Classic Café

We were happy the Classic Café was open the Sunday before Memorial Day, and wasn't at all busy. We were happy it wasn't busy because the website says you usually need a reservation to sit in one of the Beetles. Surely Tater Tot would want to sit in the pink one, we thought, but we gave her the choice anyway.

E had different ideas however. She didn't want to sit in either one and was in fact very wary of the whole situation. Once seated at a boring regular table, she explained that she was afraid they'd drive off if we sat in them. I opened up the hood on the pink one, showing her that its lack of an engine meant it wasn't going anywhere, "just like Ludwig". She responded, "Maybe next time Beetle."

Family Resemblance?

I don't see it, personally.

Speaking of Big Blue's family, congratulations are in order to Big Blue's Drivers for the upcoming addition of a future driver to their household. Mazel tov!

This is only a test.

Back in April 2009, when a prescription-pill-popping-grandma changed our lives, Mitch and I had several conversations about becoming exclusive with our ACVWs. We wagered that there would very likely come a day when our decision would be tested because neither car would be running, and we would have to wait until Mitch had the time off work or we had the money saved to fix them. So really, the discussion wasn't whether we wanted to only drive old VWs because for us that's a no brainer. The discussion was whether we could manage without a car for an undetermined amount of time while we waited. Today was our big day, so to speak.


For the second time in less than a week, Mitch has managed to defeat the odds and get Gertie home (sans tow truck) after an unexpected malfunction.

Today it required some deep breathing, head scratching, explaining the situation to E (unexpected absences from Ludwig or Gertie always require explanations to E as she's become quite enamored with them), running home for a change of clothes, a jack and some tools, laying down in a disgusting gas station parking lot, and changing the fuel filter. (I'll admit, when I heard Mitch talking to himself about a bungee-cord while he was under the front end, I gasped with fear and had a flash back to Colin's visit last summer.) Mitch remained focused even though three different people came over to discuss the car with me while he worked. 


After the fuel filter swap, we quickly decided to pack all the tools and jack in Gertie so that if she started,  Mitch could high-tail her home without a tow. Long ago we decided that when a problem occurs it's best to drive towards home without delay (assuming driving won't cause additional harm) because every mile closer to home is money saved on towing costs.

Gertie's engine stayed running long enough to get them both home. Phew. But by the time E and I hoofed it back, she wouldn't start up again. 


So now we wait. And we walk. And we bus. And we bicycle. We wait for Ludwig's engine, and we wait for Mitch to have some time off work. We try to make the most of waiting by getting random projects underway, like the gas tank, or the seats, or contemplating which on the long list of miscellaneous projects we should tackle next. But mostly we just wait.

H3O+ + Cl−

After sloshing out the loose rust, the next thing to do is loosen up some more rust with trusty hydrochloric acid. This is me taping up all but one of the holes on the gas tank. What a cluttered garage! Sorry.

Pouring in the acid before the shaky-shake.

Sloshing through and acid rinsed out, I filled it up with Marine Clean, which is apparently some sort of biological degreaser that will eat any remaining varnish (old gas). I got some good sloshing in, but the next day the weather turned cold and probably killed all the degreaser.

Dedication

On a bike ride home a couple weeks ago, I rode past some woman getting her birthday present. It was a nice shiny red Beetle (a real one, not a "New" "Beetle") that, from the looks of it anyway, had received the works. I watched  her husband and kids lead her out the door with her hands over her eyes, and down the path a ways shout, "open them!" It was just like a TV commercial; she screamed, hugged the husband, jumped up and down, the whole schmeer.

Naturally I'm happy when the keys to an ACVW (or any classic car really) are placed in a loving hand, so I felt no small amount of warmness toward the scene. But of course I'm a pessimist at heart, and I couldn't help but think glumly, "Melissa will never be that woman."

For her part, Melissa is stuck driving one of two ancient and, let's face it, nearly decrepit old cars for her foreseeable future. Ludwig and Gertie are slowly becoming more dependable cars, but the process is (clearly) of the "three steps forward, two and-a-half steps back" variety, entailing a good deal of temporal, mental, and monetary sacrifice.

