Scanning craigslist I spotted an ad for a giveaway Coleman stove with no description for it other than that it worked. Our old two-burner has served us well since 2001, but it has seen better days so it seemed the time was right. I called the guy and headed out to pick it up outside of Lolo.
(Don't worry: that tablecloth isn't ours, it's in the laundry room.)
It looks like it's a Canadian model. I hope that we can manage the switch from cooking in Fahrenheit to cooking in Celsius. I got it home and fired it up, and it worked perfectly. And it was really clean, looking barely used or at least well-kept.
Best of all, it fits perfectly in the cabinet thingy above Ludwig's icebox.
Today is Ludwig's 35th birthday. I used to think his birthday was Hallowe'en, but I think now that it's the 24th. I promise I'll get it straightened out for sure by his 36th. [edit: It is the 24th. Thanks, dwill49965.]
Here's what was going on in the world when Ludwig rolled off the factory floor in Hanover:
- It was the last day of the Yom Kippur War
- "Rocky" Lane, the voice of Mr. Ed, died
- The number one song in the country was "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips
Not very exciting, I know. A gallon of gas cost about $0.40 then, which is a little less than two bucks now. Hmmm. Maybe things aren't quite as bad as they seem these days.
He shares his birthday with a bunch of people who I've never heard of, except for the acclaimed rapper Madlib.
Happy birthday, Ludwig!
In conversation (e-conversation anyway) with a fellow ACVWer recently, I soon found myself wandering in nostalgia for the first VWs I ever owned, this trio of Type IIIs.
Not to toot my own horn, but in retrospect I think it took some guts for a small-town (Stanton Nebraska, pop. ~1600) high school guy to drive a partly pink car. Such was Gretchen, a 1973 Type III Fastback whom I purchased sometime in the Spring of 1991. I spotted her at a dealership in Valley, on the way to a Screaming Trees show in Omaha with my younger brother Bill and our friend Donny. The show didn't happen--tour bus wreck--but the car did and I've never really looked back, Rabbit and Subaru notwithstanding. I blew up the engine (sent a rod right through the case) in the Summer of 1991, got a rebuilt one that Summer, and fatally crashed her into a 1990 LeBaron that Winter. The white car in the background, at right, was my first car, "Yvette", a 1977 Ford Mustang II.
I was shopping around for a Squareback to put the freshish engine into and stumbled across Anne in Council Bluffs very late in 1991 (it was the week after Christmas). What a wonderful car. She holds two distinctions for me: the fastest I've ever driven an ACVW (100mph), and the best mileage I've ever gotten in any car (38mpg). If you've ever wondered how many bottles of Schmidt big mouths you can safely fit in the trunk of a 1970 Type III, I can tell you: 96. She could give Ludwig a run for his money as far as adventures go (the two were acquainted, actually). Anne was mortally rusty in all the typical Type III places though, and sacrificed much of herself for the next car.
Freida was put together with much love in the Spring of 1996 by myself and 01Melcher. She was red when I got her and that paint job was my choice, applied by 01Melcher. It was pointed out to us later that the stripe is on the wrong side, as racing stripes serve the practical function for the driver of reducing glare off the hood. Who knew? Appearances aside, Freida was something of a delicate creature and I never had her really dialed in and running properly. Plus I didn't entirely know what I was doing (still don't, but I'm a little better). But when she was running well, she was as fine a car as one could hope to drive. If you've ever wondered how many 10-lb. cases of hamburgers you can safely fit into the back of a 1967 Type III Squareback, I can tell you: 35. Freida met a deer in the Spring of 1998, which was pretty much the end of her, decent Type III replacement body panels in Nebraska being non-existent. I drove her for a while afterwards with a severely bent passenger-side door and a blue front fender from a '68, but the engine gave up a few months later and so did I.
R.I.P., ladies.
Our first snow of the season fell this morning. We'll see how long it sticks around.
Soon after moving to Missoula, I was told on an ACVW forum that Missoula is a "bus town". Not quite--but it is without a doubt one of America's great Vanagon towns. These boxy crates are positively rife around here. I don't know much about them other than they were air-cooled between 1980 and 1983 1/2, and water cooled thereafter. Yes, VW made the switch from air- to water-cooled in the middle of the model year. Those wacky Germans. They stopped making them in 1991, and just like that, VW's long history of rear-engined vehicles died with a whimper. (At least you can still get a car with its engine at the proper end if you buy a Porsche.) I can't tell these things apart as far as model years go, so you can just pick your favorite year from the '80s (or very early '90s) and pretend they're all from then.
Westfalia outfitted Vanagons as campers too.
I'm kind of glad they didn't color-coordinate the poptops and the bodies back in the bay window days. I'm kind of not glad they didn't put wipers on the rear windows back in the bay window days.
I lied, sort of, when I said I couldn't tell Vanagons apart by year. I (think I) know this much: if they have round headlights like this one (trust me) they are an '85 or earlier. Sometimes I wish I lived in the possible world where bay window rear hatches were as enormous as Vanagon ones.
