August 27, 2002

• The preceding post was brought to you by the need to sell my dead Vanagon. This is the narrow definition of ‘need.’
  
  I love my Vanagon, even in it’s currently decaying and decrepit state. Its name is Bodhisattfarhgnugen, or, ‘greater vehicle of enlightenment through the experience of driving.’ I got it at an auto auction a few years back.
  
  Some other guys kept bidding against me. Finally, after I won, they approached me and asked if they could buy the wheelchair lift that was inside the van. They had been bidding on the lift! They got it.
  
  The van has taken me across the nation a few times. It’s just so easy to find a national forest camping area, park the van, and sleep in the back. No motels, no temptation to watch cable TV all night, no 11am check-out time.
  
  I remember in particular driving out to Point Reyes National Seashore, out to the lighthouse, in the middle of a clear night. Sitting in the back of the van eating a sandwich, watching the luminescent ocean lap up against the beach a hundred yards down the cliff. I woke up at 6am the next morning and took a short hike to the cliff edge, and then went back to Inverness cove for the best croissant ever, with a cup of coffee.
  
  All in the Greater Vehicle. Which I now have to sell because it’s been dead for almost a year and sitting on the street or in the yard. Leaking oil. It needs a new engine.
  
  I was gifted with a used Honda station wagon by my dad. It’s nice, and the price is right, but it’s just not the same.

  • 3:19 pm
  • 8 Comments