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The best laid holiday plans… (part 2)

If you didn’t read the first part of this post, you might want to do that before reading on.

So, where were we up to? We were in Olympia with Ginger, and the mechanic had suggested that rather than continuing on our trip to San Diego, we drive Ginger home. When you’re on holiday, is there anything worse than turning around and going home?

But that’s what we decided to do. Using the trusty smartphone, I made reservations for the first ferry to Victoria the next morning and the last ferry to Port Angeles later that same day. And then we drove Ginger back to Port Angeles.

Since we were, in theory, still on holiday, I suggested we sleep in the Walmart parking lot for free, just to see what it would be like. Patrick wasn’t convinced we’d get any sleep with the bright lights and cars coming and going at all hours, but we actually slept well – worn out from all that thinking and planning, I guess. We even slept through a visit from the local county sheriff, who left us this note under the wiper.

Ticket

The next morning, we caught the ferry home. Patrick changed the oil in the car and I did a load of laundry (exciting stuff!), and then we headed back down to the ferry for our second trip across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. To my surprise, at the ferry terminal, there were no 20 questions about arriving in the van and leaving in the car – no one even blinked, not the ferry people or the customs/immigration officials.

That night we hoofed it down to Portland. And the following day, we drove through a snow storm to San Francisco, where, I have to admit, I hyperventilated when the hotel’s front desk person told me there would be an additional charge of $49 a night to park in the hotel parking lot. Patrick sent me “the look”, the one that says “if you have a meltdown, I’m going to pretend I’m not with you”, (actually, he says it was more a “don’t worry, it’ll be fine” look), and so I managed to choke out the required “okay” and hand over my credit card. But it was worth it, to wake up on Christmas morning and wander across the street to Boudin for breakfast.

Coffee and almond croissants

Coffee and almond croissants

We spent a delightful day and a half in San Francisco, soaking up the sunshine, walking for miles and miles, and catching all the different forms of public transit – streetcars, cable cars and buses.

Next stop, San Diego…?



The best laid holiday plans…

We were really looking forward to getting away over the Christmas holidays this year, not that that’s really any different than any other year, but this year we had A PLAN. We were organized, sort of.

The Plan: Drive down the west coast of the US, camping at various state parks, to San Diego, where we would stay with friends for a few days before heading home.

We started out on a Friday afternoon with a ferry trip to Port Angeles. Once we were through customs, we took a quick detour to the supermarket to buy food, and then we drove off into the dark in search of our first campground – Sequim Bay State Park. The weather was pretty squally, not yet raining, but windy for sure, so Patrick attached our newest van accessory – the Wasserstopper – which is like a tent fly for the pop top. That worked a treat, keeping us dry and warm all night.

The next morning we hit the road heading south. A storm had swept in during the night and the rain was bucketing down, so when we plowed through a particularly deep puddle and Ginger started to misfire, like the engine was going to die any minute, we figured some water must have got into the electrical system somehow.

All the way down highway 101 we talked through the possible causes of the misfiring, keeping our fingers crossed that it would either sort itself out or we’d make it to Olympia where there were mechanics and vanagon parts if we needed them.

By the time we got to Olympia we were pretty hungry, so I navigated to the Trader Joes and picked up some lunch, while Patrick went next door to the Barnes & Noble to use the free wifi. He’d decided that the problem might be with the distributor cap, wires and spark plugs, and thought we could find an automotive shop to see if they had the right parts.

Sadly they didn’t and there were no mechanics open on a Saturday afternoon, so we had to decide what to do next – carry on south and hope for the best, or stay in Olympia until Monday and get a mechanic to check Ginger. We chose the second option and found a hotel in town (yay for smartphones and mobile data plans!).

On Sunday, we had fun exploring downtown Olympia, with a coffee and treats at the delectable Bread Peddler (if you’re passing through Olympia, I highly recommend stopping in here!) We’d been hoping to have plenty of opportunities to get out for a walk, so having a whole day to wander round wasn’t such a bad thing, and anyway, we were ON HOLIDAY, so it was all good!

The Bread Peddler

The Bread Peddler

By Monday morning though, we were ready to hit the road. We got up early and arrived down at the mechanic’s shop at opening time – 8am – and lucky for us, Pete Lea was obliging and took a look. His immediate diagnosis was that the distributor cap needed replacing, as did the rotor underneath it. He said he could order the parts and get them fitted by lunch time. Two thumbs up! So we headed back to the Bread Peddler, of course, for coffee and more treats, and to read our books.

At lunch time, Pete called to say that the parts had arrived and that he’d fitted them, but that Ginger was still running rough. I can’t remember the exact order of what happened next, but by 4:30 he called us back to tell us the sad news that there was nothing more he could do. The thermostat needed to be replaced, but the nuts holding it in place were frozen and even heat couldn’t loosen them, and the oxygen sensor was also not working properly.

“I strongly recommend that you drive the van back to Victoria,” Pete said.

“Hmmm,” we said. “Maybe we’ll just leave Ginger here, rent a car for the rest of our trip to San Diego, and then pick her up on our way home.” Which wasn’t a bad idea, except that there were no cars available to rent until late on Wednesday. “Hmmm.” I’d promised our friends we’d be in San Diego by December 27, so we had to do something. Maybe we should fly?

To be continued…



Meet Ginger!

You might remember that a couple of years ago Patrick and I rented a Westfalia Vanagon camper for a long weekend and that we loved it. In fact, at the end of that post I said,

Would we rent a camper again? Yes! Might we buy one? Yes, yes, YES!

Well, what with one thing and another, and lots of debating the pros and cons, we finally started looking for a van in earnest about a month ago. Patrick scoured the ads on Craigslist and Used Victoria, and when he saw a likely candidate, we tootled off for a looksee.

We saw vans in Victoria, Saanich, Cobble Hill, Parksville, Fanny Bay, and even Coquitlam, but none of them were suitable – they were too rusty, too rough on the inside, the wrong colour (kidding!), registered in the wrong province (which meant importing it and having it inspected, and paying to fix anything that didn’t pass inspection), not registered at all (which meant we couldn’t take it for a test drive), an automatic when we wanted a standard, outside our budget, too rusty, too rusty, too rusty…

In the meantime, Patrick was supposed to be finishing his thesis for his M.S.

Finally we had to admit that buying a van was really what Steven Pressfield would call Resistance – ie. Patrick’s way of avoiding working on his thesis (nevermind what I was supposed to be doing – let’s not go there!) So Patrick decided on Thursday last week that we would stop looking for a van until after he’d submitted his thesis and I agreed that this was a most excellent plan.

Except that at lunch time Patrick had another look through the ads and he found a van that appeared to be just right – not too rusty, registered in BC, in our price range, and not a day’s drive away. So on Thursday evening we headed up island and we met a lovely couple who were selling their van because their family had outgrown it. Patrick did a thorough inspection and chatted with the guy about the work he’d done on her, and then we took her for a test drive and we knew she was the one.

Meet Ginger!

IMG_0944

She’s originally from California, so her body has hardly any rust. For anyone who wants to know the technical details, she’s a 1984 camper with a 1.9l water-cooled engine with a 4-speed manual gearbox. She can sleep four, and has a 2-burner stove, fridge, sink with a water pump, and of course, a pop-top so we can stand up inside.

Like most Vanagons, she’s a work-in-progress. Patrick has already had the sliding door apart to add grease to the mechanism. But she promises many exciting adventures. And she doubles as my new writing space!

IMG_0957

What do you think? Are we crazy? Or do you want one too?



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