From Veeduber@aol.com  Sat Aug 19 04:18:17 1995
msgnum: msg13989
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 05:18:17 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: I need help.


Sorry to bother you with this but I've got a little problem.  A
personal kind of thing.

Things are tight right now.  The Northridge quake busted the
foundation under my shop and the building is coming down, slow but
sure.  But since Vista is outside of the official earthquake zone
the cracked slab and canted walls must all be in my mind; since we
didn't have an earthquake we don't qualify for any of the low-
interest loans or other forms of assistance. 

So I set out to fix it myself.  But the Catch-22 is: No shop, no
income.  

Okay, that's the background.  I'll work something out on the shop. 
Now comes the REAL problem.

I've got personal business in the Seattle area.  It involves a dead
shipmate.  I can't afford to make the trip right now but it's the
kind of thing a man has to do whether he can afford it or not.  So
I've been working on that and came up with a way to get TO Seattle. 
But I'm plumb out of ideas on how to get home.

Actually, I CAN get home.  I've known the trip was coming up and
I've been putting money by.  Given what I expect to earn for
driving a car to Seattle (my solution to getting there) I'll have
enough to get home by bus or even plane (although I hate to ride in
back).  But as I said to begin with, I really can't afford it --
the money is needed for fixing the shop, which to me is more
important than a comfortable ride.

They won't let me use the car I'm driving up to tow my bug or bike,
which was my first idea and the one I thought I'd be using up until
today, when the Word came down: No Towing.  Thinking I WAS going to
tow the bug to drive home cost me a couple of opportunities to get
back by other means.  Now I've got about two weeks to work it out.

What I've got working for me is a bit of time.  I've got to arrive
on a certain date -- still to be set -- but getting home can take
as long as it takes.  Hitch-hiking is out.  I'll be carrying tools,
don't like the thought of getting them wet or stolen or having to
lug them too far.  And local cops are pure hell on civilian hitch-
hikers in the Central Valley.

My only other idea is pretty crazy.  Take a spare engine with me,
find a bug or bus with NO ENGINE for sale cheap somewhere in the
Seattle/Tacoma/Portland corridor, drive home in that, sell it and
recover my money.  I know; it's a real hair-ball, loose ends
hanging out all over.  Just thot I'd throw it on the table.  Like
I said, I can catch the Greyhound or even a plane, if the trip up
don't cost too much.

My hair-ball idea would work best if I could line up an engine-less
vehicle before I arrived.  Don't much care what it is, so long as
it will accept a Type I engine, has brakes on at least two wheels
and whoever has it is willing to let me work on it where it sits. 
I'm willing to dicker, deal or trade but won't have much in the way
of cash so we're talking cheap here, as in something nobody else
wants.  I can fix it up and I'm even willing to sell it back to the
owner if they'd like to work it that way (although how I'd get home
after delivering it might be deja vu all over again :-)  

I'm going to post this thing three times between now and when I
leave.  Any help or suggestions would be warmly appreciated, as
would having someone post this over to the Vintage VW list.

-Bob