Sanchius and Tuna ride again...

[sanchius]

Tuna Flower 2022.

Not bad, but inferior in almost every way to the brilliance of Tuna Flower 2019: https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9052082#9052082

What's worrying is that in 2022 our plum tree is flowering a full three weeks earlier than 2019.
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[sanchius]

Tuna Tuesday - 1300lbs of food packed and delivered today.

Last weekend I had a odd thing happen when I stopped at the grocery store for a moment after taking Tunes to a nearby park for a walk.
It took me about 30 minutes to leave because a continuous stream of individuals and groups of people came up to meet and pet Tuna in the window of the van in the grocery store parking lot
I haven't experienced getting mobbed by random people like this before since she was a pup and looked just like an animated Beanie-Baby Husky.
Everyone was all so friendly and nice that it was rather fun chatting with them.

The previous weekend, we had The African Queen anti-aircraft half-track at the Summit Racing Autorama show in Cleveland.

Being an education non-profit, we had a lot of historical and contextual information to impart, hopefully without being too dry or boring.
I had seen these pop-up banners at trade shows so we whipped up four 77x33 banners in google-sheets and had them made into two double-sided pop-up banners.
Although they were rather spendy, the pop-ups worked great for walking folks through the story of the track and the non-profit.
We recovered most of the cost of the pop-ups via donations put into the .50cal ammo can sitting on the far end of the table.

Over the three days of the show, we took hundreds of individuals, families, and groups of friends through the unique African Queen story, educating them on how The Queen was discovered, that it was preserved as a tribute to U.S. service men and women, and is now on display to promote history, civics, geography, and public service.
The show had about 1000 rare and highly customized vehicles on display and we heard many folks walking away saying that The Queen was the best thing there.

It was cool to have actual Korean veterans come up to tell us their experiences there with these vehicles.

I love this picture because it shows the multi-generational demographics we were experiencing during the entire show, ranging from the older folks, to groups of middle-age people, to young families and tykes, like the little one in yellow just agog at the half track.

Our communications lead hammered the event staffers until they set us up with a live interview with a local TV station. That short 3-minute interview live on the "Kickin' It With Kenny" show early Friday morning drove home the importance of good media exposure as it brought huge numbers of interested visitors to our display over the 3-day event. Each day, it seemed that about 1/3 of visitors mentioned seeing the Kickin' It With Kenny interview, with many coming to the show specifically to see The Queen and quoting us the exact crew size and the "back to Cleveland after 80 years" story that they learned from the interview.

Click to see the interview with my BIL, who found and preserved the vehicle.

Link

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[VdubVanner]

Very cool historical vehicle: A treasure on half-track and wheels. Kudos on the recovery and restoration!
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"Fritz", a temperamental and unforgiving 1989 Westy that proudly bears his German flags and status as a member of the exclusive GoWesty Belly Flop Club.
1989 Westy Makeover: GoWesty 2.3L Engine plus plus plus https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0

[sanchius]

The spring winds have been blowing strongly for the last three days, occasionally reaching near-gale force, and both Tunes and I were going stir crazy.
As the wind started to abate late today, we jumped in the van to get out and do some petroglyph hunting in some nearby bluffs.

The dirt road in wasn't too bad so I was rolling fast, which is always fun. I figure that's safe to do as long as Dog is my Copilot.
It is amazing how well the Vanagon suspension soaks up the bumps and washboards at speed.

Though Tunes did throw me a sharp look when I wasn't paying close enough attention and took a high-speed flyer over an unexpected gully.
I was grateful I had renewed all the bits in the suspension recently as the van took the hit, flew a bit, bounced hard, and kept just rolling as if nothing had happened.
I don't want to do that too often as something WILL break eventually.

We came to the end of the dirt road and took in the scenery.
The lush fecundate greenery of the springtime desert was almost overwhelming.

Our goal was the rock outcrop just above the bus.
The trail up to the bluff is the start of the short-cut approach to the elusive Crow's Nest petroglyph complex that I think I've located a couple miles further up in the Pah-Rah range.

The hike up to the bluff wasn't too bad.
I'm not really expecting us to find much here as there's no obvious game trails or running water.
On the plus side, no water reduces the chance of running into rattlers, which is always a risk up here.
Looking back, the bus looks tiny at the bottom of the hill.

