Modest

Maryn is too modest to say this, but I am quite proud of her, so here we go: The curtains are done! Yeah, I know, huh! They are so cool. Last night we put snaps (not without any snapfoo's (pun)) on the curtains and hung them up. I did one inside out, and Maryn did, too. If you plan to undertake snapping yourself, I would recommend buying the $20 tool rather than using a hammer. Now that we have the snap tool, I already have plans to put snaps on nearly everything Maryn owns. Anyway, the curtains are done and we are headed to the Oregon Coast in less than two hours. We hope to make it to Portland tonight, but maybe early tomorrow, then drive down the coast and back home by Monday night, if we come home at all! Pictures to come!- CCJ

Do I change our blog's title?

Well, for the first time since Craig and I have been together we are a one VW family. We’ve always had at least 2 VWs…sometimes three. This does present an interesting obstacle as the title of our blog at least in part suggests that we have more than one Volkswagen. I guess if that’s my biggest concern, then life is really good.

We sold Lady yesterday, which made me really sad…it may be freakish, but I think I get more attached to cars than I do to people. I had to get to the bank ASAP after selling her, not so much because I was uncomfortable having so much cash, but because I knew that paying off the credit card would make me happy. There’s nothing I love more than that $0 balance. (Okay, that’s so not true, I love lots of things more than that, but you get what I’m trying to say.)

Last weekend we were trying to decide whether we should sell Penny or not and decided that we needed to go look at some bay window campers (I mean, what helps the brainstorming juices flow more than car shopping?) We have, of course been in several of these before, but never with the specific goal of determining whether we liked Penny, or our potential bay window camper better. We went and saw a Westy that was about what we could afford. It was a ’75, and while the exterior was totally beat, the interior was really cool. We were digging the idea of getting a bay window—when it occurred to me that the ’75 we had seen was only 6 years older than our Penny. 6 years!

I always think of busses as falling into 3 categories—ancient (splitties), really old (bay windows) and practically fresh off the line (Vanagons). I forget that Penny was made during only the second year in the history of Vanagons. It had never really hit me before that Penny’s body and interior are in incredibly awesome shape for being an ’81 (I’ll do the math for you, that is 28 years old)! Add that to her freshly rebuilt engine and tranny and well, we’d be kind of dumb to sell her (I’m totally confident that I’ll have to eat those words sometime within…three years.)

We cleaned her interior and took her to the car wash, and man, she cleans up good. So now, we’ve got some work cut out for us because, yeah, she looks really good, but let’s face it, 29 years of wear have taken a toll. Our first project is debatable—either work on the engine seal or finish the curtains (yes, the ones I started like a year ago).

Car #9

Craig and I have been thinking for a while (since it got cold outside) about what it would be like to have a car that had heat. This has been our third winter without a heated car. You get used to being cold and traveling at a max speed of 65 mph, until you drive a car that is warm and goes faster than this. As I mentioned before, we borrowed my mom’s Audi while our cars were out of commission a couple of weeks ago.

The Audi was warm…and we had been looking at Subarus for a while. Last week, we made a casual visit to our local used Subaru dealer. On the way there, Craig asked me—what would have to happen in order for us to buy a car today. I more or less said that it was not possible, but when a clean, inexpensive Legacy, combined with a low pressure salesman came along, I somehow lost my conviction and, well, now we have a heated car that we think will go more than 60 mph (we haven’t tried yet), has two side-view mirrors, auto locks and windows, something which we believe to be called “hill assist”, all-wheel drive, and all of the other standard features that most people who are reading this see nothing special about, but to us are signs of high class luxury. Watch out Paris Hilton, here we come.

We are opposed to owning three cars, so now we have to answer the question: which of our VWs do we sell? I know that selling our VWs makes us invariably less cool, but reduced coolness is the price we are going to pay for warmth. (Plus, I really do like the Subaru.)

We have a few options: 1) sell the bug, 2) sell the vanagon, or 3) sell both and buy a bay window camper.
Option three makes me salivate.
Option three would also probably cost us money.

I guess we’ll just wait and see what happens—in the meantime, anyone want to buy a car?

