Date:         Wed, 2 Nov 94 14:13:37 PST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         macklow@sybase.com (Jim Macklow)
Subject:      Re: generators vs. camping (long and tiresome)

Joel writes:
> 
> one of the funny things i thought about with reference to the comment about
> going over the next ridge and finding more people ... it seems that humans
> have always been doing that: getting away from the crowd. this whole country
> was spread across the continent by people who wanted to get away from the
> crowded cities in the east. probably most countries were. and folks talk

But, except for the very early explorers and settlers, everyone set up towns
as soon as they could, and the big push west didn't happen until those 
towns were established and not too wild.  I kind of see the people on this
list as being the kind of people who were in the first wave.  

Why?  Because we're forced by our choice of transportation to be 
self-reliant.  We can't trust the dealer to fix our cars, so we end up doing 
it ourself, or checking very closely the work of an independent.  Can you 
imagine the driver of a Dodge Caravan packing all the tools, belts, hoses, 
filters, etc., that even the least conservative of us have stashed in our 
vans?  Our daily drivers are usually equipped to do at least a tune-up, and 
for those split owners, they drop the engine at the side of the road in 
a heartbeat, the way others would swap a spare tire.

We know in our souls that bad things can happen to our babies if they're
not taken care of, and sometimes Fate throws a monkey wrench into the works
and things go bad anyway.  But we take it in stride.  Most people want
a cars that don't break and don't need maintenence.  Unfortunately, I 
believe that many of these people extend this philosophy to other parts
of life;  people who get married without expecting the other person to
change, and refuse to "maintain" the relationship, leading to divorce;
the teenage kids who haven't realized that having sex means that they're
responsible for potentially creating another life, and for raising that
new person.

I just wish there were more people like us.  :-)

-Jim