Feels weird to be selling the bus. Like it's a part of me. Which is a weird thing to feel because I haven't even seen this bus for a good few years. Haven't lived in a permanent way in the same country as this bus for more years than I usually care to count up. Haven't had it road-worthy for more years than that.
But that strangely cloud-like feeling of driving the bus, a pumpkin-orange 1975 VW combi, comes right back to me. (Second gear was especially cloud-like; you knew where it was, you could go poking around in that area for a long time and just hit fluffy white stuff before you hit the grindy part and the WHACK! off-you-go bit!) But once you got used to the floaty handling, foggy shifting and aspirational braking, it was pure pleasure to drive.
But before that was the camaraderie of working on it; a couple guys getting greasy in a shed half the night trying to impose the neat diagrams in the repair manual onto the time-worn saved-from-the-junkyard relic into which we directed our dreams. I don't remember that much about the whole mechanical side of the project, but one of the benefits of that time spent monkey-wrenching was durable friendship. You can't hold grudges against the guy who held up the other end of the transmission!
So the bus took us from the northeast across the country to California, and north to Alaska, and back again; then the project was over. (I never thought i could fit that trip into one sentence, but there it is!) But the bus remained. Over a few years the bus served as semi-reliable transportation for me, and as the star of more camping trips, the longest of which was through New England and Atlantic coast Canada to Cape Breton. Eventually, though, life priorities moved over and the ongoing maintenance and renovation needed to keep the bus going just didn't seem worth it.
So it was parked. Put to pasture, as it were, on the same farm where most of the work to resurrect it had taken place. Life keeps on moving on, and now the bus is up for auction. Having kept good company for too many years among quality John Deeres on the farm (that's what I'd call swinging above your weight - not unlike myself hanging out with guys who could actually figure out how to keep the bus running, way back when), the bus joins them on the auction block.
Now, the bus is a real thing - in all its rust and grease and uncannily rust-proof, rounded-off beauty it is very real. Yet, for almost 20 years, it has been, for me, a story from my past. That story is about to get a new chapter. It might well be a very short brutal chapter, but at least it will be new!
I would like to think there is someone out there with the stubbornness, inspiration and resources to put this bus on the road again and add to the story. If there is such a person, the chances that they will show up at a farm auction this Friday in rural PA seem pretty small. Nevertheless I like the quick decisive finality of the auction. Bidding is fast and cold - you can be buying it for a birthday gift, for breakdown into parts, or for scrap metal, but when the bid moves you are either in or out, no lollygagging!
I do hope the winning bid nets me enough to go out and get a good breakfast, remember days gone by and appreciate how those times lead me to where I am today. But regardless of how the "good breakfast" idea works out, what the bus gave me was a good story. And I get to keep that!
