He Who Does More, Fails More

In the last post, I said I'd hoped I would be able to feature some beach photos...

So here they are!

Except, these aren't my pictures... they're just downloaded from the GoogleNet!

At the time of my last post, I had just returned from Denver with a new (used) engine. I was able to install that successfully, and... after a few more mechanical hiccups, we were finally ready to go! (For any mechanical geeks reading this, you might be interested in a forum thread I started called "A Few Neat Things I Did on My Vanagon Build")

As if getting the Van ready to leave wasn't hard enough, choosing a destination felt like an exercise in navigating the beginning of the apocalypse. Originally we thought we'd go to mainland Mexico... the Oaxaca area, but then that seemed too far and one has to drive through some somewhat dangerous areas to get there. Then we decided on Baja California, which is closer and safer... but they "closed" Baja a few days before our departure due to a COVID flare-up. Then we set our sights on Idaho / Montana / Wyoming... but it turned out that whole area was on fire and choking with unbreathable air.  Finally we decided to go north through Colorado and then make our way west towards the Oregon coast. Although much of Oregon was also on fire, the coast looked pretty clear (!).

We finally set off on a Wednesday morning. The van was humming along and we had a real feeling of freedom to finally be going somewhere!

We stopped at a preserved 1800's town museum in Fairplay, Colorado...

(hearse)

... had dinner in Breckenridge, Colorado (van in background)...

... and then settled in...

... for our first night of camping.

I realized later that something strange happened on that first night...

At dinner, Christina said "The van is running great, you must be proud!" 

To which I replied "Yes, it's pretty cool. I feel confident about pretty much every part of the van... except maybe for the transmission."

Christina: "Why?"

Me: "Well, the transmission is really the only part I didn't look into thoroughly. As an automatic transmission, it's just sort of a mystery box. You just sort of hope everything is OK in there."

(When I got the van I was told "The engine is toast. Everything else was working fine." AND... most Vanagon people... and the internet... will tell you that the original VW automatic transmission is very robust and dependable. For these reasons, as well as a lack of time, I assumed the transmission would be OK.)

Well... as soon as we got into the van after dinner on that first night, the transmission acted weird. It did not misbehave for long, and I assumed it was a one-time glitch. I shouldn't have said anything about it at dinner!

The next morning it was fine again, but by mid-morning it was slipping again, and by early afternoon it was dead. DEAD. No Reverse, no top gear, and the low gears were fading fast. We limped the van along the side of the road for about 10 miles at 15mph to a campground. 

There was a beautiful river just past those trees, and it wasn't a bad place to be stuck for a day and a half. 

Christina and Kodiak really wanted to see the coast, so my first plan was to locate another transmission locally and install it there in the campground... to keep the adventure going. But I couldn't find one, and the more I thought about it the crazier it seemed. We were only about 260 miles from home and so we called in some favors from my mom and my friend-with-a-truck, and two long days later we were home.

What an ordeal.

When I was living in Germany a friend told me a German saying... a German proverb perhaps... which says "Wer macht mehr, scheitert mehr." This means "He who does more, fails more." This saying really stuck with me, even after these several years, in part because I feel that it really applies to me and my life, and in part because I'm never really sure if I understand it completely. 

Statistically speaking, of course it's true. If you never try anything, you will never fail; and conversely, if you do things and try things all the time, you will fail at some percentage of them. Failure is part of the game, and just as it cannot be avoided completely, nor should it be feared or viewed as defeat. One way in which I've sometimes thought about this proverb is that a frequent incidence of failure is proof that one is doing things, trying things, and should be viewed in a positive light. The wording of the proverb is ambiguous enough that I think you could construe an opposing interpretation - something along the lines of "you will fail less if you rein in the breadth of your endeavor and focus on your specialty" - but I don't think that is the true meaning of it. Or at least that is not the meaning I choose to focus on. I failed in my efforts to take my family on a vacation to the coast, but we had a hell of an experience along the way. And I know a hell of a lot more about Vanagon mechanics than I used to.

Luck. I don't really believe in it. I think you make your own luck by being diligent, thorough, prepared, and ambitious. And beyond that, things just happen. The world is meaningless and random, and fundamentally beyond our control. People like to put stories on things, to find meaning, because I think it creates the illusion of control. If the world makes sense, and things happen for a reason, and Karma is real, then we can see patterns and predict occurrences, and this gives the feeling of being in control. But I believe that's all bullshit. It's the same with religion. Giving people the illusion of meaning is one of the main purposes of religion, because to live with a real awareness of the meaninglessness of existence is scary. It offends our deep human need for meaning and control and predictability... which we grasp for, I believe, because deep down we know the dark truth that we can never have those things.

You know how when you are doing something cool - something like skipping stones on a still pond - and you're getting good at it - you want someone else to see it? Having someone else see it validates it, gives it meaning, makes it real. I think this is another one of the impulses behind religion. There's a very basic human desire to be seen, to be validated, and if you believe in God then there is always someone to see you and validate you, even when no other human is around. The alternative is that no one saw the cool thing, or the good deed, that you just did... and that it's only for you, for you to know... and maybe it doesn't actually mean anything, and I think that's scary for some people. No one wants to be alone. 

But enough with God, let's get back to luck. Even though I don't believe in luck, even though I believe that the best you can do to fight off the chaos and the entropy which is constantly trying to engulf you is to be prepared and rigorous, I sometimes imagine that the Buddha hand which I affixed to the front of my big crane truck helps ward off bad luck. It's ridiculous, and I know it... and I sometimes think it anyway. 

And so when we were getting ready to set off on our big adventure in the Vanagon - you remember the Vanagon with the secretly flawed transmission - I decided that I should probably bring some good luck with me. I had a rabbit's foot that I'd saved from an actual rabbit that our dog killed a few years ago, and rabbit's feet are supposed to be good luck, so I made it into a key chain and attached it to the VW key. And I also grabbed a small carved wooden hand called a Figa, a good luck charm in Brazil, and hung it from the mirror. Well of course these primitive talismans did not bring me any luck with the Van! They did not prevent the transmission from failing. Of course I know better. The world is random, the transmission broke because of physics (and probably because it was old), and the rabbit foot and the Figa had nothing to do with it. Or wait... maybe they did ward off the bad luck! After all, no one got injured, the van didn't get wrecked or stolen! Yes, of course, the good luck amulets worked! Wait, no... the universe is governed by chance and by physics! Well, one thing is for sure... I'm removing that rabbit foot and Figa from the van! Now I just need to find some better good luck charms!

I disassembled the transmission and found several failed components. I'm working on finding replacements. Wish me good luck!