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But here’s another pic. Drew had a good time at music class with Dad this spring.

(Just to prove I will use anything to keep my kids in line…)

As I was getting ready for work yesterday, Drew made an observation: “Daddy, you have a BIG–FAT–HUGE–TOE!” (no, it’s not that big–well, maybe in comparison to Drew’s little toes it is)

“Really, Drew? I guess so…” I said. Then I had an idea. “Drew, you need to get dressed now–we’ll be late.”

Drew resists.

“Drew, if you don’t get ready now, the Toe will be very disappointed. It may be upset. I can’t vouch for the Toe. It may come after you.”

Drew expresses disbelief. I wiggle the “Toe” and move it closer to him.

“I’m telling you Drew, you need to get dressed now! I can’t control the Toe! IT’S COMING FOR YOU…”

Drew screams and giggles, and more importantly scurries into his room and gets his little butt dressed.

Mock my parenting “skills” if you wish, but they get results. My kids had better behave–they never know when the “Toe” may come back to keep them in line…

While I was driving the kids home from day care, my wife Denise called me on the cell phone. As I sometimes do, I passed the phone to Alyssa (my five year old) and let her take the call. The conversation went like this:

Alyssa: Hi, Mommy!

[More conversation]

Alyssa: Mommy, we have some treats to eat! They came from Kayla for her birthday! They’re round and full of sugar. They have LOTS of carbs. [they were LifeSavers]

Denise: [Asks Alyssa how she knows about carbs]

Alyssa: I figured it out, Mommy! Daddy can’t eat carbs, and he can’t eat sugar. Sugar is carbs!

[Conversation continues, ends]

Me (Beaming over my little girl and how I “taught” her about carbs): Alyssa, you learned about carbs from me?

Alyssa: Yep, Daddy.

Me: That’s great, Alyssa. You know–

Alyssa: I learned it from you talking waaay too much about it.

I guess my next low carb meal will be humble pie.

Ran across this pic today–Drew last Christmas at Uncle Jeff and Aunt Lisa’s (he got happy again later…):

My oh my.

This thing is pretty slick.

[This is the fifth and final part of the true story of my ’76 VW Camper’s fire and resulting odyssey]

As the night grew darker and we drove across North Carolina toward I-81, Denise asked me how long I could keep driving. I told her all night, no problem. In truth, I wasn’t fond of all nighters. I was so relieved at a functioning van, though, that I put some tunes on the stereo and just drove. Never underestimate the power of good tunes to extend your driving capacity, especially if you can sing along (James Taylor comes to mind instantly).

As we hit I-81 (in Virginia, I think) I told Denise to go lay down in the back cabin seat and get some rest. I kept driving. As we moved further north, the temperature dropped steadily.

At 2:00am or so, the temp had dropped enough that it was pretty chilly (it’d hit the low 40s). I pulled over, went into the back, and fired up the propane heater (“Heats like the Sun!” was its slogan). It was a catalytic heater on which you screwed a small can of propane for fuel. Car heat, you ask? Remember–I’m in an air-cooled Volkswagen Transporter. There’s no such thing as car heat. Remind me sometime to tell you about heat exchangers and how they’re the biggest failure of German engineering (including exhaust gas leaking into the passenger compartment–but that’s another story).

At any rate, Denise woke up enough to mumble something, and I told her to go back to sleep. I drove on into the night, or morning as it was becoming. After 3:00am, we entered a neat part of I-81 where you drive through four states in a few hours: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. I was into Pennsylvania and passing Greencastle, PA by 4:30am.

Believe it or not, we pulled into our driveway in Mount Holly Springs, PA at 5:45am. We made incredible time. I didn’t care if the van died on the spot now–we’d made it home. Denise decided to freshen up and head back down I-81 to Greencastle for her interview. I thought she was insane.

Me, I called Michelle Oliver at Cumberland Valley School District and called out sick. This was a bit strange, because daily substitutes didn’t usually call in sick, but I was beyond remorse.

Epilogue

Denise got the job, a half-year long term sub position with Greencastle/Antrim School District.

After flawlessly motoring almost 700 miles that night, the van never ran smoothly again with the Weber carburetor system. I made endless adjustments to it, but never got it to avoid stalling at stop signs.

Eventually I replaced it with a dual carb system, which elevated my van to the unheard of mileage of 22 mpg. Unfortunately, the dual carbs had no built-in chokes. This meant that my engine backfired for fifteen minutes every time it needed to warm up.

Finally I replaced the dual carbs with fuel injection again–I even used some parts from my charred system (they’d put the burnt parts in a cardboard box for me in Savannah–I’d never thrown them out). I learned a lot about VW Bus engines.

The propane heater is gone now, but not before it melted my heavy parka because of too-close contact. I have the parka with its melted spot to this day (the heater departed my ownership shortly thereafter).

John Heath is (I’m sure) in happy retirement now, fooling around with VWs in his spare time–he deserves it.

The VW Bus itself was sold the following fall after 17,000 miles to Bruce Kelly to help pay for my wedding. I’ve seen it in a field by his old house in the last year. I’ve thought about buying it back and trying to restore it. Do I dare?

I know i’m just a geek, but this made me laugh out loud (and not just because of Zombo.com).

