Vintage Tuesday: Holy Roller

January 1996 - Hot VWs - TIPP & Company Track Set

Back Where It All Begins, Part Four - Sunset

My last update on my '63 bug found Little Blue towed to a side street in Petaluma a few blocks from my house. It sat there for about 2 weeks before the first note came. I actually found 2 notes. This was the one below (the first one put on the car)

Then, someone must have come along after and written this one.

Great, right?

And then I got a police ticket warning me to move it. The man always wins.

So, in a light spring rain, a buddy named Joe, who has a slick tow bar just for bugs, came over and we towed it back to my garage. I knew it was time to get rid of it. I had 4 cars at that moment. With EP's car, that made 5 cars. It was excessive. Tellingly, the five cars status stood in a dismal state:

Car #1 - 2008 Camry Hybrid. Company Car. Runs excellent
Car #2 - Brand new MINI Countryman. Runs excellent
Car #3 - 1968 VW bus (Big Blue) - Runs. But most likely had a dead battery
Car #4 - 1963 VW bug (Little Blue) - blown engine
Car #5 - 1956 VW bug (The Green Hornet) - engine out, waiting to be rebuilt

I actually didn't put it up for sale. I tried to shufflepass it off on another VW nut, hoping to keep a connection to it. But the timing didn't work.

After that fell through, I was just sort of doing nothing.

Then EP listed it for me on Craigslist. She was advertising a garage sale she was having as we prepped to move. And she showed a picture of the bug.

The morning of the garage sale, a lady showed up and looked at Little Blue. She came back later and started asking questions. She was very interested. Apparently, the Mercedes she drove now didn't tell the story of her having VWs growing up. Her dad, who lived in Sacramento now, used to work on them with her. She made a low offer. I said no. She left a card.

As the morning went on, I realized that giving the car to someone who would love it was important. And selling cars on craigslist is not a fun experience. So I called her up and left a message. She could have the car. The price? $3000. A '63 with a blown engine. Not a bad deal. The funny thing was - it turned out she was about 8 houses away. So a flatbed showed up. She paid me. And off it went - for 8 houses! - then they unloaded it.

I would see Little Blue for the next few months before we moved. When it rained at night, I would think, man, I hope they moved Little Blue inside! I would take Oak to the park to play and we could see that turquoise through the trees. My old car. Sometimes I would tell the other parents at the playground. That's my old car. I'm sure they thought me crazy.

Little Blue was without a doubt the bast car I ever owned. We went over 40,000 miles together in the 4 years I owned it. I took it so many places, talked to so many people at stop lights and gas stations. So many worlds we saw together. Driving it lead to me finding The Green Hornet. My hope is that The Green Hornet brings the same satisfaction. But with the '56 I can enter car shows, the Treffen, etc.

So now that we are settled in the new house, I turn my attention to The Green Hornet. But I won't forget you, Little Blue.

Vintage Tuesday: Ducks

January 1996 - Hot VWs - Bug-o-rama 36

Catching up with Big Blue!

Big Blue in front of his new home.

It's been far too long since I have sat down and updated you on our personal VW situation. We haven't been taking too many trips in Big Blue, and the reason why is we have been terribly busy buying, working on and moving into a new house. I'll try to catch you up over the next few weeks.

About a year ago, we decided we were going to move to Napa. Oak was about 6 months old and EP was taking most of the strain of taking care of him during the day since I commuted 2 valleys over to Napa (where I worked) from Petaluma (where we lived). It was a fine commute, and I've shared several pictures of it here on this blog. But the commute meant I couldn't come home at lunch and also didn't get home to 6 or sometimes 6:30 at night. Sometimes Oak was already asleep by the time I had to get home.

Not seeing my son was a big issue. And EP was taking care of him almost the entire time he was awake. So we decided to move to Napa. It wasn't long before we found a house we liked (right on a park!) and made an offer. The offer was accepted. The only issue was the house was a short sale - with 2 bank loans involved. It was an extremely long, slow, paperwork-filled process. And then, on Thanksgiving, the owner of the house died! The guy had been uncool, but that sucked. He was young - like 40 years old! And it through the system off a while - making the process even longer. When we finally had the offer accepted by both banks, we did inspections and found about $40,000 worth of work to do. Ummmmm. Crap! By this time it was spring, and we were 8 months into the short sale (or, as we called it, "The Longest Short Sale in History").

We called it off.

At the same time, a great 1970s ranch house on a corner came up and we put an offer in. Someone outbid us and we refused to get in a bidding war (the Dutch side of me coming out). So they got it. Then, after a few weeks of us looking at other houses, the 70s ranch house realtor called our realtor. The people who had outbid us backed out. So we were next in line. Since we had the appraisal and inspections from the first people, we knew what we were getting into. We resubmitted the offer and it was accepted.

The house was build in 1971. It has been meticulously maintained (Mary, who we bought it from bought it in 1973) but not updated. It's like a the "barn find" of houses! With Big Blue in front, it is pretty period correct!

We took possession May 15th. There was some work to be done for sure. The ceilings tested positive for asbestos. And the floors had tons and tons of … interesting carpet. There was no light getting in the house. And the walls were covered with dreadful wallpaper (actually, some of that wallpaper was pretty awesome - especially the fuzzy blue stuff in the master).

We decided on 3 major steps:

1. Have an asbestos removal crew come in, seal the place up, and take down all the acoustic (popcorn) ceiling and remove all the carpet, light fixtures, etc
2. Have a painter come in, remove the wallpaper, fix the ceilings (after the removal of the popcorn, they had to be cleaned up) and repaint EVERYTHING.
3. Since the carpet was to be removed, we wanted to put in wood floors

While we hired people to do the work above, I set out to remove a massive deck (almost 1000 square feet) from the backyard as there was no grass! It would consist of removal of the deck, and bringing in top soil and then sod. All this was an effort to have a backyard for Oak to play in. I started work on this immediately.

 

Lawn!

We moved in June 23rd. The next weekend we packed up Big Blue and the car and left for a week at High Sierra. Now we are just getting unpacked. Just getting new lights up. Just getting back to blogging.

So I hope this explains the lack of VW adventures and the silence on the blog for a while. I'll continue to catch up about High Sierra, Bus City 2012 and - the biggest story - selling Little Blue.

And, since there we're too many VW pictures in here, I give you the Green Hornet being flatbedding to the new place....