For a guy who often looks as though he's slept in his clothes — you mean everyone doesn't? — has a casual relationship with barbers and the personal grooming aisle of drug stores, and clearly believes shoes shouldn't be replaced until the soles fall off, I'm beginning to get uncomfortable with the Stuff of Life that seems to have collected around me. I never set out to become a collector of stuff, and not infrequently conduct major purges, but there's truth in the cliché, Stuff Happens.
Thinking about it, there are several forces that have ganged up to give me that overstuffed feeling. Age, about which no more shall be said except there is a formula that measures the rate of accretion of stuff over a lifetime and it's impossible for a 25-year-old to hang on to stuff for 30 years. Trends of a fickle consumer society, almost all of which I've managed to dodge over the years but would have to admit, under duress, there may be a Pet Rock or Rubik's Cube amid the detritus in the basement.
And, most significantly, an unnatural and possibly psychopathic tendency to anthropomorphize things and thus form a bond that triggers my deep-seated, reptilian procrastination mechanism every time I think of getting rid of whatever I'm thinking of getting rid of.
That, and a lifelong fascination with certain vehicles that stirred my soul for reasons it would take therapy to understand, explain the 36-year-old BMW motorcycle encased in a thick layer of undisturbed dust in the garage at Smilin' Dog Manor. I have no immediate intention of purging it since it doesn't take up much space and even thinking of parting with it brings on angina-like symptoms.
I felt much the same way about the 30-year-old, air-cooled, Volkswagen Westfalia known affectionately as Mello Yello... at least until someone suggested they'd be willing to pay north of five figures for it. Despite many fond memories, I have not imbued it with sufficient human characteristics to blind my economic reality-o-meter. Besides, I hadn't roadtripped it in for something like five years and only start it often enough to keep the battery from becoming a paperweight.
Which explains, sort of, why I'm in northern B.C., in September, camping in the drizzled greytones of late summer, preparing to navigate the last hundred or so kilometres of the Highway of Tears to Prince Rupert. I have never been to Prince Rupert. I do not consider that an omission I'm ever likely to lose sleep over. The Wonderful Woman in my life hasn't been there either; her curiosity is considerably greater than mine. And she reasoned we should take a trip in Mello Yello before making any rash decisions about selling it. Hence, we go.
Driving a 30-year-old anything is an adventure. Driving a 30-year-old Volkswagen is simply demented. Driving probably isn't even the right word. Early in the trip a guy driving a motorhome and pulling a vehicle larger than Mello Yello asked me how it drove. I said, "Not as good as a car but better than a hotel room."
I think that pretty accurately captures the reality of driving something that weighs as much as Mello Yello and is powered (sic) by 70 — that is not a typo — horsepower. It is this lack of pep that makes driving both embarrassing and exhausting.
As a rule, I try to avoid major highways in Mello Yello. Drivers on big highways are, well, scary. They remind me of terminally crazed speed freaks — the crystal meth kind, not the go-fast kind. I know this is just an example of relativity at work but knowing that doesn't lessen the discomfort. In the U.S., there are spiderwebs of secondary roads to choose from to avoid big highways. In Canada, our big highways are also our secondary roads and there simply is no choice.
Reaching the posted speed on any Canadian highway is not always a given in Mello Yello. Headwinds of any measurable consequence can leave me many kilometres per hour shy of the speed necessary to shift into fourth gear let alone reach the speed limit. Mountains, well let's be honest, hills, put me in the vulnerable position of being passed by semis, double-long logging trucks, and the rare bicycle tourer. Sometimes I look in my review mirror and all I can see is the angry grill of a motorhome behind me. It's just as well I can't see the snarl on the faces of the little white-haired couple, gnashing their dentures in the leatherette bucket seats, pointing bony fingers and motioning for me to pull over before they run my pathetic ass off the road. It's all so embarrassing. More than once I've made camp instead of tackling a combination of uphill with headwind.
Once, on the way into a town I hoped had a mechanic who worked on old Volkswagens and could check out the funny noise Mello Yello was making whenever I turned left... or stopped... or sometimes just rolled forward, I was passed by an even older Volkswagen camper. It was owned by a young Millennial boy long on adventure and woefully short on judgment. It had tie-dyed curtains in eye-popping shades of purple, orange and lime, retro peace stickers, a bumper sticker that said "Only Users Lose Drugs" and another one proclaiming the occupant a graduate of Starfleet Academy, half a dozen Grateful Dead decals including a very cool holographic image of Jerry Garcia coming back to life, Jimi Hendrix blasting from a sound system far more powerful than the engine driving the thing, and a smoky haze drifting out the driver's window. In short, everything a happy camper could want except maybe a big neon sign saying "BUST ME, PIGS"!
Almost hidden on the splintered 4x4 pine timber substituting for a bumper was a sticker proudly proclaiming, "Zero to Sixty in Eleven Minutes." It showed a picture of a VW Camper, smoke coming from the spinning rear wheels, and some stylized animal, coulda' been a porcupine, passing it.
"Braggart," I thought. "Eleven minutes!" Maybe downhill with a tailwind. There are times, many times, where you could clock a Volkswagen camper accelerating from zero to sixty more accurately with a calendar than a stopwatch.
But I'm where I am and sometime later today, the gods willing, I'll turn around at the Pacific and head back over the road just travelled. I haven't figured out whether to sell Mello Yello, or not, but since I haven't heard any discouraging words coming from the passenger seat, I'm betting this won't be the last adventure with my old, albeit powerless, friend.
