Hello there people!

Welcome to my story. There will be some jargon along the way but there will be lots of photos and I think it will be worth it. give it a try.
I’ll do it in stages so bear with me 

I’m a SSVC virgin so I’ll start by introducing myself.
Hi. I’m Colin, 24, from Banbury and I currently own a 69 bug . I re built her two years ago for a charity event that saw us (4 others in my team and another bug) driving to the Arctic Circle in Norway whilst doing a whole heap of challenges on the way. She, ‘Julie’ to all but the sane, is now covered in sponsorship from said event and so sticks out like a naked sunburnt man in a snow storm. Some people think hot, some think cool, some think I’m a weirdo.




Anyho.

This story is how I have come to own a second something and should follow the slight adventure that I have and already, aswell as the one that is coming up.

I like to travel, six years ago I was in Australia for a year, I have seen lots of Asia and Euroupe and quite some of Africa but until last year I hadn’t seen much of the states.
After a bout of terrible man flu and serious hospitalization I decided enough was enough and I needed to buzz off and see some more.
It wasn’t long before the tickets were booked and I’d raided the piggy bank for ‘rainy day savings’ Plan was six months in the states, some in Canada and if I could get up to Alaska, brill. I had just about enough funds to cover a shoe string budget. Not a new pair of shoe’s strings but perhaps second generation hand me downs. Still, enough just
Fortunately I had booked a tour across Canada and most of the stuff was included so that saved some pennies. Unfortunately one of the items not included was the alcohol.
I, the English man, quickly teamed up with an Irish man and a Welsh man (seriously, no pun intended) and between us I think we managed to help many a bar tender into early retirement. This did well for our spirits (pun intended) but did little for my strings that had now become threads.

So, the tour ended with us being dumped in Vancouver, a lovely place, very well off area, full of students and has a girl to boy ratio of about 5-1. Naturally it was a terrible place to be and I didn’t go out and drink every night whilst being surrounded by swooning teens fascinated by my accent. I refer you to the film ‘love actually’ The slightly bonkers character who goes over to the states with his mate, the one called Colin who sings, and I quote,
“MY name’s Colin, and I have a biiggg kno……..”
You get the idea. Still, this pushed the budget even further but I still wanted to get up to Alaska, how do you do that when your daily budget just about covers a banana and a pot noodle?
You hitchhike ofcourse!!!
Now I had never done this before. Ever.
I can tell you however, not only am I still alive but it was nearly freak free and I had the most amazing trip of my life!

‘fast forward about 2 months’

I’d hitched nearly 4000 miles all around Alaska, got into many of the parks, spent 4 days up the Yukon river with some Athabaskan Indians, met countless amazing people and a few stray grizzly bears.



Truly satisfied, I’d decided to head back on the 2500miles down to ‘the lover 48’ when I was offered a place to stay for the night in a place called Glenallen. Getting close to -5 on some of the nights now and the tent was getting tedious so I accepted.
The following day, some of their friends were heading south down a 100 mile ‘dead end’ to a place called Valdez, the photos had looked amazing so I thought it would be a good thing to do and so we set off, without my bags, to go on a day trip.
With a rendez vous time set of 6pm, I set out to go and explore. What an amazing little town it was, surrounded by snow covered mountains, beautiful but very quiet at that time of year (October)
Suddenly (cue cheesy music) out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something looking at me, I turned and thought,
‘that looks like,,,,,,
My eyes adjusted to the failing light.
“It is you know, I think.” Now I’m talking to myself.
I started to walk towards the pair of eyes that had caught my attention. My heart started to flutter, by the time I had realised what I was doing my gentle frolic had pratically turned into a sprint.
Was I being deceived!???
Then I slowed and stopped, I stood, motionless in the breeze… wow, this is getting soppy.
Sat infront of me, in the middle of a parking lot, with no lights, torn, wonky, airless tyes and tinworm crawling up the sills,
sat a 1966 wesfalia.







TBC

um, seems those photos didnt work. must try harder.

Great story so far, I hope you fix the pictures and finish what has been a very good read so far. The reason (I think) that your pictures didn't work is because they are on Facebook... fine for folks who have Facebook accounts and are signed in (possibly), no good for the rest of us! Perhaps you can get the pictures uploaded and linked to something like photobucket.com or flickr.com and edit your post with new (working) links to pictures.

he he. pictures are the next stage. i had to run out the door earlier due to an impending bday meal, i know how picture hungry people are!
photobucket here i come!

Hi Colin, welcome to the forum
I was parked up next to your beetle at Blenhiem palace a few weeks ago .Had a good read of your book, that really is some story you've got there
Debs

Hi Debs,
Yes you were! Fab van you have there.
Thankyou, my bug has been through quite a lot with me, hopefully the upcoming adventure will be just as exciting
part two to come.

Ok,

Part two.
So, i came accross this lovely little van. She has obviously seen better days with regards to the bottom six inches but the rest from there up was pretty good. all the gutters were fine. I was 'well chuffed' as they say in places that arnt here. So the next thing to do was to find the owner, well the next sensible thing to do would to have been walk away but these things dont happen in reall life. plus i was never going to buy it, just talk to the chap.



