When we first came with Kermie we used to, on a whim, pick up on a Friday night and head for the eastern slopes of the Rockies. Sometimes we’d leave as late as 8:00, pick up subway sandwiches and drive out to stay for a couple of nights. On Sunday morning we’d get up early so we could drive back into the city, shower and make it to church on time.
There were many campfires and much conversation until the wee hours of the morning, and, in those days, there was also wine and scotch for Richard and fuzzy navels for me. That made the stars brighter and the relaxation after a week of work seem deeper.
One time we camped in the sunshine only to wake up to a van covered with snow. It must have been May because I remember needing to get back into the city for the high school graduation ceremonies. Before we left we went for a short walk, not long enough to be considered a hike, down the muddy road that led to a backcountry campground. We didn’t walk that far and when we returned to the van our boots were covered in mud and the huge soft snowflakes clung to our toques and settled like down on our shoulders.
We brushed ourselves off, knocked as much mud off our boots as we could, and cleaned the snow off Kermie without a snow brush. We neglected to bring one. After all, the weather was summer-like when we left. We drove back to the city gas heater cranked up to keep us warm
Each of the camper vans we have owned has had its own special quirks. Kermie, the VW, had an air-cooled engine which meant that the cabin couldn’t be heated in the same way a vehicle with a water-cooled engine could. The gas heater could take the van from below freezing to tropical fairly quickly. There were two problems however, the heater used roughly a liter of fuel per hour, and it was quite stinky. The smell was not only unpleasant, it coated the windshield with a slimy film. At that point Kermie was the vehicle that Richard drove to work. Instead of turning on the gas heater, he wrapped up in parka, heavy boots, toque, scarf and heavy mitts for the drive.
It was a long straight drive and by the time he had to make a turn the whole drive train had cooled to the point where it was stiff and turning was difficult. Richard had to haul on the wheel as if he was driving an 18 wheeler without power steering. Another Kermie quirk was that the throttle had a tendency to freeze in the open position so that the driver needed to put the roaring beast in neutral, drift into the nearest parking spot, get out, engine still roaring, walk around to the rear engine compartment, wiggle a rod, which caused the engine to calm down, hop back in the van and continue on the way.
After a few years of this and a change in focus for us from canoeing to cycling, we decided it was time to sell Kermie. We sold it to the shop teacher at my school. He was delighted to get it and had the skills to put a new engine in it. I lost touch with him when I moved schools but I hope Kermie gave him years of enjoyable trips.
After Kermie, we bought Flopsy from Richard’s mom and dad. It was a bigger van and had a V8 engine. We joked that it could pass anything on the road except a gas station. Because of the interestingly floppy steering, driving Flopsy was fairly hard work and it reminded me of the overcorrecting I did when I first learned to drive. At first I turned the wheel too far one way, then I turned it too far in the other direction in an attempt to compensate. The difference with Flopsy was that you never quite got to the sweet spot where you could keep the vehicle straight with only small movements of the wheel. You’d be driving down the road with the wheel canted to the left or the right to stay in a straight line. Then a gust of wind would come up and you’d slow as Flopsy did a little dance and you recovered control once again. Because of that, I didn’t like driving Flopsy and poor long-suffering Richard did most of the van wrangling.
There was a lot of that. In addition to bringing Flopsy to this campground for short getaways, we drove it out to the Okanagan and the west coast to visit friends and family. On one of our first trips, we decided to visit Tofino. It’s the only time we have ever been there. We had a great time flying our kite on the beach and hanging out with a colleague who happened to be in the same campground.
Then it rained. I’m a pretty sound sleeper but Richard woke up to water pouring in through the high side-window. He quickly moved all the items sitting on the ledge below the window and placed towels to soak up the water. The morning found us in a hardware store buying silicone sealant in a tube to fix the leak. We hauled a picnic table over to the van so Richard could reach the window. It wouldn’t win any prizes for beauty or skill but the silicone stopped the leak.
Poor old Flopsy had no garage to protect it from the winter weather so it rusted. In 2013 when Flopsy was 29 years old, we drove it to the Yukon to hike the Chilkoot Trail. It rattled and banged along and we decided to add a trip to Inuvik via the Dempster Highway after we finished the Chilkoot Trail hike.
There are advantages to driving an older vehicle on a road like that. It’s gravel and, with the vehicle being in less than pristine condition to start with, there is less worry about rock chips. Parts of the highway are made from local shale and those sharp pieces can slash tires in an instant. We were very lucky in that we made it from Dawson City to Inuvik and back without a flat. There was an unusual noise by the time we reached Inuvik so on the advice of a guy we met on the ferry, we took it to The Midnight Mechanic. The parking area outside the shop was a mud pit as it had been raining for a couple of days.
Both the owner and the dogs looked suspiciously at us when we pulled in. Richard explained to the owner that he had been recommended to us and, with that, he relaxed a little. He had a look at the underside of the van and told us to come back in a couple of hours. We headed into town in the rain to sit in a café and drink coffee while he worked on it.
When we returned, he told us he had found a bolt missing and had replaced it. He also found a few other things which he fixed. He charged us a very reasonable fee. We thanked him and headed on our way.
On one of the ferries on our way back south, we met a woman who had worked in the post office in Inuvik and who had just retired. As we chatted, we mentioned the mechanic. She laughed, “Well, it’s a good thing that you got to him this week because next week he’s headed to jail for serve time for a drugs conviction." Maybe that accounted for the suspicious reception we initially got. Regardless, the work he did held up until we sold Flopsy at the end of the next season after a trip from Calgary to Newfoundland. But that’s a story for another day.
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