The end of an affair

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

You know how it is with a new love -- you can’t get enough of each

other, you go places together and you’re inseparable.

Then, the interest begins to fade. You don’t see each other as

often. Edges are frayed and things appear rusty in spots. Still, you

remember the good times you had together -- 18 years of fond memories.

But finally, you find another love to take the place of the old

love and the affair is over. It’s time to get rid of that old car.

Vic was ready to sell our beloved Volkswagen Wolfsburg Westfalia

camper, but I still couldn’t bear to part with it. Not after all

those years together. Our surfing nephew from Oregon thought about

buying it, but he just couldn’t make the commitment to buy a car from

so far away. The fact that the car was as old as he was may have had

something to do with his decision

But when he visited this summer and drove our camper, he admitted

that he’d made a mistake in getting a different car. He saw how truly

wonderful a Wolfsburg Westfalia really is -- how roomy and practical.

This model rides six people and sleeps four, two in the pop-top upper

bunk and two in the foldout lower bunk. It has a foldout table with a

fluorescent light over it, and a comfy seat on either side. The table

was perfect for eating camp meals when the weather outside was

inclement, or for playing Trivial Pursuit after the campfire burned

out. With two cabinets in back and storage under the two back seats,

we always kept the camper loaded and ready to go camping.

We took our VW -- or rather it took us -- on many a trip. We went

to the desert to see comets, look for fossil trilobites and

photograph cactus in bloom. We went to the mountains to see

wildflowers and wildlife. We went all over the west in our beloved

camper.

We spent the hottest night of our lives at Valley of Fire

campground in Nevada one summer. It never got below 95 degrees that

night. You’d think we would have taken a clue from the campground

name.

Mostly we camped at our favorite Southern California places:

Caspers Wilderness Park, O’Neill Park, Blue Jay Campground, Cuyamuca

Rancho State Park, or Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Sometimes we

simply camped in a clearing by a national forest service road.

I commuted regularly in the VW for years, but I haven’t driven it

much since 1992, when I bought a new Honda Civic. The Civic got much

better mileage, and made a more sensible commuting car for me. Vic

tended to drive more locally in those days, so he drove the VW. Then,

in 1996, I bought a Toyota Camry with automatic transmission. With my

bum left knee, I just couldn’t drive a stick shift car in those awful

daily traffic jams on our local freeways anymore. Vic took the Civic

as his commuting car. The VW was relegated to third car status.

Finally, the brakes on the Civic gave out in a most dramatic

fashion last summer. Vic was returning alone from a hot birding trip

to Mt. Palomar and decided to take a steep dirt road home. A short

distance down the mountains, the brakes failed. Faced with a choice

of either going over the steep edge as the car picked up speed, or

deliberately steering it into the mountainside, he chose the

controlled crash. The air bag went off, sparing him any serious

injury, but the Civic was totaled.

We were at a crossroads in our lives. Vic needed a practical and

safe car for hauling people around in comfort on his birding trips. I

wanted a car that was better for back-country roads and camping than

the low-slung Camry. We both wanted something that got better mileage

than the 16 mpg that the VW got. We settled on a Toyota Highlander.

We’ve had our Highlander since last fall. It rides five people

easily, has the high clearance we need for traveling on forest

service roads, and holds all of our camping gear. Best of all, it

gets 25 mpg on long road trips, like the one we just took to

Yosemite. The Highlander is a sensible mid-sized SUV that

environmentalists can love. Or at least tolerate.

Even though I hadn’t driven the VW much in 10 years and hadn’t

camped in it for at least two years, I was reluctant to part with it.

I guess it was like saying goodbye to a part of my youth. We were

discussing how much we loved our old VW with our brother-in-law. He

buys and sells boats for a living. Buying and selling a car doesn’t

have the same emotional baggage for him that it does for us. We don’t

buy cars; we adopt them for life. But when he said he’d buy it for

the price we had offered to our nephew, we took him up on it. Now our

beloved Westfalia is gone.

We’ll always love it and remember the wonderful times we had with

it. But we feel better driving down the road knowing that we are

getting better gas mileage with the Highlander. Love isn’t

everything.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.