Even though s/he's legally a resident of the Centennial State, I put this Westy here because I'm a sucker for just about any automobile that's painted white. By the time this van found its way to this side of the Atlantic they were selling a pitiful 6000 or so Vanagons a year. VW had such a severe midlife crisis/identity problem in the '80s that by 1991 or '92 they very nearly stopped selling cars in the US altogether.
I was on a stroll, thinking about doing some hate, when I saw the sticker (poster?) in the rear window of this van. Whew! Disaster averted! If only people everywhere would just print up and post this mandate--the world's problems would be solved. Am I right or what?
It's inexcusable that we've neglected to show this silver Vanagon on the blog before. The omission is inexcusable because this is easily Ludwig's closest VW neighbor, sitting across and down the alley no more than 15 yards from him. I like to imagine that they have pleasant but shouted conversations in German all day long (they'd have to shout because their backs are usually toward one another).
As mentioned in a previous post, we entered three photos in GoWesty's 2009 calendar contest. Well, Melissa's photo below was accepted and will appear in the calendar.
No word as to which month Ludwig will grace.
(Don't worry: that tablecloth isn't ours, it's in the laundry room.)
It looks like it's a Canadian model. I hope that we can manage the switch from cooking in Fahrenheit to cooking in Celsius. I got it home and fired it up, and it worked perfectly. And it was really clean, looking barely used or at least well-kept. 
Today is Ludwig's 35th birthday. I used to think his birthday was Hallowe'en, but I think now that it's the 24th. I promise I'll get it straightened out for sure by his 36th. [edit: It is the 24th. Thanks, dwill49965.]
Not to toot my own horn, but in retrospect I think it took some guts for a small-town (Stanton Nebraska, pop. ~1600) high school guy to drive a partly pink car. Such was Gretchen, a 1973 Type III Fastback whom I purchased sometime in the Spring of 1991. I spotted her at a dealership in Valley, on the way to a Screaming Trees show in Omaha with my younger brother Bill and our friend Donny. The show didn't happen--tour bus wreck--but the car did and I've never really looked back, Rabbit and Subaru notwithstanding. I blew up the engine (sent a rod right through the case) in the Summer of 1991, got a rebuilt one that Summer, and fatally crashed her into a 1990 LeBaron that Winter. The white car in the background, at right, was my first car, "Yvette", a 1977 Ford Mustang II.
I was shopping around for a Squareback to put the freshish engine into and stumbled across Anne in Council Bluffs very late in 1991 (it was the week after Christmas). What a wonderful car. She holds two distinctions for me: the fastest I've ever driven an ACVW (100mph), and the best mileage I've ever gotten in any car (38mpg). If you've ever wondered how many bottles of Schmidt big mouths you can safely fit in the trunk of a 1970 Type III, I can tell you: 96. She could give Ludwig a run for his money as far as adventures go (the two were acquainted, actually). Anne was mortally rusty in all the typical Type III places though, and sacrificed much of herself for the next car.
Freida was put together with much love in the Spring of 1996 by myself and 01Melcher. She was red when I got her and that paint job was my choice, applied by 01Melcher. It was pointed out to us later that the stripe is on the wrong side, as racing stripes serve the practical function for the driver of reducing glare off the hood. Who knew? Appearances aside, Freida was something of a delicate creature and I never had her really dialed in and running properly. Plus I didn't entirely know what I was doing (still don't, but I'm a little better). But when she was running well, she was as fine a car as one could hope to drive. If you've ever wondered how many 10-lb. cases of hamburgers you can safely fit into the back of a 1967 Type III Squareback, I can tell you: 35. Freida met a deer in the Spring of 1998, which was pretty much the end of her, decent Type III replacement body panels in Nebraska being non-existent. I drove her for a while afterwards with a severely bent passenger-side door and a blue front fender from a '68, but the engine gave up a few months later and so did I.
Westfalia outfitted Vanagons as campers too.
I'm kind of glad they didn't color-coordinate the poptops and the bodies back in the bay window days. I'm kind of not glad they didn't put wipers on the rear windows back in the bay window days.
I lied, sort of, when I said I couldn't tell Vanagons apart by year. I (think I) know this much: if they have round headlights like this one (trust me) they are an '85 or earlier. Sometimes I wish I lived in the possible world where bay window rear hatches were as enormous as Vanagon ones.
Even though s/he's legally a resident of the Centennial State, I put this Westy here because I'm a sucker for just about any automobile that's painted white. By the time this van found its way to this side of the Atlantic they were selling a pitiful 6000 or so Vanagons a year. VW had such a severe midlife crisis/identity problem in the '80s that by 1991 or '92 they very nearly stopped selling cars in the US altogether.
I was on a stroll, thinking about doing some hate, when I saw the sticker (poster?) in the rear window of this van. Whew! Disaster averted! If only people everywhere would just print up and post this mandate--the world's problems would be solved. Am I right or what?
It's inexcusable that we've neglected to show this silver Vanagon on the blog before. The omission is inexcusable because this is easily Ludwig's closest VW neighbor, sitting across and down the alley no more than 15 yards from him. I like to imagine that they have pleasant but shouted conversations in German all day long (they'd have to shout because their backs are usually toward one another).
