April 4, 2000

I respectfully ask you to withdraw the VW bus from the ten-worst-cars-of-the-millennium list.

To condemn to ignominy the VW bus that you claim is among the worst cars of the millennium, without (by your own admission) actually having owned one, is a betrayal of the American notion of justice.

While it is true that the bus is slow, has a pathetic heater, has terrible cross-wind stability and is often held together by flower stickers, those are just superficial characteristics that miss completely the transcendent nature of this wonderful machine.

It's true that a bus needs 100 pounds of tools and spare parts in its cargo inventory for even a trip to the grocery store (fortunately, thanks to Carl Franz, even a *complete idiot* can fix one); And it is true that I was unemployed for ten years because I had to stay home to fix my bus, but in doing so I (along with many other bus owners) overcame all the petty objections mentioned above.

Anti-sway bars were added eliminating the crosswind instability problems, I built a high-performance 100MPH motor that made sailing up the mountain passes of the West, in the fast lane, possible. A gas-fired heater keeps everyone toasty in the winter when we drive to the Sequoia redwoods to visit them with a mantle of snow.

Don't know about Boston, but there are still a plethora of buses roaming around the West. Many are used as daily drivers with hundreds of thousands of miles on them. Their owners love them. How could it be put in the same company with the others on the list?

You deserve our love, pity and compassion for your ignorance and obvious deficiency of life experience. Poor brothers, worked on the bus as a piece of broken machinery, but never had the opportunity of having a peak experience* in one, as I have so many times on road trips of epic proportions.

My buses have traveled from Alaska to Central America; from California to New York and Florida, by back road, off-road, county road, blue highway, and scenic byway, intimately exploring the world with family, friends and lovers. Happy trips, adventures, and learning experiences. The ambiance of the bus itself lends some ineffable quality to each journey that makes a road trip in one, an extra-ordinary experience.

If the bus could talk, it would regale you with endless stories of torturous-mountain crossings, deserted tropical beaches, ancient ruins, warm nights, Vicious hail, Florida panthers, scarlet macaws, fresh pineapple, smoking volcanoes, hidden oases, cave paintings, gourmet meals made in Guadalcanal conditions, the smell of a thousand campfires, crimson skies at dawn and dusk, the burden of kayaks and mountain bikes, the joy of touching grey whales, new friends made, and old friends reunited.

If you had experienced just one of the myriad nights of passionate romance spent with the most wondrous women on Earth, sunroof pulled back revealing a canopy of stars blazing through a clear desert night, you would speak of the bus with reverence and not derision. Their essence, wisdom, beauty, excitement and love continue to suffuse the carapace of the bus and animate it with an energy that infects all those who travel in it.

I am reminded of a time when I was hitchhiking and was picked up by a VW bus in Oregon. The side doors swung open, inside was a collection of other hitchhikers traveling the road less taken. I was received into an instant community of strangers* who fell into rapturous rapport. People were communicating their hopes, dreams and visions of the future, instead the timid, anxious and cruel fears that one is so likely to hear today, when one picks up a stranger on the road.

After 27 years and more that one half million miles of VW bus ownership, The essence of all these experiences is palpable, and surrounds me as I continue to journey down the road in my bus.

If, as the saying goes in California, *you are what you drive*, then having the bus on the ten-worst list devalues the lives of so many of us who feel that the bus has been an immeasurable and wonderful part of our existence over the years.

Do you know that bus owners wave at each other as they pass? We are a society of people who share a tradition, a common experience. People who understand that the quintessential of this thing called life, is the journey itself and not the destination. (Arriving somewhere an hour ahead of the bus, wisked there in air conditioned 85MPH comfort, misses the point entirely).

What a long strange trip it's been.

Peace,

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