I Like Talking about the Old Van

I really do.

Because it had personality.  Not unlike a large, badly behaved pet.

And if during the summer the front seat passenger wanted to put his or her bare feet on the dashboard, it not only really didn't matter - it was more or less expected.  It harked back to The Day.

Everybody says 'Back In The Day'.  The thing is, nobody really knows when that day WAS.  For some, it was the '60s.  But not for all.  Just some.  There are people out there for whom Back In The Day was the mid '90s. Flexibility is good.  Especially if you are wanting to put your feet on the dashboard of the vehicle in which you are riding.  (It is uniformly agreed that it is very bad for the driver to do this.  Especially when the vehicle is in motion.)

Our old bus had quirks.  Although as I'd never really gotten the hang of driving a standard transmission vehicle, there's a possibility that not all the quirks were of the bus.  I may have caused a few.  It almost always stalled out when I drove it, especially when I tried to shift from First to Maybe Faster, the next gear up.

There allegedly was an ''H' pattern?  On the old bus, it was more of a drunken Y with codependency issues.  If you thought really pure thoughts, you could usually get from First to Maybe Faster.  Sometimes it was hard to tell because…maybe it was faster.  Or not.   I suppose speed is relative.  5mph is faster that stopped.  10 is faster than 5.  You can extrapolate this for yourselves.  Don't bother getting into larger numbers.  It never went over 55 unless there was a long downhill stretch involved.

There were basically4 gears.  First, Maybe Faster, This One Might Be Neutral and Sometimes It BacksUp.  None of them did anything consistently.  As stated, sometimes it backed up.  Sometimes all that happened was that the steering wheel fell off.  But that wasn't a big issue when it occurred  as the bus was not, nor likely to become, a moving vehicle.  So you just woogled the wheel around until it more or less went back in place and had another go at finding Sometimes It Backs Up.

To park randomly in a place where you could simply go forward as needed was the idea.  Sadly, most parking areas were not designed with this need in mind.  Sometimes you had to just attempt to find neutral and then push the thing around until you could drive away without a need for Sometimes It Backs Up.

We were extremely trim and fit while we had the old bus.

This is all for today.

Tomorrow I might remember The Trip In Which We Bought a Sheep Fleece.  It's a good story in that involves both an old VW bus and a real sheep fleece, which at one time had been worn by a real sheep.  Although the real sheep is not a player in that story.  I suppose we could have easily carted a sheep around in the old bus.  We just didn't.

There are many stories, among them The Time We Had To Stop Quickly, The Time There Were Cattle On The Road, and Head To Head With An Armadillo.  My numerous avid readers can vote.