Volks,

There will be Vanagon content!

Well, those New York Giants weren't up to it last night.  Being a
reader of both the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun, I have
followed both teams' successes this year through the football season.
Of course, as a resident of Baltimore, I have been far more interested
in the Ravens' season and was rooting for them to win the Super Bowl.

Honestly, I didn't think they would get by the Giants.  Thought it
would be 14-10, 10-7, or something like that - Giants win.  Boy, was
I wrong.

Since being in the city that wins something like the Super Bowl or the
World Series is such a rare event for most people, I decided to take
my 11 year old out for a quick drive around Baltimore's downtown last
night immediately after the game. Baltimore is known for very
mannerly non-riotous crowds, so it was not as crazy a decision as it
might be in some other cities.  Wanted him to have an extra memory of
this. I live close in, 2 1/2 miles from the harbor (heart of the city)
on a straight shot one way street, so we hustled out to the Syncro and
drove around for a few minutes as the excitement started. Horns blowing,
people yelling and all of that stuff.  Even my son, who is not very
interested in sports, was yelling "Go, Ravens!" etc., and we were
blowing the van's horn like all of the others.  Later, there were
150,000 people downtown and the police cut off all the major highways
into downtown to limit the crowd.  But we got in and out and back home
before there were more than about a few thousand down there, but you
could see it building up.

But we keep on having these "father son" things in one of the two vans,
and he still claims he is going to get one of them for his car when
he is old enough to drive.  We'll see what puberty does for his car
tastes.

Sam Walters
'84 Vanagon, 174k
'89 Syncro, 176 k
11 year old Alex, future driver