ADDITIONAL HORSEPOWER
Camping was the standard vacation in my family. Every year in August my father would pack up all of the camping gear into the wagon and off we would go towards the mountains for two weeks of isolation. One year around 1969 my father bought an old VW camper. It was supposed to be blue and white, but the paint was oxidized and there were several gray primer blemishes. The engine must not have been much good either, because Dad, an accomplished mechanic, replaced it with a Corvair engine. He was pretty excited about it, although at the time I didn’t know why. On the flats, that old camper rolled along the highway just like the other VW’s, but the difference became pretty clear when we got into the hills. That camper roared up the steeps like they weren’t even there. Dad was eager to get to Tioga Pass, a notoriously long and steep highway near Yosemite. The other VW’s were crawling…
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