Me Gusta! - VWs

This is a 1978 VW bus - the same car I drove when I first learned how to drive. Our VW bus was brown and my friends and I nicknamed it "the whale." I have so many great memories of that bus. I was the first of my friends to get a driver's license so I spent many days picking up friends and dropping them off. It was the first car I drove like it was my own. It wasnt mine of course, but it felt like it was when I was 16 years old.

Here is the only picture I have of our VW bus. Thats me and my youngest sister, Miranda. My dad is on the right.

As I said before, I learned to drive in the whale. It wasnt easy. Vista is a hilly place and the whale was a four gear stick shift that didnt go into reverse easily. I stalled out all the time - sometimes with a line of cars in back of me. The whale wasnt fast either. Im sure my parents were grateful for that fact. Im guessing the whale topped out at about 60 mph, but I cant be sure. Even though the speedometer read up to 80, the needle would bounce in place at 55 and go no further. Sometimes the light in the dashboard would go out for no reason and a several times the whale would pop out of fourth spinning idly out of gear while I was driving. But I loved that car. I dont think I ever really knew how much I loved it until my parents sold it.

I only drove the whale for about 9 months, but I have a lot of memories in it. I used to pick up my best friend Linnea each day and drive her to school with me. I will never forget driving to her house that very first morning. In my excitement, I misjudged a curve on Foothill Drive and fishtailed all over the street. It really freaked me out and I never drove fast in that car, on that curve again. Another random memory is the time the muffler fell off in my high school parkinglot. I was leaving softball practice with a friend and as I went over a speed bump it broke off completely. The whale had a very particular hum (all VWs do,) but when the muffler fell off it was replaced by a horrible, loud sound. I looked in the review mirror and although I didnt know what the metal item in the street was, I figured I needed to retrieve it. That muffler was so large that it took both my friend and me to pick it up and put it in the car.

This is random, but if you look at the picture of our bus, you can see that its missing the VW in the front. It fell off one day- no reason why. When my parents sold the car, I kept the VW and had it hanging with some curling ribbon on a mirror in my room. When I left for college, the VW emblem went with me and when I returned home after four years, it returned too. I still have it someplace. Its probably in a box in my garage. I will never get rid of it... not ever. That car was my first taste of VW love and everyone knows that first love is impossible to shake.

Happy Thursday.