It has been a journey.

Talking about " tracker" bikes in one of zeds posts made me think about my early involvement with the aircooled. My introduction to the aircooled so to speak.

Back in the 70s kids like me did get around a bit, the world was our oyster. Well an area of about 3 miles around our house was really our oyster, not much of an oyster but it did us.

Those tracker bikes with the cowhorn handle bars and the playing card and a peg clipped through the wheel that gave a clicker noise took me and my mates miles. we went camping over the woods with home made tents and borrowed cans of beans and pots from mums kitchen, we had killer rope swings and we swam in any pool bigger than a garden fish pond. we probably stank to high heaven but we had fun. We learned about all things worldly. girls, fags. football, skiving school, fishing and how to build a bike on a shoe string( no one seemed to have much money in those days) most importantly we learned about friendship, Those friends are still my friends, we see each other occasionally and sometimes we get together and laugh like we did back then. I look forward to the birthdays and the Christmas drink more and more as I get older.

One of the lads "Geoff! was a bit older than the rest of us and knew about things - you know like cars, motorbikes and grown up stuff like beer, cider porno mags and wacky baccy, The stuff you would listen to intently while your head tryed to fathom out what a big end or a little end had to do with a girls fannys or nipples, It was confusing but really gripping stuff listening to Geoff enlighten us on some of lifes great mystery's, he was our sage our leader and a bloomin great bloke, Pretty sure he winged it a bit because he told us about girls monthly's and how they would die without a Dr White. There was no Dr White in the whole of Kiddy or any surrounding surgery and I never heard of any girls dying. guess he was adding effect or just filling in the gaps. all the same he educated us and we were truly engrossed with his story telling.

Geoff left school earlier than the rest of us as he was a couple of years older, as soon as he got a job as a sort of designer in a local carpet factory he bought a VW beetle and artists air gun from the States. He had a real talent for the air brushing his designs were amazing and as he worked at the side of the road in front of his house people noticed his work. pretty soon he was taking on commissions for the air brush work and servicing beetles as well.

In a short time he had moved into a unit, aquired the handle " Van goff " and was offering a full aircooled garage facility with airbrushing an option. Well we had to get in there and earn ourselves a few bob off that little enterprise. It took us a nano second to skidaddle off up to Geoffs and blag ourselves some Saturday work. I helped prep the paintwork and others helped with the mechanical stuff. The tuned up aircooled with twin webbers and modified exhausts that had just come off the krypton tester or whatever it was called sounded really mean and the amount of revving and exhaust fog in there probably means we will all die of some sort of exhaust fume cancer in the not too distant future, but they sounded superb when done and moved like sh-t off a shovel.

One Saturday morning Geoff was peering in the back of some womans bog standard 1302s and it was ticking over nicely " Now , that sounds nice!" I said, Geoff just looked at me and said " It's has vw made it to sound malc, Proper!" that single remark has stayed with me forever.

Geoff was a aircooled man through and through. later on he moved to bigger premises, employed more people and took on lots of varied vw work from servicing beetles through to rebuilding transporters, always aircooled though. He serviced my bays most of the time. he also did any repairs they needed as I never trusted the local VW dealership not to rip me off.

Going to Geoffs was a bit of an excuse to spend some time with an old mate once I got married, he would always have time to chat about the vw and life in general, he imparted some great words of aircooled wisdom that when I am working on my own van these days come back to me. I could have learned a lot more from Geoff if I had taken the time, but I had my own things going on, so took my van in and had a chat then left.

I learned some time later he had packed up and bought an house in the forest, I never saw him for years until a couple of years ago while walking down by the cut. I saw a forlorn figure that resembled a a person I once knew, as we approached each other our eyes met and there under the massive overcoat and beanie hat was Geoff, he was smoking a spliff and looking every bit the the archetypal dope head drop out. When It dawned on him who I was his face lit up and he rolled out his life story. He still has his own dubs and he still tunes them to perfection only, just as an hobby nowadays.We sat and chatted for ages and promised to keep in touch, we never did!

My mates bump into him occasionally and reckon he's doing okay, and each year we say we should seek him out and drag him around the pubs at Christmas with us, yet come the new year we all forget. c'est la vie!

 

I dunno why I wrote that really. Just something Zed said in the bicycle post reminded me of my old mates I suppose

 

It's the weed mate - fecks yer head in in the end!

 

Funnily enough I have just spoken to another mate about getting him to come out for a drink at Christmas.

 

Is that really it though. me n my mates did the drink and mild stuff until we moved on in life Nowadays we all pity the lads still doing the drink and drugs, they seem so lonely and not quite with us.

When we talk about it we all agree there was always something odd about them when we were kids. It was a pretty awful area we lived in and you could never always tell what went on in their lives behind closed doors. Jesus my life was bad enough and we were the luckier ones!