I know how to fix things a little better now than I did when I was in my 20’s.

When I was in my early 20’s, I had a 1972 Volkswagen Bus that was kind of a piece of….

It had some issues.

One of the issues that it had was the driver.

There were a lot of things that were wrong with that bus that were easy to fix.

There were a lot of problems that I should have known were easy to fix….but at the time, I just let them go and tried to get creative with pieces of wire and rope.

I think that at one point, I had to drive barefoot because the accelerator pedal had come loose from the floor and I had to grip its edge with my toes to get it to move in the right direction.

I might have propped it up with a piece of two by four at some other point.

I’d work at figuring out all sorts of weird “fixes”….everything except fixing it right.

It contributed to the hilarity of driving the bus when the faulty headlight switch went out every bump that we hit driving on curvy mountain roads.

It was hilarious when the accelerator cable came loose again from the attachment to the carburetor at the back of the bus.

It was funny when you had to carry an ice scraper to scrape the inside of the windshield when you drove it on a really cold day….when you had to step out of the bus to warm up.

That was funny.

It was a pain in the rear when things didn’t work right because I didn’t know how to fix it….and was too reluctant to just ask somebody who knew how to repair simple problems.

It’s a character building thing to have something like that to work on.

Now, I know that anything can be fixed.

I know that most things can be made better…that you can get it close to “right” if you figure out how.

Back then, it was all a learning experience.

It takes a long time sometimes to figure things out, though.

Problems build character….or turn you into a character.

That was one funky van.

I kind of miss it….and all its problems.