And so it begins (Part I)

It's been a long road to get to be the owner of a Volkswagen Van.  I've had an affection for Volkswagens since I was a kid.  I was born literally in the final days of summer in the last year of the 1960s.  My first foggy memories were as a young kid in the 1970s.  The 1960s were giving way to the 1970s but in my first memories, you could still feel what the sixties must have been like.  I'm not unique in that a large part of the scenery of my youth was comprised of the ubiquitous Volkswagen bug.  My mother pushed my dad to buy her a Beetle and he did.  In 1973, my mother got her wish and became the owner of a bright yellow, brand new Super Beetle.  It was the car that she learned to drive stick on.  It was the car that took us from Florida to Alabama to Ontario Canada and back again.  I remember long drives where I would squeeze in the little hatch above the engine.  I remember being disappointed when I got a little bigger and couldn't quite squeeze out of the backseat without someone lifting the front seat for me.  Sadly, one day the little yellow Super Beetle up and died.  My mother was undeterred.  She replaced her Super Beetle with a 1976 silver Beetle.  We brought in the Bicentennial in the German Peoples' car.  A few years after that in 1979, my grandparents took me to visit my father in Ontario and we rode the whole way from Orlando to Ontario in their brand new, lime green, Westy Camper.  

Years later, when it was my turn to learn to drive, I found myself in familiar territory by learning to drive stick on my uncle's 1967 powder blue Square-back.  Little did I know that the Square-back would be the last time I would have any meaningful contact with a Volkswagen until I was fifty-one.  There were flirtations along the way.  I friend of mine in the mid 1980s had a Jetta followed by a Scirocco.  Riding around with him connected me to my youth.  In the early 2000s, I became obsessed with getting a Passat but for some reason soured on the idea and went in another direction.  

In my mid forties, I decided that I wanted a Volkswagen Bus as a third vehicle.  My hope was to score a camper like my grandparents had.  When I started looking, I was shocked at the prices.  I remember shortly after high school, you could snag an old VW Bus for a few hundred dollars.  Suddenly, any bus that was in my price range was more rust than bus.  Campers were way out of the question.  For a few years I pined and plotted.  I really wanted a bus.  I looked at Vanagons and Eurovans but didn't like the later look of them plus, they weren't really any cheaper.  

After more pining, something clicked with me -- After my initial dislike, I really started liking the Vanagons.  Now the look wasn't so ugly as I once thought.  Could I pick up a cheap Vanagon and convert it to a camper?  In late 2018, I found one that would fit the bill.  It was an $800 GL that wasn't in running condition but it wouldn't take much to get it there.  We were about to move from Birmingham, Alabama to Central Florida and I wondered how I was going to get it to Birmingham and then down to Florida.  I drove an hour and a half to see it.  I had the cash in my hand but at the last second, the reality of the situation hit me.  It may be cheap to buy but by the time I spent getting it to Birmingham, getting it to Florida, getting it up and running, I really wasn't going to be ahead of the game.  It didn't get any better after that, converting a GL to some sort of camper van was going to be an uphill battle.  As much as I didn't want to do it, I knew that it was smarter to pass.  Volkswagen ownership had eluded me yet again.