If the battery on my cell phone had not gone out then I would have
made a post of sorrow and parts request to the list last night.
Tonight I will briefly share the news of my change of fortune which
just might have been improved by all of the hitch-hikers I have been
picking up.  Due to what I found to be extremely cold temps I opted to
override vws ingenious gas-cap idiot proofing with my alternate set of
keys.  I left the van running while I refueled the van in hopes that
the thick layer of frost on the inside of the windshield might begin
to soften.  Many hours later I noticed a missing gas cap and realized
that I had just lost all of my duplicate keys and my only water tank
cap key.  That was three days ago.  I retraced the 15 mile commute to
the ski hill many times and had decided that a snow plow had finished
my cap and keys off.  It does appear that a snow plow had chucked the
cap and keys from the road and for the first time since coming to stay
in a ski resort town I am glad that it hadn't snowed in a while
because the melting snow bank revealed what I had lost.  The items had
managed to stay on my roof for 5 or so miles before jumping for their
freedom.  I celebrated the reunion by having a lot of keys copied this
afternoon, I even splurged and got one of those magnetic key holder
thingys and a tube of graphite lock cylinder lube.

Maybe I found the keys and cap because I finally scraped enough ice
off of the inside of my windshield, but I think that the hitch-hikers
had more to do with it..

Jonathan Poole
'82 ac westy

oh yeah,, it shure was good knowing that someone on the list would
have been able to help me replace that water tank cap and fuel cap..