While a youngster(18 or 19 to be exact).  My younger brother and I
took a trip from Iowa to California(with parents approval) in my old
60 Beetle that had been converted into a Baja Bug(remember that first
generation kit from Meyers Manx?)  I pulled out the back seat out to
store a plethora of old 356 Porsche parts in boxes that I craftily
marked on the outside(visible to the whole world) as "soil
samples".  I was selling them to a shop in the Bay area..  Four day
round trip, so we didn't do much sight seeing.  I guess I was lucky
as back then renting motel rooms was easier and not one person asked
us if we were running away from home.  I do remember that climbing up
to SLC, the optical illusion of appearing to be going downhill, when
you were actually going uphill.  For a while I thought the motor was
going to crap on us.  Got to the top and nobody died....didn't need
to crack open the John Muir book, but I think I did check the valve
adjustment one morning before starting the motor up.

Today would be a different story.

DM&FS

At 07:29 AM 2/28/2009, David Beierl wrote:
>At 08:49 AM 2/27/2009, Michael Sullivan wrote:
>>Opinions welcomed. Thanks.
>
>To me a lot of it comes down to how well you really know your boy,
>deep down, and how well he knows himself.  I think that anything you
>send into Spring Break that you care about (possibly including the
>boy) is asking for it; but I could easily have an exaggerated notion
>of what Spring Break entails.
>
>As for the rest, I agree with the folks who say that intimate
>knucklebusting knowledge of how the beast works is important to
>continued success and happiness.  I always considered Dutiful Passage
>to be pretty reliable in its own way, and never hesitated to take a
>trip in it except when it was officially not working.  But part of
>the reliable was the reliable expectation that sooner or later I'd be
>underneath it or head down in the engine at a campground or parking
>lot or off the side of the road somewhere chasing gremlins.  I drove
>it something like 150,000 miles and never had it towed until the
>night it went to Mike Collum's to retire and *he* had it towed the
>last 17 miles.  But in the course of that I learned an awful lot
>about the vehicle and pretty much covered Bentley with grease and
>dogeared pages.  I used to look at it sitting next to the Corolla
>manual which had one greasy thumbprint on the cover from when I
>couldn't find the oil pressure sender (under the alternator, of
>course).  And like an ijjit I gave the Bentley to Mike and when I
>started talking on the list again had to beg one from Doug Ford.
>
>So me, I wouldn't lend one farther away than I could get to except to
>a seasoned Vanagonaut, I guess.
>
>Was my boy, I'd help him get a beat-up loaf and a copy of Muir.  That
>way he'll be thinking in terms of his own sweat and blood rather than
>your money, when it comes to peer pressure and taking care.
>
>With respect,
>
>  --
>David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
>'89 Po' White Star "Scamp"