Online ACVW forums are littered with stories of the "I love our camper but my wife hates it and won't ride in it" variety. Many classified ads writers bemoan the fact that "the wife says it's junk and has to go". Melissa on the other hand happily drove Ludwig most of the way from Death Valley to Goleta (CA) in second gear. She willingly hopped into a vehicle with no heat on January 1st, eight months pregnant, to go camping at a frozen lake. She's run the jack both (both!) times we've taken out Ludwig's engine. And whenever I wonder aloud why we don't just forget it and buy a 2002 Subaru (or whatever), it's Melissa who pulls me back from the brink of despair (or the light of sanity, depending on how you look at it).


Melissa will never be that woman. Thanks for being okay with that, Melissa.

Gas Tank Removal

When the engine's out it's a perfect time to clean out and seal the gas tank. Ludwig has a voracious appetite for fuel filters, which this side-project should remedy.

There it is, with the firewall removed.

The nuts holding the straps down were very resistant. Thankfully I didn't break them.

Out! Not that hard, really. There's just the two nuts, a clamp to undo, and a couple lines to cut. I can't believe that some people do this with the engine in.

I was kind of hoping to find some treasures in there, but there was just rust rust rust. Thus his hunger for fuel filters.

Elevage de poussière (1973-2010), M. Grady et. al.

Rant, Thy Topic is Bus-Bus

For as long as I've been following other bus blogs, I've been lightly antagonistic with one of Big Blue's Drivers as pertains the grotesque phenomenon known as the bus-bus.
You see, when it comes to objects that are meant to be used in the real world, I'm pretty much a form-follows-function-type guy. On the other hand, designer jeans and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, for example, are all (or mostly all) about style and appearance ("Lookit me!") and little to do with purpose. Likewise bus-buses--they're all form, no function. There is no reason to build a bus-bus anymore other than to be able to say, "I made a bus-bus. Isn't it cool that I made a bus-bus?" None. So naturally I hate them.

And I'd hate them were they made with '70s-era Ford Econolines, or '80s-era Dodge Caravans, or '90s-era Toyota Previas, really I would. But of course the "classic" bus-bus (such that it is) adds insult to injury by requiring for its construction the ruination of a near-perfect example of form-follows-function design: the VW bus (1949-1979). Kind of like having Frank Gehry build a gigantic addition to your Frank Lloyd Wright home, you know, just because you can.

Unfortunately I must admit I haven't always been so jaded on the subject. There was a Summer, the Summer of 1993, when I was living back with my parents in small-town Nebraska after a year of college. I got my old cooking job back at the ol' bar & grill and the idea was just to make money. That, and, since my hours were 4-11, imbibing perhaps too much, too often.

That Summer an older SHS graduate I knew, who disappeared not long after his own graduation, resurfaced quite unexpectedly and I should say quite spectacularly: he left a fairly clean-cut kid but came back in full "hippie" regalia (scare quotes because, no matter one's intentions or philosophies or lifestyle, hippyism died in the late '60s; if you're under circa 55 right now, there is no way you ever were or ever will be a hippie, sorry). His crew numbered maybe six all told, and they arrived, as I said, spectacularly, in a full-on bus-bus.

This one, in fact.

I've written at excruciating length here about my hatred for bus-buses, and about that hatred's ironclad justification. I've written previously about my hatred for bogus painted "hippie" buses, so my dear reader can heave a deserved sigh of relief that I won't go into that again. Now for the confession: I helped adorn the above bus-bus with that paint job. The "hippies" stayed in Stanton for perhaps two weeks, waiting on a part for the school bus, striking camp at the fairgrounds. (Amazingly, given what went on there, they didn't run afoul of the law.) During this time I made near-nightly trips to Craig (the SHS grad and only one whose name I remember) and his crews' bus-bus, mostly with the intention of b.s.-ing, thumping the bongos, smoking Drum (well, I was smoking Drum), and tipping back too much of my drink of choice at the time, Shady Screwdrivers (Stoli and Sunny D). Their part came eventually and on one of their last nights they decided it was time to paint the bus-bus (it had arrived just blue). Most of my work was on the passenger side, so it's not in the picture, but it consisted of a similarly-centered crescent moon. All this was done organically, without fakery, false sentimentality, or deceit and so I stand by it without shame of contradiction.

I lifted the picture off Craig's facebook page. A comment underneath said it had a date with the crusher last Summer, which I took with a small pang of sadness, as it closed a minor chapter in my Lost Youth. Farewell and good riddance, bus-bus.