Missoulaneous ACVWs

I think it's a '68.

Old Soul

Antiques that get driven (the first and fifth vehicles here, for example) are much more impressive to me than antiques that sit in climate-controlled garages, get lugged around on trailers, and add only thirty or so miles to their odometers each year. A trip to the VW AutoMuseum in Wolfsburg would blow my mind, don't get me wrong. But sustaining an unbroken record of service for years and decades is better, I think, for the car's spirit (such that it is).

We spotted this Beetle by the Hip Strip the other day. This little car has clearly lived a Life; I sense a lot of pride here. How old is it?

Someone better steeped in such minutiae could offer a more exact answer, but that little oval rear window tells us that this Beetle is between 53 and 57 years old.

P-burg

Mitch is often asking me to post, so I asked him to pick his favorite photos from our most recent road trip (in Gertie) and I would do the writing.

Destination: Philipsburg Montana. We'd never been to Philipsburg, and I'd been wanting to visit for a quite a long time, but especially since Angela, Jason, and Bode visited Missoula, and their subsequent trip to Philipsburg. Mitch had to travel to Philipsburg for work, and since the hotel was paid for Tater and I tagged along.

Philipsburg almost became a ghost town, like the dozen or so actual ghost towns in the surrounding area, but sometime in the '80s or '90s most of the downtown became part of the National Register of Historical Places. The locals take a lot of pride in being voted one of America's Prettiest Painted Places. Seriously, we saw a bank employee windexing the black paint trim on the bank when we walked around town the evening we arrived. Now the town's hot with tourists, although not this time of year. Discovery Ski Area (seen above) probably is touristy this time of year though.

Since it was the off season, there were only a couple of hotels open for business. The choices were The Broadway Hotel, or some dive that Mitch's boss said he wouldn't be staying at. The Broadway Hotel was very much not a dive. It was probably the most awesome hotel we've ever seen. Tater Tot really liked the fire in the stove in The Cowboy Room, and sitting on a cow hide covered bench while playing with poker chips.

True to form, books trumped all other activities.

Each room has a different theme, the one we were in was The Hard Rock Room. As you can see in the photo above, the room was updated at some point since the photo on the hotel's website, and included a giant pickaxe above the headboard. Mitch and I both gasped a bit before checking to see how secure it was fixed to the wall.

The owner of the hotel was heading to Missoula the morning of our checkout, so Tater and I had to pack up and were left to our own devices. My ability to entertain a toddler in a mostly-closed-for-the-season-tourist-town was really put to the test. Although I didn't get any photos, the best part of our day was spent at an amazing volunteer-run thrift store. We scored some great sales, and had some interesting conversation with the locals. Luckily, they had shopping carts. If you don't know why that's lucky, then I gather you don't get out much with a toddler on your own, and I'm not going to explain it to you. You'll just have to take my word on it.

After we met Mitch for lunch, we headed to The Sweet Palace. Tater spent quite a bit of time pointing at all the candy and asking what it was. She was most interested in the puppets in a back corner of the store, but when she saw a really hairy wooly mammoth puppet, it freaked her out, so we headed upstairs. She kept lying on the carpeted floor upstairs and telling me I needed to lay down with her to read books and nap. That was my cue to find the wintertime substitute for the closed-for-the-season coffee shop. I really needed a place where we could read some books and she could take a little snooze. We found the place, but after we got settled and Tater was well in to her nap, we got kicked out because business was so slow they were closing until the evening. So, I woke Tater and we headed for the elementary school park.

The park was awesome, but apparently not as awesome as this icy frozen slush puddle she stomped in for a good 10 minutes. Wondering why she isn't wearing a coat in Winter in Montana? Well, I'm guessing you haven't gotten out much with a toddler on your own, and I'm not going to explain it to you.

This giant snake was in the back of the park. She was a little nervous when she first saw it, but after she got a close up look at the pictures of hearts and flowers and butterflies on the scales, she mellowed. (For the record, I outwitted her and she put on her coat shortly after this photo.)

The drive was pretty, and the heat was going strong. It was nice, and Tater sang most of the way home.

Oh yeah, and Mitch wanted me to tell you that Gertie got nearly 26.5 miles per gallon. 

