thanks for the great story Don !
very adventure-prone place anyway, Baja.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Hanson" <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2008 7:31 PM
Subject: Dual control ? Minimal Van content.

>I always wanted to make a car
> with full dual controls, like for desert racing say - you just hand off
> control to the co-driver without breaking stide.
> I could build one for someone, got all the parts needed.
> scott
> turbovans
> =
>
>  When my father passed away, my mother gave us their almost new 30'
> Bounder
> Mo-Ho....At the time, we were spending winters in Baja, south of La Paz
> and
> had been using my F-250 with an Alaskan camper to habitate and motivate
> for
> a couple of  months per winter.  With big misgivings, we decided to take
> the
> Bounder, since it was free, almost new and had all kindsa crap...more
> stuff
> than our house, even.
>
>  So I hooked up my small Nissan pickup on the back and off we went...Gas
> was still under a buck in Mexico, luckily.
>
>  Well after many harrowing near misses along Baja Hwy 1, which is only 23'
> wide (if all the pavement is in place) and many white-knuckled passes of
> speeding Mexican busses and trucks, we made it to La Paz...Whew!  Then we
> headed out to our beach property which entailed a ten mile stretch of 'Old
> Baja' road....large sand washboards...  At about 5 miles onto the El
> Sargento road...the steering wheel no longer had any effect on the
> direction
> of the Mo-ho.  With a flourish, when my SO, sitting waaay over in her
> captains chair screeched "What the f..are you doing, you're wandering all
> over the road!" I calmly handed her the steering wheel (which had come off
> in my hands) and said "Here, you drive then"...We'd already had some
> Ballenas (liter sized Pacifico beers) so it cracked us up....I stuck some
> vicegrips onto the steering shaft and we continued on to our camp....Only
> to
> find out a week later when we went to pick up our mail that GM, which made
> the Bounder platform, had issued a recall saying..."You GM truck vehicle
> may
> encounter catastrophic loss of directional stability" or some such...
>
>  What a good thing that wheel didn't come off on any of the previous 1000
> miles of highway while we were skirting very dangerous driving encounters
> by
> the hundreds, daily and blitzing along in 10 tons of flying Cheeze at
> about
> 150kilometers per hour..What a huge pig and one of the dumber vehicles
> I've
> ever owned...We were popular with our tenting buddies during some long
> rainy
> days, though, showing Videos and munching on microwave popcorn...Sheesh!
>
>  The very next year...That Bounder was history!  I lusted all that winter
> over my next door neighbor's Mazda-powered Westie...(van content) and
> helped
> him win an off road race (the Pacifico 300) in his Baja Bug pre-runner...
>
>  Don Hanson