Actually, I'm a transplanted Cheesehead. VW's are very popular in the very liberal capital city of Madison, Wisconsin, and I used to have a '73 Baja Bug -- so that describes my fahverg-dreamin'...

And, ya know, VW has bought up more than a few other companies, including Rolls Royce, so I could think of my wee Golf as a mini-Rolls.

Dean "where's the beer and cheese curds?" Trexel

> Dean--

> As a Michigander (temporarily transplanted to Maryland) I was shocked,
> shocked to hear a Michigan resident brazenly tout his purchase of a
> VOLKSWAGEN! (The Mazda might be okay because some of them are made up in
> Flat Rock.) I guess it's hard to be a nativist with regard to car
> purchases nowadays, what with the Daimler-Chrysler merger and all. (The
> upside to that merger is it is now much easier to take the wind out of the
> sails of a yuppy driving a sleek Mercedes convertible -- just compliment
> him on his "nice Dodge.")

> Enjoy Kau'ai. It's a great place to kayak. My wife and I had our honeymoon
> there. I took her out for her first kayak experience in an unwieldy
> sit-on-top double. Everything was going fine until I got us surfing in to
> shore. We capsized, and she got hit in the nose with her paddle shaft as
> we got dumped. Bloody nose, scratched knees from the coral reefs, etc. It
> was a long time before I got up the courage to mention I was thinking
> about building a kayak in the attic and spending all our money on tools
> for the project.

> --Will