since i brought up my vehicles in the last entry, i should mention the city of houston came by a couple of weeks ago and put a “move this piece of junk” sticker on the vw camper bus, which is sitting over at the potts’ in their driveway. i have until april 12th (iirc) to do something with it. humorously, they didn’t put one on the pickup which has been sitting in the exact same position in front of the bus, just as long as the bus has been there.
i’m still trying to figure out what to do with that stupid vw camper bus. part of me wants to take it and fix it, just to spite the memory of tamara tied to it. but the fact is, i really don’t like or care about old vws. having a fixed, functional 1977 vw camper bus would give me little pleasure. the fact i was forced to pay more than the value of it to tamara (as “half” the value of the vehicle) when it should have been her piece of junk to deal with anyway…well, that’s just icing on the cake. have i ever mentioned on here how much she took advantage of me, financially? heh.
in loosely related events, as much as i enjoy reading one of my friend’s blogs, my enjoyment has recently been compromised by the comments section. of all things, my ex-wife has decided she should start commenting on it. this isn’t someone we both knew when we were together, but someone i met through other friends a year or two after the affair had happened. oddly, soon i after i linked to this person’s blog, they were befriended over the net by a good friend of alistair — most likely because he followed a link from my blog. (he admits to having read my blog, but he denies doing various other things. ha ha.)
shifting to related subjects, i get a lot of people searching my blog for stuff about alistair, tamara, etc. that’s old hat though, even if it is (evidently) fascinating to some others out there. the really interesting ones are people getting here from google searches. this usually means my blog is in the top 10 or 20 search results. here are some interesting google searches (just over a 24 hour period) that led people to my pages:
And Darryl couldn’t talk at all
suicide rate grand canyon
hot neighbor
my truck is getting poor mileage
on the run from johnny law ain’t no trip to cleveland
“alistair isaac”
ear stretching stories
i love technology always and forever
failures in a marriage
“intellectual teens”
some are surprising, some are rather odd, some make me happy. i’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which ones go into which category.
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failure is not an option. it's a requirement.
Is your camper a Westy? How much you want for it?
yes, indeed. it’s a 1977 vw westfalia camper bus, pea green in color. it needs some work to get it in good shape (paint is original and old, some rust in common places, a couple of bent/dented places on back bottom but not too scary), but it should be close to functional as far as driving. right now i can get the engine to run, but it doesn’t stay running unless the rpms are kept up. (some of that may have to do with the old gas in the tank, but i’m sure it needs some tlc too.) but i did get it started, and drove it about a mile or so over to my friends’ house. internally, it’s mostly original and thus old. but the back part is generally in pretty good shape, and the front and dash is used. it’s an old vw. i’d really like to get $1500 for it, which is what i had to pay my ex as supposedly half the value of it. but it’s not worth $3000 how it currently is. i’m not sure i could get $1500 for it either. a friend’s dad offered me $650 for it, sight unseen, but i’d rather get more than that if possible.
A simple tune up is probably all it needs, or maybe just a new carb. We resurrected my cousin’s beetle with about $150 and 2 hours. Neither of us knew what we were doing. If the vehicle drives, you can just move it every now and then and the city can’t really say anything about it.
Hey Terry!
Got your email… I would love to take a journey similar as yours — drive out and purchase a vehicle, fix it up a bit and drive it back home. There are unfortunately only two people in my house (my wife and I) and we have three vehicles. I have a feeling that a fourth vehicle will have to include divorce papers.
A good spot to get feelers on people willing to purchase the Westy is on vwvortex.com. They have a pretty comprehensive message board there with (no exaggeration) thousands of people all over the world who are VW fanatics. If you are serious about getting rid of it you’ll probably have no problem find a willing, local buyer for her.
I’m very sorry I can’t purchase it myself at this time, as I’d love to have one.
i have four vehicles and i’m just one person! i’m hoping to get down to three though. i’d be okay with two, once i get the pickup in good shape (it and my motorcycle), but i hear the insurance people have a lot of limitations on classic/restored insurance. i’ll probably ditch the honda element and pick up something else in the next year or two. better to have fewer memories tied to the past.
thanks for the info on the website. you probably wouldn’t end up having a good experience if you flew down here to drive the bus back anyway. it might be fine, but i don’t trust the car. but then maybe it knows that, so it screws with me. i’m so glad i had a good experience with the pickup!