Peace Vans helped bring my dream to life.
In the early 90s I owned an old vw bus. Our adventures included travels throughout the West, from Tucson to Klamath Falls, from Vegas to San Francisco to Santa Fe and Telluride. We saw the Grateful Dead in many of those places, many times over. Also Neil Young, Taj Mahal, the Allman Brothers Band, and countless others. We journeyed to visit a beautiful park ranger; she was having none of us, not then, and although one day she would come around, that is a story for another Yelp review. But after a few years I had to head East. That old bus saw the direction we were driving and it refused to go, refused even to approach the shores of the Wabash river. Her injectors melted, not once but twice, and I sold her for nothing in Effingham Illinois to a used car salesman with a lot full of Fords. I've regretted it ever since.
Now older and wiser, with a bit more spending money, but with a family and responsibilities, too, I put in place a plan to reclaim some of that past glory. The internet does strange things to a man, and, having invested a fair amount of time searching through blogs and craigslist ads and other such things (and sites like the one you are looking at now), I hatched a plan to buy a van. The immediate justification was a family vacation - me, the wife, three kids, the Tetons, Yellowstone. The big time. But the more important justification was deeper, less instrumental -- it was the call of the open road, a love of adventure, a desire for movement that expressed itself in dreams of seats set atop wheel wells and steering wheels so big you need to use your whole body to turn them, throwing your weight into the turn, power steering be damned.
I spoke with people at most of the well-known VW shops, and received any number of recommendations. Of all the people I spoke with, it was my conversations with Harley, the owner of Peace Vans, that really stood out for me. He had sage advice, and warned me in no uncertain terms about the real costs of pursuing the dream. When a van looked too good in an ad, he reminded me that they all need something. He urged me to be sensible and have the prospective vehicle checked out. He served as a combination godfather and Sherpa for the purchase and for the plan.
In the end I bought an '87 Weekender in Las Vegas and drove it 1000 miles to Seattle to have Peace Vans give it the treatment. June is Vanagon season in the American West, and although it is invisible to most drivers -- automotive muggles in beemers and subarus and hondas and the like -- if you hang out in Seattle or Portland or San Francisco you will see the vanagons emerge, road beasts waking from hibernation and circling the oases that keep this invisible ecosystem alive. Peace Vans has become one of the most important of these oases in recent years. As you approach Seattle or Santa Cruz, after hundreds of miles of seeing not even one other Vanagon, all of a sudden you begin to have more frequent encounters, and joyous recognition passes from front seat to front seat as both drivers, in unison, flash the secret signal they reserve only for others of their kind: the peace sign.
My van spent two weeks at the shop, while I went back home to fetch my family for our big adventure. Harley went out of his way to carve out space for us in the busy June schedule. Most of what they did was work on suspension, brakes, the cooling system, the fuel hoses. These are the un-fancy things that are needed to get one of these vehicles in shape. We were all aware that passengers 1, 2 and 3 were my kids. Leave the upholstery and paint for the future, focus on the important stuff.
I had spent a not inconsiderable amount on fixing up the van -- almost as much as the purchase price, in fact. The results were noticeable from the moment I drove it. Above all, I felt a sort of security, knowing that the van had been gone over from top to bottom and that most of the important issues had been addressed. In fact, while camping with my kids the first night, we realized that one or two things had come out a bit off. There had been a miscommunication about the need for a seatbelt in the rear-facing jump seat. We brought it back to Peace Vans on Monday morning and they took care of it, and did not charge me for the work. It was, in fact, not an inexpensive fix, and I was incredibly impressed. Later on that same trip, when I ran into a problem with a faulty oil cooler, I called Peace Vans to inquire. They called on their friends at the local shop to take care of me. And, again, I was incredibly impressed.
I recommend this shop completely -- they did such a great job and they are so dedicated to their craft. Thanks so much for everything!