Anyway, my point is that several people gave me a good-natured hard time that evening for not having blogged lately.
Now I think it would not make for a tremendously interesting blog post to write about why I haven’t been writing blog posts lately, but it’s a point of entry… And so I'll ponder it briefly.
For one thing, I’m just so damn busy. More on that in a moment. But the other noteworthy aspect of it, I suppose, is that I have not really been doing much art lately, and I think I’ve inadvertently fallen into a trap that I did not even know I had laid for myself, which is that I think I’ve begun to feel like my art practice is the only thing worth blogging about. If I look back at my blog from 10 years ago, making art was only a small part of the content. But I guess recently I’ve begun to act like it’s the only valid topic. And I think that's wrong.
The truth is that I still make art every Thursday night, when I go to my live model drawing group. Thank Jeez for that group. Since we started up the group again, post Covid, I have been the assistant to the woman who runs the group. But in reality, as far as keeping things going during the actual class, I am running the group. And I find that very enjoyable. The other thing I really enjoy about the group is that I have seen myself get better at drawing, even to the point of perhaps developing something like a personal style. To see oneself get better at something over time is really gratifying, especially something you enjoy and want to get better at. Here are a few of my recent drawings…
The other thing that’s been going on, and chewing up all my time, is something that really needs to be told like a story. So here’s the story:
As far back as the 1950s, Volkswagen manufactured the iconic VW bus (technically known as the Type 2). They sent a certain proportion of these buses directly from the manufacturing facility to another German company called Westfalia. Westfalia outfitted these buses with a camping package, which consisted of a fold down bed, a tiny little kitchen, a bunch of cabinets, and a roof which popped up revealing a second bed. In 1980 they modernized the design of the vehicle, and for the American market they called it the Vanagon (technically know as the Type 3). Again, a certain number of these were sent directly to Westfalia and outfitted with an even more modern camping package. In 1992 they revamped the vehicle again, this time dubbing it the Eurovan, and again… some number of them were turned into campers by Westfalia.
In my opinion, the Westfalia Vanagon, produced from 1980 to 1991, is by far the coolest version. I’ve always loved them.
(Not my van, photo courtesy of the GoogleWeb)
Back in 2012 or 2013 I fulfilled a dream and got one. I had a friend do some work on that van prior to taking it to a festival at which I was showing a sculpture, and just before departing on that trip, the engine (that he had worked on) started making some truly horrible noises. I called a second mechanic for his opinion, and after listening to it, that guy said “I don’t know what that is, but it’s bad.“ I did not have time to figure it out before going to this festival, so I had to rent an RV at great expense, at the last minute. Upon returning, I was financially forced to sell that Vanagon. Over the years I often regretted it, saying to myself… and sometimes to Christina, "we never should’ve sold that Vanagon." (It turned out that my friend, the mechanic... who was the same fellow who carelessly caused my Ant sculpture to fall down at Maker Faire in 2015, had carelessly forgotten to tighten some important bolts in the engine-to-transmission interface. These bolts came loose and made a huge racket, although no real damage was done. But I didn't learn any of that until it was too late... until I'd sold the van.)
Fast forward to earlier this summer, sometime in late May. We were trying to figure out what kind of fun thing we could do over the summer as a family, and after ruling out international travel, we hit up on the idea of taking some kind of road trip. Again, I said “we never should’ve sold that Vanagon.“ “Well, hell… Let’s see if we can find another one,“ Christina said.
Now one of the things that you have to understand about these vehicles is that they have become cult vehicles… very collectible. My theory about the reasoning behind this development is that they fill a niche in the market that no other vehicle really fills. They are small, economical to operate, have their own little kitchen, and can sleep four people. Plus, they’re great looking! What all of this means is that they have become absurdly expensive. So when Christina and I went online to see about finding another one we were rudely surprised. Even crappy Vanagons start at about $15,000.… and that’s just a bit out of our price range. But then I remembered... a friend of ours who used to live just a few miles away had a Vanagon before he died. So that night I texted his widow, who is still a good friend of ours, and asked about the van. A few days later, it was mine... and for a fraction of the cost of all those other ones we had seen online.
The catch is that it was in pretty rough shape.
The engine was dead, and the interior needed a hell of a lot of work. So thus commenced about a month of work… (well I hoped it would be about a month) in which we revived this old van. Another thing to understand about these vans is that, although the vehicle itself is unique and much loved, the original VW engine was not a particularly good one. One very common solution is to swap a modern Subaru engine in there, in place of the original VW. So instead of replacing the blown VW engine with another crappy VW engine, I decided to go the Subaru route.
I am friendly with the best mechanic in this town, and I had a hunch that he probably had a Subaru engine sitting around. So I asked him, and sure enough he said “Yep, got one sitting on the shelf.“
I bought that from him, and over the course of this last month I installed it, building my own engine mounts, exhaust system, accelerator linkages, transmission oil cooler, roof rack, etc. About a week ago, I turned the key for the first time and… The engine started! Success! Except… about a minute later the engine started making a pretty bad ticking noise. The noise got worse, and three days later I definitively established that the engine was fatally flawed.
In this photo we see: In the upper left - the dead engine, stripped of its peripherals. In the upper middle, hanging from the red strap - the transmission. In the foreground - all the peripherals which have been stripped off the engine, waiting to be transplanted to the replacement.
Our original plan was to set off on our road trip down to Baja California sometime in the middle of this week… or in other words… right about now. But as it stands, the van does not even have an engine in it, and there’s still quite a lot of other things that need doing. So it is safe to say that we are delayed from our original schedule.
As I write this now, I have just returned from a 13 hour driving adventure, going up to Denver to get a new (used) engine (and some new (used) wheels) and returning… All in one day.
So, with that, I will wrap this up and go get my hands dirty. We are hoping to leave on this trip in under a week, so I have a hell of a lot of work to do! I mentioned in the beginning of this post that I was really busy these days… almost too busy to blog... and this van is the reason why. In fact, the first pass of this post was dictated into my phone using voice-to-text as a time saving measure. If you noticed any subtle changes in my writing style, that's probably the reason why.
So, like I said… off to work.
Hopefully the next post will have beach pictures.
(OK, one last thing I want to throw in here. Rammstein are just phenomenal. My favorite band over the last 6 or 7 years. Some of their very best songs pull off this trick of combining heavy metal guitar and drums with truly beautiful melodies with fucked up, disturbing lyrics. The melodies keep you humming the songs to yourself, but the lyrics are what keep you thinking about them, over and over... sometimes wondering "Why would they write something like that?" The songs "Spring" and "Dalai Lama" are the ones I'm talking about. Do not seek out these songs (or at least don't read the English lyric translations) if you are easily unbalanced. I can't get enough.)
OK, bye now
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