Finding a diamond in the rough

Funny thing is these days I find myself not driving very much. Commuting is now mostly riding the ferry and cycling.  Which was good because my Mazda 626, with 320,000 miles, was getting very tired.  Sadly It just didn’t really make sense to invest any more money in her.

So I started looking a new more useful vehicle.  I was originally thinking of getting a new dependable car like an all wheel drive off road capable Crosstrek.  I also wanted something that we could all travel in comfortably in with more useable versatile room.  Then I thought about something to we could all camp in.  We looked at new cars but nothing was really available.  We didn’t want to drive an RV at the time. Although in hindsight we are much more open to it now.

Looking at various Vans, i found that Vanagons are simply smart and cool.  My buddy Tim showed me the light and shared his Westy, Vanagons are 30 years old, and had reliability issues then and much more now.  The newer ones have more power but are just not the same.

Emma shared with me that when she was a kid her dad had a couple of them when she was growing up.   And that they used to go on a number of family camping trips in it.  We did some research and we went to go look at some.  Bay area vanagons are pricy!  After looking for a while and doing further research, it became clear that an all wheel off roading capable ride was more important to us than a full kitchenette.  It would give us more space for Cal and we figured we can always add additional cabinetry later.  

The ability to go anywhere with higher confidence to explore without getting stuck is just simply cool!  Going to the snow, Tahoe, the beach, dirt off road trails, muddy rainy backroads...anytime seemed really attractive.

A diamond in the rough.  Looking on samba and other websites our budget light…we finally came across a unique Syncro.  It had all the cool rad stuff that we would love to add over time.  And it was a converted pop top weekender.  Problem was it was across the country in a salt state.  However it was very affordable considering it was a Syncro but far far far away.  

So I convince Emma to take a quick vacation to New York  :)