There wasn't any rock art in the usual places. The closest I could come was this.
A solo duck? Probably not. More likely an overactive imagination generating nonexistent shapes and patterns in random weathering.

No finds, but it was a nice evening's walk.

Sun's setting, time to go home.

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[dobryan]

Nice walk!
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Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2002 Subaru EJ25 and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[sanchius]

Mrs S, Tunes, and I met up with an old friend and her group of hydrology grad students who were making a stop at the Court of Antiquity petroglyph site just outside of Reno as part of their class tour of the lower Truckee River watershed today.

The conversation centered on the role of the river in hunting, fishing, farming, and migration over the past couple thousand years and how these petroglyphs often marked territorial boundaries, just like the timeless piles of wild stallion poo we walked by on the hike in and and the modern day graffiti we could see sprayed on the UP train cars rolling by on the other side of the river.

Even though we've been to this site many times now, part of the fun is that we always seem to discover new panels and pictures that we hadn't previously noticed with each visit.

An impatient Tuna says, "Quit taking pictures, Dad, I want to go play!"

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[VdubVanner]

[Abscate]

She is aging well. I’m guiding puppy Number 2 thtough evening of life. Still hope I’ve got another year.
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.ssS!

[DuncanS]

Whose evening? An aging puppy or you?

D

[Abscate]

[sanchius]

[Abscate]

Hmmm….puppy plus ferry plus VW content.

Challenge accepted.
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.ssS!

[sanchius]

Nice, thanks for the pic. I bet that pup is happy to be afield.

A beautiful afternoon with good turnout today at Reno/Tahoe Buses & Beers. BC's Dirty Wookie Brown was, as usual, distractingly good.

Also good was the conversation, tales of buses found, buses lost, and Dirty Herbie keeping us smiling with his endless series of jokes that were clean... mostly.

All the buses except Green were set up Nevada-style with stout All-Terrains that allow one to just keep going when the end of the road is reached.

Yes, Abs, of course Tunes is in the picture.

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[Abscate]

Looking at herself in the mirror, a Senut, as it were.
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[charleslabri]

man, i wish i could have made it
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An example of my labor in action:
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My Build Thread:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=730525&highlight=

[sanchius]

It can be dangerous to visit the weekend local neighborhood moving/garage sales with a vanagon.

"How much for the Kayak?", "$75?", "Would you take $50?", "Sure...","Done!"
A $500 Perception Pescador with life vests & paddle slides into the back of the van to replace the cheap $50 inflatable kayak the river took 2 years ago.

"Tell me about the compressor.", "It works fine, but something's leaking, it doesn't hold air. You can have it if you think you can fix it", "Done!"
A super smooth, super quiet, old-school SpeedAire slides in the Van that just needs the $20 cracked water separator replaced.
It cranked right up to 120psi and shut off. It's whisper quiet compared to my SUPER LOUD pancake compressor.

Tuna Tuesday: Loaded to the gills with the usual 48 boxes we filled at the local food pantry, each box a week's supply of food for a veteran, an elder, or a family who shows up on our delivery list because they are one step from the streets.

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[sanchius]

Finally acquired some old-school Thule feet so I could mount the roof box that was gifted to us last winter.
I'll have to do something about that emblem on the back of the box.

Yesterday, Tunes and I dusted off the red vanagon and joined my brother, his P1800, and the group of friends he was running the SFO-Tahoe-SFO vintage Snowball Rally with for some spirited driving in the Sierras.

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[dobryan]

[Abscate]

[sanchius]

We grabbed Mrs S from work, got some subs, and went on a hike up Galena Creek through the big sugar pines this afternoon.
The van served well as a changing room to switch from working clothes to hiking garb.
I even slipped in a few minutes of shut-eye between finishing lunch and the starting the hike.
Tunes got lots of pets from other hikers. It was a beautiful day for a walk.

It was also a very dry day, so we stopped at Lead Dog brewing after the hike to rehydrate.
There were a bunch of classic cars in the Summit Racing lot, so we stopped in and chatted with them for a bit.
All in all, it was a great day. I love the utility of this van.

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