I have spent most of my driving years driving older vehicles with no computers, real
carburators and a decent finish that looked nice but I never had to care about where
I parked it and who might ding a door or whether a shopping cart sent wheeling across
a parking lot at 30 mph smashed into a fender.  I have owned 2 very nice brand new
vehicles and I can say in all honesty, I'm happier with the ones that don't make me
neurotic about what might happen to them.  If you take notice when going into a
parking lot, you'll see that all the nice cars are parked farthest from the store
entrance, and people with sh#@boxes dont care where they park and tend to get as
close to the building as possible.  Best advice I can give is to park your van next
to expensive higher class cars who's owners are typically a bit more courteous, if
not for yours at least about their own doors when they open them.

robyn and heather wrote:

> I just wanted to rant a little.  This has very little vanagon content, but
> I feel entitled to waste everyone's time.  It's therapeutic, so bear with me.
>
> I would like to go 30 days in a row without some one denting my 91
> Westy!  I feel nuts for caring as much as I do, but at the same time I get
> pissed because some people just don't seem to care where their doors swing,
> whether they are wholly in a parking space or how close they park their
> piece of crap next to my beautiful Westy.
>
> The latest offender was Carter VW in Ballard, of all places.  They backed
> my van into something and mangled my rear mounted Yakima rack and put a
> dent in the door where the rack foot rests on the door.  God knows what
> would have happened had the rack not been there.  I spoke to the Service
> Manager and I quote, "if you say it happened here then it happened here and
> we'll pay for it." Thankfully he was a smooth talker that answers his own
> phone.  While I dialed the number I was really gearing up to give him
> hell.  I was pretty pleased with our verbal detente.  Of course, this was
> before I realized the door was dented as well.  I don't feel like the dent
> warrants bodywork, and that it would be more a hassle than it's worth. It
> makes me so angry.
>
> This is the last in a line of automotive calamity that follows me whatever
> I drive... a few weeks ago, a woman rolled back into my front bumper while
> waiting for the Fremont Bridge in Seattle. While waiting for the bridge, I
> had time to get really excited.  Luckily my gnarly bumper guard laid a nice
> black smudge on her brand new turquois character-lacking grocery getter,
> otherwise I would have been staring at a split in my fiberglass bumper that
> her insurance company couldn't begin to atone for.  In an attempt to
> diffuse the situation, I told her she could probably just wash off the
> paint, and she looks at me and says, "I just better get your name and
> number in case I have to replace my bumper."
>         "Are you nuts!" I cried.  "You rolled in to me! Knucklehead! Do you think
> this vanagon defies gravity? I know it functional, and has more character
> than that thing you drive could ever have; even if Christ himself drove it
> around the block, which I know for a fact he would drive a Westy and
> probably a syncro, but really, rolling up hill at a stop light!"
>         Meanwhile next to us in traffic is a cabby with his open window just even
> with my theatrics, and he is laughing so hard he can barely speak.  The
> lady, seeing him as a key witness to her injustice asks him what really
> happened. He could hardly get out how funny it was that this lady would
> roll down a hill into some one and then be crazy enough to ask them to pay
> for the damage.  The bridge comes down and he drives off muttering
> something that sounded like, "Christ driving a volkswagen he hee he."
>
> I could go on, but I will spare you all.  Let's just say that I have owned
> almost as many cars as years I have been driving, and I hope to get the
> number of years bigger than the number of cars some day.  I, like most VW
> lovers, have owned more than my fair share of cars, many of them VW's, a
> few Fiats, a 1954 Lancia B24 Spyder and many others.  Most of them have
> ended in disaster (the Lancia was sold rather than destroyed, but it ruined
> my driving record before we parted ways).  I feel like I need to preserve
> my Westy before something really bad happens to it.  But for now, it is my
> daily driver and I take my chance every morning and evening trying to
> determine where the next dent is coming from in order to limit its affect
> on my blood pressure.
>
> Thanks for listening.
> robyn