Hi all.
A longtime lurker (well, since September) now opens the closet door. From
far away and overseas I have followed the Adventures of Grendel, visualized
myself on countless Interstate Highways, taken part in the heated argument
over PC, taxes and pollution, car manufaturers manipulation of society and
learnt something about heaters in vw:s.
All I can say is: I like it.=20
This, to me, represents some of the best aspects of staring at a computer
screen that I can think of. Having a vw-bus is not such a lonely, costly,
frustrating, nailbiting, and bankloaning (yeah, read robbing, if only my bus
would be quick enough to escape in <grin>) thing it used to be. Or, it still
is, but now with all of you out there sharing the agonies, it somehow feels
better. Silly? Yeah, maybe.
All isn=B4t gold that glimmers, and a lot of the threads are over my head.
Still, the feeling is good, and some things have made me think about
possible alternations (we own a Tranporter -80. Now, is that automatically a
Vanagon over there?) that might make life easier.
As for right now, we are Expecting. Car pushed us over the evil mountains of
southern Germany and Austria, only to give up and go to vwheaven, to meet
its maker. That was August. Any day now, we will have the 1'600 replaced by
a 1'800.
Don't know if it was a stupid decision, it emptied our bankaccount pretty=
 good.
But it's our car and we really like it.
Following this list has left me feeling convinced we did the right thing.
How we got into this mess? That's another story, coming up soon.

Well, that's all folks.
Ciao
Johanni Larjanko (yeah, that is a Finnish name. Finland. Mika H=E4kkinen.
Nokia. Ice Hockey)
Grassina (as in Italy)
80 Transporter (getting better all the time)