Meet Loretta

I'm pretty stoked to introduce Loretta as the newest member of our family. Loretta is a 72' VW Westfalia. She just took me all the way from Iowa City in supreme style (and she told me it was OK to call her LoLo). We bought it from a guy named Pete. Pete bought it from an elderly couple that had owned the van for almost 30 years. The wife (Loretta) was suffering advanced stages of Alzheimer's. Throughout the drawn out and emotional transfer of ownership to Pete, Loretta would exclaim, "We have a van just like that!" We hope to offer it the same kind of love and care that they did, and I think our relationship is off to a good start. The Hypocrite Wagon and the 12' Deathbox are soon to go.

I have been without an air-cooled presence in my life since I sold the 67' Karmann Ghia in 2002. Old Volksies gave me a profound appreciation for smart and simple engineering at a young age. I have since maintained an interrupted and varied (but not always monogamous) series of relationships with vintage VWs. I have even had a few water pumpers sprinkled in there. This is our first camper. She has a refrigerator that is capable of keeping beer cold. I have tools and a natural understanding of all things mechanical. It should be perfect symbiosis.

George and Jesus

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate
hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of
e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message.
Thank you
again for taking the time to write.

You're welcome! Jesus never takes the time to write back either. I don't think either one of them can type.

Word

BSNYC, on the virtues of keeping it cheap and simple.

"No group has tapped into this wisdom more successfully than singlespeed mountain bikers. The singlespeed mountain biker revels in the fact that he’s accomplished the same thing as the geared rider, and he lives for that moment when someone is impressed by his ability to keep up while using a derailleur-less drivetrain. Of course, the truth is that on a lot of terrain a singlespeed mountain bike isn’t much of a handicap. In fact, often it’s an advantage. When confronted with a steep grade on a singlespeed mountain bike, you either have to stomp up it really fast, or you have to run it. Meanwhile, the geared rider will downshift eternally until he’s spinning a tiny gear so violently he simply falls over. It’s kind of like clothing. It might seem like you’re at a disadvantage if you’ve only got one pair of pants, but the fact is when it’s time to leave the house you just throw on your pants and leave. On the other hand, if you’ve got too many pants, you’ll need time to decide which ones to wear, then you’ll need to find a matching shirt, then you realize the shirt that goes with those pants is dirty, and you don't have any clean pants to match the clean shirt, and before you know it you’re 40 minutes late. Still, the singlespeed is perceived as a handicap, thus allowing the singlespeed mountain biker to stay up late doing bong hits, show up at the race the following morning, finish 15 minutes down on the guy riding the geared full-suspension bike who’s trained really hard, and still look like the toughest guy out there. (A notion that’s only reinforced after the race when he pulls on his one and only pair of grease-stained pants.)"

22.5 hours of 9 mile

Victory, (and apparently the ability to construct intelligible sentences) has evaded us. We do, however, have a firm hold on dead fucking last. 24 hour racing is hard. 22 hours in I was hating it and figured it was a really stupid idea. Now I can't stop thinking about next year; like what I/we did wrong (a bunch of stuff) and how do I/we do it right next time (I don't know yet). Huge props to all those guys that killed it all day and all night. Thanks to Ryan, Wendy, and Sheri for all of the help. Also, big thanks to Rick Walls for giving up his NR Moab when Pete's battery was snagged from the charge bar.

What a completely original experience it was.