From leaning into curves to a box on wheels

Nearly three years ago I began to plan a two-month motorcycle trip.  My plan was to ride from Portland down to the border and into Mexico, including some areas that received a fair share of news coverage because of drug cartel violence.  Whatever the risk would have been, reason prevailed and the trip was reduced to a tour of the western United States, from Portland to Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and back.  It was reduced, but only in time and distance.  The trip was spectacular and one of the best experiences of my life.

Things have changed.  For the first time in nine years and after roughly 80,000 miles ridden on a variety of motorcycles, I am without a motorcycle.  Health and safety concerns drove the decision to sell my last bike.  I had some close-calls, a couple of relatively minor crashes and lost an old friend, Hector Reyna.  He died from injuries from a crash on a flat, straight road on a sunny morning in South Texas, riding home from having his Harley serviced.  A car driver turned left in front of him sending him head-on into the side of her car.  To say the least, this motivated me to reevaluate my motorcycle riding (and a number of other things).

I sold my 2012 Yamaha Super Tenere in October 2014.  I went through a bit of a mourning period, missing what had become a major part of my life.  Less romantically, I was also put out by the financial loss I experienced, selling a bike that I’d bought new two and a half years before.  But, as they say, it’s only money.

The previous week, quite unexpectedly, I became the owner of a 1999 Volkswagen Eurovan Camper. 

One day at the office, I overheard a coworker talking on the telephone about her VW camper that she wanted to sell.  Though I’d worked with her for years and knew a little bit about her home and family life, I had no idea that she owned this camper.  Without recounting the less-than-exciting details, I purchased it from her and her husband.  For a 15 year-old vehicle, it had relatively low miles at roughly 94,000.  Cosmetically, it was in fine condition, with one somewhat strange exception which I’ll write about later.  It needed a few repairs and modifications, which have mostly been done.

For the last couple of years, I’ve had this idea that I would live and travel full-time in a recreational vehicle after retiring.  In my mind, it would be a diesel Class C, most likely aWinnebago View.

  This would be a much larger investment, more than likely requiring the sale of my home.  The idea being that it would be my home for as long as I was interested and able to live a nomadic lifestyle.  But when the opportunity to acquire the Eurovan arose, I took it, thinking that this would be a way to try out the RV life on a much smaller, less costly scale.

Besides, I’ve been enamored of VW campers for most of my life.  Sure, I came of age in the 1960’s and 70’s, but I like to think that there is more to it than that.  When I was about seven or eight, the Bonham’s Grocery Store in McAllen, Texas raffled off a brand new VW Bus.  I don’t know if it was a 23 Window,  

but I like to remember it that way.  I was already car crazy, but this was like nothing I’d ever seen: A house/fort/lair on wheels.  I’m sure that I demanded that my mother buy a raffle ticket on the spot and was mostly convinced that we’d win it because My God, what else could happen in a world that is fair and good?  Not surprisingly, we didn’t win it and I went on to other automotive fantasies.  Ten or so years later, my friend Brian Rawls got a 1965 VW Camper.  It became our mobile party spot, in which we and an assortment of friends flew down the dirt roads of South Texas and consumed more than a small amount of illicit substances.  We even camped in it a few times, including trips to Garner State Park and South Padre Island. 

Not long after moving to Olympia, WA in 2002, I got a serious case of the I-Want-a-Vanagon-Westfalia bug.  I looked for months, test drove a few, even got close to buying one (the title situation was “funny,” which scared me off).  Eventually, their notorious mechanical shortcomings and high price steered me away.  That and motorcycles.

So here I am, once again the owner of a German vehicle.  There is probably a ten syllable German word meaning “I know it’s overpriced, costly to maintain, prone to catastrophic mechanical failure, but shit, it is so cool and fun to drive.”  I don’t name my vehicles and I won’t name this one.  But I’ll call the blog La Caguama Blanca, or the White Turtle

 for obvious reasons.  Oh, yeah.  Caguama means something else in Mexican Spanish.