I’ve owned 3….a cruddy 1972 (first car!)…a 1968….and a split window 1967 that I never drove that sat in the driveway waiting for me to learn enough about “mechanicing” to get it back together.
They were all fun in a horrible way….but other than the “cool factor”, I don’t know that I’d have another one.
A Grand Caravan is a better vehicle….and it’s not cool….but I bet that I could make a pretty great camper out of one.
I will bet that I could.
A VW camper van is pretty cool, though.
I remember that Jenny and I looked at one when we were first married that was selling for 1100 dollars….a ’71….but I didn’t end up buying it.
23 years ago, you could still buy one for 1100 dollars.
This van has a Subaru motor.
Good for them.
It’s a heck of a lot better that my old 1972.
These old vans make me happy.
I’m glad that I don’t have to work on one all the time anymore, though.
No….forget that Grand Caravan comment.
A Grand Caravan, no matter how great a vehicle it is, will never be as cool as an old Volkswagen.
Whether it’s a car….or a town…I love it when things come back and are usable again.
This is another great Kirsten Dirksen video about a town in Mississippi called Water Valley.
I’ve seen a lot of Southern towns like this.
I mean on the “dying side”.
I like it when they come back and have some life again.
The first time Jenny and I went through downtown Greenville, SC some of the areas we drove through felt like this.
They aren’t like this now.
In fact, one of the most depressed areas and the one that had the most dead storefronts that we saw in Greenville was on Main St., and if you walked down Main St. now, you wouldn’t believe that it was ever like that.
It’s pretty vibrant now.
Good planning and a strong belief in what the city was going to be is what made it what it is now.
Small towns are pretty great.
It would be a drag, though, if you were the only one who ever had any faith in a dead or dying downtown somewhere.
A diamond in a pile of manure doesn’t look too good.
Thinking about how a diamond shines can be pretty inspiring, though.
They do shine, don’t they?
(To put this into clearer focus: Water Valley was a dying town that’s located 20 miles or so from the University of Mississippi and the town of Oxford. What about that didn’t scream “SAVE ME”? Good for these guys! Make it good again!)
I ordered one of these Redhead steering boxes tonight to replace the leaking one in the Cherokee….and I checked on a price to have it put on at the mechanic I use when I’m too tired, cold, and lazy to lay in the gravel driveway and do it myself.
I hope these Redhead boxes are as good as people say they are.
But….you know….for a right hand drive box, the price wasn’t too bad.
It was still as expensive as heck, but compared to all the junkyard ones I saw….and the other prices out on the internet, it really wasn’t bad.
Or….maybe….it wasn’t the worst price out there.
Anyway….they seemed like good folks to deal with….and they’ve been in business for a while…so I hope it all works out.
It should work out.
Why should I expect anything less than the most positive of outcomes?
That’s what I’m talking about….the positive expectation of a glorious outcome.
I woke up in my youngest son’s bed again….putting him to sleep.
I put myself to sleep, too.
That’s pretty darn disorienting….to wake up someplace that you didn’t plan on falling asleep.
That seems to be happening to me a lot these days.
Nah.
That’s just me being theatrical.
If it’s not one of the kids’ beds or the couch, I’m not going to be falling asleep in any weird places.
I don’t fall asleep at stop lights or anything like it, yet.
Anyway, I didn’t write a blog post today, so getting one out there before I fell asleep again felt like it was going to be hard.
A new video from forestyforest made it easy.
This guy makes some of my favorite videos….beautiful and meditative.
Bicycling.
Who would resist it if it was all like this?
Fatbikes are kind of cool, too!
I don’t know much about them, yet.
I haven’t seen any in thrift stores.
Too new, maybe.
Anyway, when you wake up groggy and need to get one last thing done before the day is over, it’s nice when that one thing is easy.
Writing something nice about a forestyforest video is easy.
They’re a “good thing”.
(I thought it was kind of funny to talk about being tired after waking up when I was watching something like a guy riding a fatbike ALL OVER out West. That’s funny to me. How tired could I really be if I was only waking up from sleeping? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Maybe “groggy” is the right word? Maybe groggy makes more sense than tired? Who am I to be tired? All I do is drive mail around for 7 hours at a stretch. How tiring could driving be? Am I groggy? Maybe. I’ll have to drink some coffee in the morning….FATBIKES!! HOW ABOUT THAT?! FATBIKES!!)
It’s Sunday and time for another Iohan Gueorguiev video.
Here’s a guy who is out there…travelling the world…pedaling away…seeing a lot of amazing things.
This time, he’s traveling through Costa Rica.
It’s raining here….and we might go to a mall today and walk around with the little guys.
How about that for a contrast?
Costa Rica?
A mall?
Not a lot of similarities there, huh?
I guess that whatever you do, you should try to find something interesting about it all.
But….PEDALING THROUGH A FOREIGN COUNTRY SOUNDS A WHOLE LOT MORE EXCITING THAN GOING TO A MALL…..JUST BECAUSE IT’S RAINING HARD AND YOU NEED A DRY PLACE TO WALK AROUND.
Awwwww…..this will be our lone trip to a mall this year, so maybe it will be interesting.
I’m glad that mall-walking isn’t our normal activity.
That would be kind of sad if we were all really into going to the mall.