(click for map→ miles 912-1070)

Scarry, Oil Change

Gertrude took on two and-a-half liters of fresh 10W-30 today, and Winter's been here for months! (I should've put the thin stuff in back in November at least.) There wasn't any gas in the old oil, which means the new injectors I installed with Colin back in June are working properly. We don't drive much, so seasonal oil changes are probably gonna become the norm around here, as opposed to the every-3,000-miles schedule.

Thinner oil in Winter, thicker oil in Summer, all to keep quickly-moving metal parts from rubbing against each other. There's a little lesson in engines and their parts below, although I don't think the metal parts in ship engines move quite as fast.

(from What Do People Do All Day? by Richard Scarry)

Right there, lower right, is a pretty good representation of how a four-stroke engine works. Granted, it's a diesel--that's why no spark plugs, and the fuel oil--but the principles are all there. Quiz question: a prize for whoever can tell me which stroke each cylinder is in, from left to right. Bonus question (I don't know the answer to this one): how does the valve train work on this thing?

(from Cars and Trucks and Things That Go)

Richard Scarry is one of my favorite kids' authors/artists. My parents brought my old R.S. books here on Thanksgiving and I think I like them more than Tater Tot does, though she really likes the story where Abby the bunny goes to the hospital to get her tonsils out. My absolute favorite Richard Scarry book, and possibly my favorite kids' book of all time is his 1974 masterwork, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. The blue car/boat in the picture above is my absolute favorite VW of all time, the WWII-era Schwimmwagen. The "desert jeep" is a Kubelwagen, also built by VW during the War.

It could very well be that my love for CaTaTTG partly inspired my early love for Volkswagens. The story's protagonists, the Pig family, drive their orange Beetle convertible to the beach for a picnic, and back. By my count, there were ten other positively identifiable VWs on the road that day with the Pigs, including a shortened Splitty, a Beetle stretch limo, and a blue Thing. When they got to the beach there were eight dune buggies, which I suspect were VWs as well. There were two bay window buses, the passenger bus above--coming down an unnamed mountain pass--and the green Westy at the campground below.

To paraphrase j+a, good job, Richard Scarry.

Not a Hippie Bus

This bus has been parked near the library for a few weeks now and I just got around to taking a picture. I thought it looked familiar and just today while researching Big Blue's blog, I remembered why.

Apparently the winner lives around here, though last time I looked it had New Jersey tags. Leftovers from its previous home, I guess.


Those who know me know that I detest this sort of crap. This is not to say I detest wildly-painted or hippie buses as a rule. During the Summer of 1993 in fact I helped a troupe of kids--one hesitates to call them "hippies", since it was 1993 and all--paint the school bus (note to BB'sD: it was a bus-bus, actually) they were living in while they stayed for a week or so in Stanton Nebraska's "campground". That's the thing: when something like this is done organically, unironically, and with sincerity, it's cool. But when it's done to bring about bogus sentimentality, then I say get out the DA sander and the 200-grit.

Explanation

Long-time readers who have the inclination to ponder such trivialities might wonder what happened to the gung-ho Winter campers that used to write this blog. The short explanation is spelled with four letters, capital "e", "s", "m", and "é". She still has a pretty high ratio of surface area to volume and therefore loses heat to the environment more quickly than us larger mammals. I got a first-hand lesson in this biological truism a few weeks back...

...when, on a bright and exceptionally cold (well below freezing) day, I took E for a stroller ride through the Northside with the idea of inducing a nap. We spotted this mid-60s Beetle there.

And this Beetle.

And this r.u.s.t.y. Karmann Ghia. Wow. Sometimes I'll stumble across something like this and feel a little better about our cars.

And this late bay window.

I took her to the top of the pedestrian bridge over the train tracks because I know she kind of likes trains. One went right under us and the noise and blast of heat simultaneously scared and thrilled her. So I didn't notice at first that her crying was becoming less gleeful and more stressful. I took her hand and it was ice cold. Then I realized that I'd only put one blanket on her. I thought to myself about how cold I was, and realized that she must feel much, much colder. I got her home as fast as I could but she was pretty cold--and really, really mad--by the time she got back in the house. She seems not to have become gunshy about the cold since, but it was enough to scare me. 

I think we won't be taking any Winter camping trips with Tater Tot this season. Maybe next Winter when she's bigger.