Maupin day two

It's about 8:00 am and I'm out the door after my "continental breakfast". There are groundhogs all along the side of the road near Klamath lake, they seem to be smart enough to know that cars are deadly.

Oregon was described to me as a "curious mix of hick and hippy" once. I think that is accurate. I see faded bumper stickers on old Fords that say "I'm the NRA" getting passed by Toyota Priuses with the required Obama 08 sticker. (Question: if you remove the Obama sticker from a Prius, does it void the warranty?)

Odd roadside sculptures dot the road to Bend. I'm there a little early, so no stopping at Deschutes brewery, it's just a cup of coffee, and I'm continuing on.

I'm there a little early, so no stopping at Deschutes brewery, it's just a cup of coffee, and I'm continuing on.

But I take a picture of Mirror Pond just the same.

The last 30 miles to Maupin are the longest 100 miles I've driven. It's pretty, but after close to 14 hours of driving, you just want to get there and see happy faces.

I do. There are.

There were only a few buses when I pulled in, I was earlier than most.

I put up the tent next to Johns. This is the big tents inaugural trip, it did well.

And then I set my bus and tent up next to Melissa

But as the evening poured on, more and more showed up.

Next up: Dogs. Lots of dogs.

Maupin Day one

I've missed the Maupin River RendezVW for the past two years, and decided I really needed to head up this year. So, off I went.

Thursday, around 2:00pm, and I'm out the door. I've adjusted the valves, changed the oil, and I'm bringing the tent of awesome for the first time. The tent of awesome is the only name I can come up with, if anyone has a better name, I'm interested. Tent of Doom is taken (along with annex of despair, and my favorite - house of falling water).

I'm on the bridge a little after 2:00pm

at the Vallejo interchange a little after 3:00pm

and up almost at the 505-5 interchange around 4:00

Around 4:30 the freeway is a parking lot near Arbuckle

And the exploded semi that caused the back up is both tragic and an amazing thing to see. I'd suggest checking your fuel lines for those of you who know what I mean.

The rest of the ride up was uneventful. I stopped in Redding for food and to visit my grandparents resting place. This blog is partially named for them. Ellen, Clement, Elizabeth, and Louis. Clement and Elizabeth were my moms parents, they spent a big chunk of their lives in Redding. I'm not there very long, but the smell of the hot manzanita, and the fresh cut grass at the cemetery turns me into a 16 year old boy spending a summer with his grandmother. I wish I had my grandfathers Studebaker Hawk, it was such a cool car.

I'm back on the road around 6:30 and heading up to Weed.

The Summer solstice is a few days away and the long sunsets give me a painted mountain to admire all the way into Oregon. I zig-zag through Dorris, and find out the both my horn and highlights are not working. My intention to camp just north of Klamath Falls gets reexamined as deer and other wildlife are common on those roads. So I pull into the cheap motel off the freeway at Klamath and sleep in "not-a-bus".

I'll get up early tomorrow.

Classic Vendors of Irvine

One of the reasons you go to a car show is for the "stuff". Not the cars, but the extra junk. Parts, art, crafts, things, baubles, doo-dads, rare things, toys, shirts, whatever. They are all just as much a part of the show as the vehicle.

The Irvine classic had it's own special brand of vendors. These guys were making brand new engine blocks out of their own special aluminium.

And these guys have been improving baja bugs with over engineered suspension systems.

Here is a complete SO 22 camper interior for sale.

and if you need a canvas bag to hold all your junk, here are a couple for sale.

There is always some guy with dash plaques, key chains, and some rarities. This particular one has some items that would be illegal in Germany.

Here's a lady who was making purses and wallets out of seat cover material.

Perhaps you don't like your friends, then I suggest that you put them in an uncomfortable seat like this one.

And in case you don't have enough toys:

There a plenty more on my flickr site. Coming up next, my Maupin trip.

VW Classic - Irvine

I'm in L.A., I have been here for two weeks both moving my wife into her apartment for her internship, and attending E3. I was planning on being back in the bay area last week, but I was told that the VW Classic was last weekend, so I extended my stay.

The Classic is the "big" event on the west coast, it's been going on for years and the VW magazines used to cover it on 8 pages. Now that the VW scene is a little smaller, it's only likely to cover 2 pages, but it is still worth going to.

If you just want to skip my talk, go here and click through the pictures.

The Bay Window group is normally the red headed step child of the VW community - not so much any more. I kept over hearing conversation about "how I gave one away" or "sold on 5 years ago for 300$" and now everyone seems amused that they command $4K and up for something running, and over $10K for a good one.

Regardless of their ignorance (says the guy who loves his bus and puts no price on it) they are right, bay window buses are worth about double what they were five years ago.

Some people really love putting their all into them. This work of art was cleaner than mine, and probably cleaner than Gary Marr's bus. (Seriously Gary - it was spit polish clean)

The owners are about to do a road trip - I'm inviting them to join the camper family if they are going through town.

