Some idiot decided to jump his green light while I was making a protected left hand turn, and smashed into my right rear quarter panel. The impact ripped the engine off its mounts, causing it to drop. The muffler was partially torn off the car and the pipe separated from the actual muffler. And worst of all, the bastard scratched my pink paint job!

I tried to drive the car away from the scene of the accident after I was cleared to go, to discover the engine had dropped so much that it shuddered the whole car and sounded like something was going to explode. I limped around the corner to a friends house, went in the door, and collapsed into their chair. The tow truck guy took me to work and then dropped of my van at the fix-it place. Now I have to wait for a week until the police report comes out and the insurance companies start to duke things out. In the meantime, I'm homeless and vanless, since I'm set to move out on July 1st and was going to live in my van. Crap.

I went to a VW junkyard the other day. They had 10 acres of vehicles and a huge warehouse full of all sorts of goodies!

I'm packing up my VW today, getting ready to move out of my house. My lease runs out on the 1st, so I've decided to live in my van full time.

You know that magnet that has a horrified looking lady on it, and says "Oh my God, I turned into my mother!" ? I'm starting to identify. Now both mom and I are wandering around while living out of our vehicles. Mine's cooler though. :-)

Everywhere I go, little kids and grown adults all smile and shout, "I love your van!"

With my next paycheck, I need to fix my brakes and get some new shocks. I figured it was easier to concentrate on the cosmetic things before the mechanical stuff and living in it. I moved into the house I built before I was finished with it, and it was just a total pain. Never again!

Van happenings

I haven't been doing much to the van, hence the lack of pictures of it. Here, have a picture of my new haircolor instead!

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Everybody and their mother has been complimenting me on the color, even old, persnickety people. I quite like the color myself, with the exception of the fact that now I kind of clash with my car....

Yesterday I made a duvet cover with the help of Pat, the woman who's been helping me with every other imaginable van thing. (She even bought the duvet fabric as a present. Awwww!) It's a tan fabric with pink gerbera daisies. It's perfect!

Yesterday we took my van for several spins, including one at 10pm to a donut shop that has hot donuts from 9pm to 6am. We bought 4 original glazed, 2 chocolate glazed, 2 chocolate cake, 1 doz. donut holes and a small milk, all for $3.80. Mmmm, sugar... I just don't get enough during the day at my bakery job.

Dyed my hair

Now it's a dark Burgundy. :-)

I want one of these!

A nifty stove and oven, so I can bake cookies and Thanksgiving turkeys on the road. Mmmmmm....

From Cabella's.

My vans' new name is...

Pigathius Lee.

It's Miss Piggy's full name and is a play on Peggy Lee, whom I just discovered at the library and absolutely love.

Miss Piggy and I share the same sort of personality, my initials are HAM, and the van is a nice piggy pink. It fits. I also was given a pink pig keychain a few weeks ago, which brings it all together.

New VW upholstery

This is part of the old bench seat seat cover. It's why there was a fuzzy blanket over the backseat when I bought my VW.

And this is what it looks like now... I made the pillow, too. Next - Curtains! Why stop now? I'm on a roll.

Today an adorable 5 year old told me she really liked my pink car. Kids seems to get a kick out of it. Whenever a car with a kid goes by me on the roads, they usually have their noses pressed to the glass and gawk at my car as they go by.

Naming the van and answering comments

Whoops, I haven't published the comments in a while. I keep them on moderation so I can instantly delete any nasty comments, and savor the good ones before they hit the web.

This van is manual. It took me about a week to get used to the particulars of the clutch. When I took it to the VW shop for a check-up, the guy told me that every van is different. Sometimes he gets into a VW and can't find gears for the life of him.



I'm slowly working on redoing the interior. When I got the van, the upholstery was a yucky brown corduroy that was full of grit, sand and dog hair. It was worn out and badly in need of replacement. I'm replacing it with a heavy duty fabric with light blue, green and tan stripes. The light yellow on the back of the captains chairs is automotive antelope. It came from a friend who got the 3 antelope hides from a sheik's airplane upholstery job. It's the same friend who let me use her backyard and fancy spray gun for the paint job. She's amazing! She does decorative painting for a living, and wanted to try painting a car as a warm-up for painting her RV. I was only too glad to lend my van for the cause...

Eventually I'll get around to installing a wooden floor inside. I'd love to do bamboo or birch! For now, I need to save up money for the not so glamorous mechanical side of things. I'd like to get some new shocks (the current ones are a wee bit tired), and get new rear brake shoes/drums before they give out. I also need a good tune-up, and to get my fluids flushed sooner rather than later. All in all though, it's in pretty superb condition. Later down the road I want to give the underside a good bath and a scrub, then undercoat the heck out of it. It's relatively rust-free, and I'd like to keep it that way!

I promised a friend I'd name my van before she came back from a trip out of state. I have a week to figure out something fitting. Any suggestions? The last two cars were Toby the big red van, and Annie, the toyota 4-runner.