[This is the fourth part of the true story of my ’76 VW Camper’s fire and resulting odyssey]

We awoke in the morning and went to the VW dealer to hang out until the van was done. It was January 3rd, 1990, and fairly warm in Savannah (in the sixties, if I recall correctly). Our main concern was January 4, 1990, the following day. Denise had a very important job interview in Greencastle, PA for a long term substitute teaching position. The interview was at 8:30am. She’d decided to stay with me and the van. I wasn’t at all sure that she had placed her bet on the right horse (or van, as it were).

We were still unsure that the replacement carb kit would work. We were throwing all of our trust into John Heath, the mechanic who was willing to take on our job. He began ripping off the bad fuel lines at 8:00am. The fuel injectors would be next, and then the manifold, and then the rest of the charred pieces. It would all be replaced by our Weber carburetor kit parts.

We waited. For a long time. To relate the tedium that we endured would do the reader a grave disservice. To be brief, we waited all day. Literally.

At 4:45pm, we heard the van start. It ran. We looked around and saw a flash of orange go by the outside window (I did tell you the van was orange, didn’t I?). This was very, very good news.

Five minutes later the van pulled back into the lot and into the service garage. John got out and went back to the van’s engine compartment. I could see him gently tug on the carburetor cable with a finger to test the linkages. He was smiling.

He came inside to the service desk and told us everything was a go. They wrote up our ticket and we settled the bill. We were never so glad to pay for nine hours of repair time in our lives.

It was almost 5:00pm. We loaded up the van with our stuff and took off for Pennsylvania. We got back on I-95 and headed north. I decided to cut across the Carolinas in a bid to get to Interstate 81 and take it to Pennsylvania. If I was lucky and we made great time, we might just barely make it back home in time for Denise to have her interview. Night closed in as we motored up the eastern seaboard.

I just got back from Lititz, where I got to play my guitar in a huge jam session. There were 125 or so of us, all playing our guitars in two songs for a nice-sized crowd. We played one of three parts in each song. I played the easiest part, since I don’t know how to play guitar much at all. In fact, my only guitar is a 12 string Fender acoustic with half the strings currently taken off to make it a 6 string (If you’re reading, Scott–yep, it’s the same one I bought in college with you). I was pretty happy to be able to keep to the music on the sheet (especially since I don’t read music). It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever performed with a musical instrument in front of an audience.

The second part was cooler, though. Phil Keaggy came out and played a full concert for us. He was awesome. I never knew a guitar could be played in so many ways. The coolest parts were during his extended jams. The guitar came alive in his hands. At times it almost seemed that the guitar was playing itself and Phil was just tending it. That’s a really cool place for a performer to be.

He was funny, too. His ability to go off on a tangent rivals my own–and that’s saying a lot.

Truly a great night.

[This is the third part of the true story of my ’76 VW Camper’s fire and resulting odyssey]

A good first step in finding a foreign parts store is the good old Yellow Pages. I asked for one at the dealer’s service counter, praying that it wasn’t a toy phone book like the one in the rolling hills of North Carolina. It wasn’t. We found a lone prospect and called them up to ask where they where. We were at the VW dealer, they asked? Yep. Well heck, they said. We were just two blocks away. Just on the other side of the new Comfort Inn from the dealer. Did they have VW fuel systems? Sure they did. Come on over.

I am not making this up.

It was truly amazing. I was flabbergasted. We left the dealer for the two and a half block walk to the parts store. As we walked, the history of the VW Bus ran through my head in the imaginary voice of the late Heinz Nordhoff, ex-President of VolkswagenAG (OK, it didn’t really, but hey, it’s my story, right? Keep reading…). “The Volkswagen Transporter began in 1952, with refinements up to 1967. In 1968, the body changed, and in 1972, the engine changed to the Type 4 engine. In 1974 the camper poptop changed, and in 1975, the Transporter gained a new fuel injection system that lasted until the model was superseded by the Vanagon in 1980.” I had a burned-up fuel injection system that would cost thousands to replace, but I had the same engine that’d used carburetors two model years before. This compatibility was my only chance. I knew there were carb retrofit kits–I’d seen them in magazines. Would I be lucky enough to find one or overnight one into the parts store? We walked into the parts store and I explained my problem. Could they get something in for me quickly?

The guy behind the counter just smiled and pointed up in the air behind him. There on top of the parts shelves, prominently displayed, was a Weber carb kit. It wasn’t a dual carb kit like I’d hoped, but it was there. I was looking at it. It was for my bus. I couldn’t believe they had it in stock.

The parts guy acted surprised. “Oh yeah,” he said. “We always have one in. It’s a very popular conversion.” Well, it was sure as heck a popular conversion with me at the moment. It was $235. I pulled out our credit card, reserved for emergencies. I hated to use it, but if I’d ever seen an emergency, this was it (you have to be careful about these credit cards–they can become a problem if unchecked).

Armed with our lifesaving Weber carb conversion kit, we marched back past the Comfort Inn to the dealership. I’d debated replacing the thing myself, but I felt better having the dealer do it. But would they?

Yes, they would. For straight time. As long as it took. And it wouldn’t be today, either. It was after five already.

We made the arrangements, grabbed some essentials from the van, and left the dealership. We headed over to the aforementioned Comfort Inn and checked in for the night. Tomorrow would hopefully be a better day.