Then there was this cute little thing.

 

 My cats won't go into my bus, I wish they were as mellow as this one.

This guy just didn't have enough crap on his dashboard. ;)

There was an ambulance.

The Kona brewing company had a keg and tap in the back that they were serving from:

I predict that half these lowered buses will be back to stock height in 5 years:

This 63 multiwindow came towing a camper. Gorgeous. and classic.

And since I'm a fan of the car bar, this picture was taken for my amusement.

I'll post more later. Sorry I missed he trainspotting campout, but I still got my vw fix.

 

Bus City 3 -or- The Rapture of the Bus

I was never raised knowing what "the rapture" was. I have only heard about it during the past decade of my life. Apparently, the story is that a particular subset of a particular religion has a fascination with the end of the world, and all sorts of money has been made on the selling of the idea. You can look up the rapture on wikipedia if you are interested, but suffice to say, one sub-branch of a sub-group of a tiny division of an obscure affiliation decided that the world was supposed to end on April 21 at 6:00pm, and that the righteous were to be taken to heaven.

For the record, it did, and we were.

The annual Bus City campout along the Russian River returned - new location included! I showed up with my twin  - VW Druid (Alex) early Friday evening.

John and Mike were already there with Bill of the awesome syncro, Sheri and Mike with the Orca, and a Vanagon owner who had the best mosquito net I have seen.

Blake and Shelby came with their Subagon (or Vanaru - depending on how you want to describe it). Joe and Alison showed up later with non-camping friends in tow.We decided that the rough week was worthy of skipping food and we went straight for the beer. Note to self- don't do this in the future if I don't want to have my nails painted. Oddly, I don't have any pictures of that. Weird. So here's Allison and Shelby because they are better looking.

About 20 buses showed up over the course of the weekend. Two Syncros appeared, and two split windows. We had a random appearance of a German group who were touring around nor-cal arrive on Friday, I wonder if they thought that everyone in California had a bus.

If a bus is your home for a few days, there is no reason to leave the comforts and identifications of home behind. We encourage lawn ornaments.

Schoolhouse canyon is not near enough to the Russian river to encourage mid-day swims, so the alternative is always appreciated: mid day beer.

Our Big Blug host had a medical emergency that kept him from attending the ascension, but that didn't keep him and Camper van Emst from stopping by and dropping off goodie bags. Much thanks to the kindness of Hemmings, Go Westy, Mid America Motorworks, West Coast Metric, and Airhead parts.

It's not one of our campouts if Johns tent isn't there.

John isn't kept around for the tent alone, we also like his late night singing:

And this is the perfect Marshmellow. Just saying.

Around 6:00pm on Saturday, we looked around and found that nobody was missing. We, much like the rest of the world, wondered what kind of awful life we had lead that kept us from being taken into heaven. And as the beer and wine mixed, as the various foods appeared, as the fire got warmer and the chairs got more comfortable, it became apparent that we had misread the signs. Without the courtesy of an apocalypse, we had all ascended into the warmth of the best that this world has to offer. Rapture indeed.

More pictures of this campout can be found here.

Live Oak, George's Birthday campout

Live Oak is a small-ish town along the feather river, just north of Yuba City. A quiet park is on the edge of town and borders the river. John La Torre decided it was a good place for a campout to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his bus.

(Click on the photos for larger versions)


John has the gigantic tent of doom, we love camping with it as in guarantees our comfort during "fire and drink" time.



I left on Friday afternoon, and managed to swing around some traffic.

I had just replaced the CV joint boots (that writeup will be later) and the rear shocks.

(Guess which parts were new) :)


The moon is clear in the valley, and gave me a chance to play with long exposures. I still need some work:


That night it was just Me, John, and Mike. The next morning, it was us three and hundreds of birds.



Mike had never seen the tent set up, and I needed to dust it off, so I did the full tent regalia and had John time the setup. It took 16 minutes to put it up, and would have taken less if I remembered the corner piece direction.
Take down was 10 minutes.







The rest of the crowd showed up mid-afternoon.



We had to scavenge for food and were limited to whatever we could scrape away from the local supermarkets:



As long as you are having a birthday party, you should have a cake.



Joe had returned from China, and Maggie was doing her Dog-duties (begging for food) as if he had never left.




Maggie loves us.




The wonderful Blake and Shelby made it, I took their photo for this years christmas cards.




Since I'm mentioning the tent, the interior (when it is connected correctly) looks like this:




More write up later - I need to stretch this out as I am starving for content.

Not much to post

I haven't done much recently, so I haven't posted.

In the meantime, let me link to this bad ass picture of my Grandfather. He's the fine looking dude on the far left.

Montana. 1930's. I look at these guys, look at those springs, those riding outfits and think... man, I'm travelling in luxury, and I don't look half as cool.

This is not a VW post. Sorry.