TGIF

I’m ready for it to be Friday. The past week has been defined by the following events:

Saturday 1PM lock keys in car while at Sears (after which, Ali wrote Craig a note that said “DONT FERGIT TO PUT QES IN YOUR POCKIT” because, you know, wow, if only we had a note to remind us, we would have remembered. :-)
Saturday 8PM Lady dies in drive through (as described below)
Saturday 9PM we discover that Penny’s clutch is out
Saturday 10PM Our good friend Rob helps us tow Lady to the mechanic
Wednesday 12PM I walk to the mechanic and pick up Lady, pay $177
Wednesday 6PM We use Lady (the bug) to tow Penny (the bus) to the mechanic. I really really wish we had pictures of this. Craig says we got some really funny looks. I did not notice as I was too concerned about not crashing our cars into each other.
Thursday 6PM Lady dies (again) on the way to pick up dinner. We push her onto a side street and decide that there’s no use wasting pizza, so we walk to the pizza place. We walk back to Lady, and proceed to push her half of a mile (no exaggeration here—I looked on google maps) back to our house.
Thursday 9PM we acquire my grandparent’s truck (thanks Mom and Dad!) and tow Lady to the mechanic

It has been an all too eventful week. In the interest of not sounding like a whiner—I do love our cars, and this chaos is just part of the game when your newest car is older than you.

Other significant events during the week: we received a very helpful and generous check in the mail (thank you!); Charlie turned four and we bought chicken nuggets at his request of which he ate none; we almost finished our bedroom floor; and became seasoned experts at administering banana flavored oral medication to our cat.

I’m desperately hoping for an un-eventful weekend...after the Pepper concert.

A little TOO Coincidental

Last Friday I posted on this blog saying that our cars have been running great and that some shop time should be coming up soon. The following dialogue serves as evidence of my telepathic abilities.

Here’s the scene: Saturday night—Garden City Dairy Queen drive through.

Lady in the speaker: That will be $6.37 at the window

We pull forward—there are two cars in front of us.

Maryn: Doesn’t Lady (the bug) sound weird?
Craig: (revs engine) yeah

Bug Dies
Craig tries to start bug

Maryn: *%&#
Craig: *$&#
Maryn: Do you want me to get out and push?
Craig: yes

Maryn gets out and pushes car

Lady at the window: That will be $6.37
Craig: thank you

Maryn pushes bug past drive through window and into adjacent alley

Onlookers: ha ha ha ha ha

I’ll spare you some unnecessary details here: We sit for about 10 minutes, and after several failed attempts to start Lady, we call my grandparents who pick us up, take us to my parent’s house and we borrow their car (luckily, they’re in Florida). We decide that we don’t want leave Lady in a parking lot over night so, when we get home, we decide to take the bus down and tow Lady to the mechanic. We get in the bus. Resume scene.

Craig: There’s no clutch.
Maryn: What?!
Craig: the clutch is gone—there’s no clutch
Maryn (laughs hysterically): you are joking.
Craig: “no—there’s no clutch ^*&%”
Maryn (still laughing hysterically): “$*%&”
Craig: Let me see if it is the cable. (Craig looks at undercarriage) There’s oil all over the slave cylinder.
Maryn: Hooray.

Again, I’ll spare you the unnecessary details: our friend Rob saved the day by meeting us at Dairy Queen and towing the bug to our mechanic. (Thank you Rob!)

Sigh. All we can really do is 1) laugh, and 2) be grateful for the six months we went without visiting the mechanic (we love you Mike!)

Splitting from the Splitty

This blog has long been neglected and I became embarrassingly emotional when I visited it this morning and realized that I need to simultaneously update the blog and eulogize Aunt Tranny. Well, maybe eulogize isn’t the right word, but it feels right. A couple of months ago, we sold Tranny. I’ve attempted on several occasions to explain this decision to people, but words don’t exist that make it okay.
We sold her to a man named Dan who was absolutely ecstatic to have her and he plans to return her to original condition. I feel like the mother in India who sells her son to the trader so that he can have opportunities that she can’t provide him. Tranny deserved a lot more care (read—financial investment) than we could give her and for that reason we are really happy that Dan has her. What lessens the sting is what we gained by selling her—financial peace of mind.
Sigh. The good news is that we still have Penny and Lady and they kick ass. I’m sure we are going to have some serious shop time coming up because they haven’t given us an ounce of trouble in…SIX MONTHS! This is an astonishingly long time for us to have not visited our mechanic.
We’ll see how long I can keep Craig from shopping for new a new bus. I’m guessing I’ve got another…three hours.

VW Fun

The annual Bus Pilots family reunion was a few weeks ago. It was fun as always, but this year we also attended the Saturday morning event which we'd never gone to before but which turned out to be gobs of fun. This was a type of scavenger hunt where we had directions like--turn left at the 17th street you pass, or turn right at the 5th stop sign. I navigated while Craig drove like he was 19 again (I'm so glad we all made it). We had the kids with us and they "helped" us count streets and I think they got a little bored towards the end, but had a good time overall. Here are a few photos of some sweet vee-dubs.