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.
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