I had a quick dig around the van and came across a letter. It was an eviction notice 'to the owner of the vw bus'
apparently the owners of his rented accomodation didnt really like him leaving this rusty hunkajunk infront of his flat, so had asking it to removed.
unfortunately the only part missing of said letter was the chaps name and address! typical.
it did however have the name of the property agent.
A quick search of Valdez found the agent, and a quick chat with them had me chatting to the owner of the bus
Gues what, he wanted to sell it! and even better, he wanted $350 for it!
Result, although i naturally wasnt going to buy it



With number in hand, and the time rapidly approaching my 6 O'clock, i left with wild plans racing through my head. Back at the aggreed pick up point, 6 came and went with no show of my ride.
7 came and went, then 8. A quick text confirmed that there aparently had been a misunderstanding (some how) and they thought i was staying.
So im stuck in valdez with out my bags, no tent, no sleeping bag, no food and its getting cold quickly. I did contemplate sleeping in this perfectly placed camper. too cold, so a hotel was the order of the night. Kerching!





The following day, i was reunited with my bags! phew, gave me the chance to do some serious web surfing to find a logical way of getting this van home. All ways seemed rediculous and a huge amount of money, not to mention massive time consuming.
so I did the only logical thing that came to mind.

I grabbed my phone, rang the dude, offered him $300 and bought myself a toy!!

The following few days became a bit of a rush to see what i could do to get the van rolling. Nowhere around had tyres to fit and i was still stuck with the 'lack of tow vehicle' situation.
Still, i had officially mooved into the van, or Bugzy as she was now named. what an upgrade from a tent!

A few more days rolled by, i'd become a regular at the local supermarket, it had toilets and food and now that i had somewhere to store stuff i could get exotic stuff like cereal
I'd had many visitors coming to look at the rusty van and being shocked that there was someone living in it!
I'd had a visit from the police who were just checking that i hadnt mooved in and while i was sorting out paperwork at the local 'dmv' office, I found out that i had been snapped by the papps and that there was an article in the local paper!! They had a few facts wrong so i found out where they were and took a trip down there




Long story slightly shorter, After a week, i had managed to hitch back to anchorage, some 300 miles away,pick up a towing bar, had sourced four tires (no easy task as most of theirs are either huge, or 13 inch!!) and most importanly, i'd found a truck.
It needed to be moved from alaska down to the lower 48 and seemed perfect, 5.8L v8 auto with a tow bar. with all that sorted i was nearly ready for the off. turned out the truck was quite big though.






More coming later

What a cracking story and great find in the bargain.
Looking forward to hearing more.
Good job !

thankyou


this will be a quick one as it's very late and i have a big trip coming up soon.

so i now have this van up on its wheels and ready to roll when i get another visitor. A really friendly old guy who was/is a mechanic and used to tow vehicles back in the 70's. being so far away from anywhere, a lot of the times people couldnt afford repairs and so would leave the car there, or he would be called to collect abandoned ones and such. anyway he said he had a few that i might be interested in looking at, so the next day i took a trip up to his house and had a look around.

i was in for a shock, there was literally about 100 or so cars dotted around all from between the 50's to the 80's. they ranged from old american trucks, large and small, cruisers, an old bus, many beetles, 4 type 3's and 63 split. these were all outside and had been there since they were parked so all were rusty and had trees engulfing them.











in some boggy places i was told that the cars would sink, they would then be covered in gravel and more would be parked on top, this happened a few times and in some places the cars were burried 3 deep. i was stood on a vehicle grave yard.
the most amazing though was in his 'garage', an old massive oil container, and i mean huge. he had in there a truck, some old american thing, an auto union DKW and a 60something splitty that used to be his driver. unfortunately the winter of 83 had brought with it 65 feet of snow. yes you read that right. 65 feet!, this unfortunately proved to much for the 10mm steel garage walls and foot wide central post and it collapsed. the vehicles parked round the outside were fine but unfortunately the poor splitty in the middle bore the brunt of it and still remains pinned to the floor. its lowest point was just high enough for me to crawl under so about 1.5 feet tall. very sad

This is a story for the Split screen scene!
I can't stop reading & am going to be late for work now, what a story!

Cool story dude, what's your book called??

Shalom, Lee

Ps. I'll have the razor edge Ghia please...

what an amazing story, more PLEASE!

Lee I think thats not a razor but a '63(ish) chevy corvair ... as the typ34 had one single tail light on both sides.

e m p i wrote:
Ps. I'll have the razor edge Ghia please...

Fantastic read i want more

correct on the corvair although you can see the styling has been copied by one side. Still a nice car and probably worth a lot to people in the know.

Right, these next ones could be short and come in bursts as i'm flitting in and out or airports.
So i have the van all hitched up when this chap chats to me, i've seen his collection of amazing vehicles including the green and white 63. IT's not in too bad a shape but the roof had collapsed in and so water has.

oh flight called , tbc