Geez, my eyes are misty from all the memory filled stories of past bus
ownership here....

Mine was a bit different. I found a '72 rust-free camper with the nice
Helsinki interior but a sunroof instead of a poptup. It had a blown engine
so I got it for $500.  I was poor and wanted a used engine put in by my
drunken Hungarian mechanic told me he would rebuild it and I could pay him
in payments. 5 months went by as I drove past the shop staring at my van
that never moved. Eventually I got it in the fall.  The sunroof never quite
closed right so for all the years it was sitting water had built up in the
channels and had turned all kinds of nasty colors.  This was unknown to me
at the time.  When I finally got it from my mechanic I brought it home and
decided to take my new bride on a little ride. The first time I hit the
brakes 10 years worth of "sewagey" water poured all over my wife. Luckily
this was a cold fall day to add to the misery.  That was probably the first
time I got "The Look". Even though the bus had new heater boxes, etc. the
interior was heated by exhaust whenever the heat was turned on so this van
had no heat right off the bat. Not a good thing in SE PA. Our first camping
trip ever was at a private campground (we did not know better) and luckily
it was Square Dance Weekend. Yup, loud square-dance music poured from the
clubhouse for hours on end. The wife soon perfected "The Look".  I spent the
next few years replacing starters in campgrounds, tires in the snow, clutch
cables in the mud, etc. It had a monthly trip to the shop to get the
carburetor adjusted as it NEVER ran right.  Eventually coming home from work
one day on route 476 I heard the inevitable
tappa-tappa-tappa-tappa-whap-whap-whap from the #3 valve.  I sold it to a
guy named Zeke at YBH VW for $500. He still works there but they won't
answer my emails. I'm curios at to what became of it.  The '84 GL I bought
to replace it in '93 was a disaster of unimaginable proportions.  How my
wife let me buy my current '83.5 in '96 I'll never know but it has made up
for all the bad things that happened in our previous vans. I still have that
one and now an '03 Eurovan MV which I just added 2 weeks ago.  Ahhhh,
automatic, air conditioning.....

Bryan