By Kari Howard, Los Angeles Times
Sun Mar 18 2012 12:00 AM
The first smile came from the mechanic at the Jiffy Lube at the bottom of the hill. You know you're on to something good when you can make a tired guy light up, even if it's just for a second, at the end of a long workweek.
By the time the weekend was over, we'd amassed way too many smiles to count and moved on to peace signs. (My favorites: from the surfer who looked like a bleached-blond Jesus and the panhandler who carried a sign saying, "I won't lie. I need beer.")
I'd like to think it was because we gals were so fetching, but I must admit it was probably — OK, certainly — the thing we were riding in: a spring-pea-green vintage VW camper with a paint job so shiny you could imagine that it was 1979 and that we'd just driven it off the showroom floor.
It was my birthday, and I wanted to do something different this year. VW buses have always been a personal good-luck charm; I make a wish whenever I see one. So when I found an outfit in Orange County called Vintage Surfari Wagons that restores and rents them, I knew it was time for a vintage VW road trip up the Southern California coast.
By the time the weekend was over, we'd amassed way too many smiles to count and moved on to peace signs. (My favorites: from the surfer who looked like a bleached-blond Jesus and the panhandler who carried a sign saying, "I won't lie. I need beer.")
I'd like to think it was because we gals were so fetching, but I must admit it was probably — OK, certainly — the thing we were riding in: a spring-pea-green vintage VW camper with a paint job so shiny you could imagine that it was 1979 and that we'd just driven it off the showroom floor.
It was my birthday, and I wanted to do something different this year. VW buses have always been a personal good-luck charm; I make a wish whenever I see one. So when I found an outfit in Orange County called Vintage Surfari Wagons that restores and rents them, I knew it was time for a vintage VW road trip up the Southern California coast.
