is shot so what. But man where does this high come from?
I am clinically giddy!!!! WOW and whew! My excitement yesterday
made me so elated to buy this thing, I would have started riding my
bicycle to Miami, completely confident I could make it. Being this high is
scary.
I have fallen a couple of times from being under the influence of
optimistic excitement when my brain is not rational I feel
dysfunctional. In perspective this car really represents to me the "Pearl
of great price". Why?
Well buses are tied to some good high points in my life. The
first was in 1979, at nineteen I was nearing the end of Helicopter flight
training and all of us were buying cars. Slick, woman-hunting,
testosterone charging machines. I already owned the envy the the
battalion, an IMSA styled 240Z my father, a autobody restoration
specialist, and I had just lightly reconditioned.
Owning this thing was a heady experience for me. You could say I
was a little bit caught up in this too. Only 19, I was considered "fast,
strong, and smart" by my peers who were several years my senior on average.
Including "Kalitta" a buddy who shows up in his new/ used "pilots car" a
powder blue, oxidized, 70's vw bus.
I was crossing the parking lot and "Kalitta's" dream boat floated
in farting a tune from the rear end. With sarcastic astonishment, I
approached my wayward lamb of performance. "Kalitta"honey, I said,what
have you got here? My dopey eyed friend grinned like an ex-virgin the
morning after, proffered a beer to me and said,"Want one, hop in". Not
wanting to scare my "patient" I coolly accepted. So Kalitta have you ever
sleepwalked before, I said tenderly? No response from my man. I change
tack . Hey Man what are you doin? this thing ain't fast! Kalitta's, next
words hypnotized me for life. "Man I ain't in a hurry" he drooled. I
didn't know it then, but the seed was planted and would grow in the rocky
soil of my impatience soul.
I know not how, but my aim was to be freed from my fire breathing Z
to where I could say "I ain't' in a hurry" I drove that Z, and myself,
for the next fifteen years. I was really unable not to hurry in that car.
Mostly I just ran it hard for 200,000 plus miles, a friend owns it now as
his daily driver. Yes he calls for advice. Its kinda cute. He apologizes
that the "call" is really just for a diagnosis. Last call as he was saying
goodbye he says, "oh ah and we had another baby on Thursday" Anyway back
to why.
My second high point and bus crossing occurred just two years after
Kalitta's fertile prophecy. I had just accepted the offer of salvation in
Christ from my high school bar buddy, who was at a Christian College in the
Foothills outside of Sacramento, CA.
David's school job involved baking and delivering bread for area health
food stores. What can I say, the school had a cream over chocolate "bread
bus." I was so "high" from the spring mornings in the mountain foothills, a
new life in Christ, and here was this gorgeous bus that we rode around
admiring all of the new spring life. It was truly a pinnacle of my life
and still is!
I guess the bus is a memento of my life's greatest times. Ten
years passed before I began my search for a bus. Driven like a hatched
turtle to the sea, I began my journey to own a bus. Now personally I am a
bit a nut when it comes to hunting something down. For the past seven
years I have been --"distracted."
Every newspaper I saw was checked for a bus. Every new road I
drove I craned my neck for my bus sitting for sale on the side of the road.
I cruise used car strips when in strange towns, like kids cruise the mall
or strip. I'm not proud to say that I called and went to drive many of
them just to build my data base. I wanted to know a goodun when I saw it.
I've even broke down on a test drive-- a particularly pitiful 81' Westy
which had been retro carbed by an idiot!! It had a cream or yellow
oxidized, body and I thought the world of it, but like many of my test
drives "No Sale." In truth, cash kept me from every one.
May I say parenthetically, that if your reading this and have a
"bus wanted ad" and have cash, man your just not trying-- except for the
guy who wants his green westy back. Man I haven't seen one in my seven
years. I have seen um, but it was before I started my pilgrimage.
Since were on a tangent anyway, one reason I feel this monologue is
special, I wanted to express my journey for others to identify that bus
fever is still a potent and life changing err rather empowering to people.
Succinctly, to me buses are usually a catalyst to the best times on the
planet; and as such I would subsume the mental state as a taste for the
good life. May we all extract the good times. Perhaps defined differently
for each, but certainly "I ain't in a hurry" includes most of us. And we
pay dearly and gladly for it.
Well money is still a scarcity, but not a limiting factor. As a
photographer, I was able to get a great shot of a 91' Vanagon on film and a
large blow up on my bedroom wall. So much for the intro, wow dejavu, I
really believe I dreamed all of this just before I was bug bitten seven
years ago. Somebody call me a Doctor!
About three months ago, a friend offered to introduce me to the
inter net. I immediately began exploiting my friend offer to locate my
dream bus. One night with the net and I became a feverish bus hunter. I
spent my next bounty on a Mac and got the the stuff to be my own explorer.
Yeah, I lost some sleep, you guys crank out a lot of interesting stuff.
I've been on the net in the wee hours when I couldn't sleep. So I hope you
connect to the symptoms of the the malady I suffer. Hey!! Where's that
doctor I called for?
Anyway, soon after a got on the net, I hit a bus ad that yanked
my spinal cord hard. Heavy breathing, constricted pupils, and trembling
fingers. I call. Is it still for sale? (I ask trying to be calm,but I
felt like I was trying to lie to a cop!) A voice in spanenglish says,
"yeah mang, I still got it!;" but there are couple problems you should
know about. Get me that doctor now!!! I am suffering here!!!
So after three weeks of delays by the PO, I get the pictures,
actually a disposable camera. The photos reveal the Fedex truck and driver
in the background waiting on the owner to snap my images of glory. Nice
touch huh. Anyway we haven't consummated the deal yet, but soon. There are
some real heavy duty problems which if you all are interested in I will
gladly spill at the appropriate session. In the meantime blessings to any
of God's children who read this and comprehend.mk
new owner 91' Carat
