The day that broke the camel’s back. One little email, well three I guess. A misplaced addition to the contact list and now I am writing a diary!
The day started well enough. I am getting used to the late rising and even Lola appears to have worked out the code. A quick shower a lap of Whangaparaoa with the dog and I am ready for anything! Well what I am really ready for is a cup of tea, we Brits can’t do anything without at least half a gallon sloshing about inside us. I answer a couple of emails in timely fashion so everyone knows I am up and about and pretending to be working. Then we have a livestream Teams Talk, Q&A – COVID-19 update from our CEO. These chats for the CEO aren’t unusual and I will be honest I don’t normally bother. But these are different times, I need all the information I can get. If there are redundancies around the corner I want to know about it before it slaps me in the face. As you can imagine, attendance is at an all-time high and not just from the New Zealand team. Thl is global and this effects all our sites from USA to Australia, UK to New Zealand. There has already been staff redundancies in the States but no plan for the rest of us yet. I am not short-sighted enough to think that there won’t be job losses brought on by Covid-19 and am realistic enough not to think I am above all of this. What I do know is that I can only do what I can do and what I do is talk to people. So after sending my latest email that is exactly what I do.
Email 3:
As we hunker down for the long hall, my mind has drifted back to my own motor homing history. Or more precisely campervans. Not many of you will know but I have a deep love for old tutt, more precisely old VW tutt. I have been lucky enough to own and be involved in the restoration of a good number of these iconic beasts. What you guys know as a Kombi is in my world very different. These vans are all VW Type 2’s the Type 1 is the VW Beatle, back in the day VW kept naming things very simple!
The iconic split screen like the picture below, is easily recognisable and the first of a long line of great vehicles. The very early ones (1950 – 1956 I think) had the barn door (double opening doors to one side).
The van below is a good friend of mines, who bought it blind online after too much beer; but that is another story. It is however quite a rare 1963 Sundial. In this picture sporting the rat look it is now probably three quarters its way through a ground up restoration. Once finished it will be a show winning vehicle I am sure and I am very much looking forward to seeing it when I am next back in the UK.
The old girl below is a more modern T4 (I say more modern I think it was a 1992), this beast battled it way round Europe with me in 2008. We travelled pretty much the entire coastline anti-clockwise before we came to Italy where we turned north to take in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Brussels before all the botched repairs began to take its toll. I managed to get it back into the UK before the head gasket blew in a most spectacular fashion about 20 miles from home.
I still dream of one more of these busses, but it’s a specific one. I want a 1968 Early Bay window deluxe. These where only built between 1968-71, just before I left the UK I found one but sadly the rust had taken too much of a hold for it to be viable for me to repair. These for me are the epitome of VW busses and one day I will have one just like this.
I would love to hear tale of your motor homing history and travels and if anyone should know of such a van please do let me know. I have one more big build left in me, in fact I have two but I will share that with you all later.
Stay safe and if you have any questions or queries regarding your own motorhome or even your next one I am here for you.
Oh and if you think you’ve got it bad, now we have no water!
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