The vanagon.com Short Story Contest Judges |
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Joe Clark is a writer-instructor-designer with over 20 years of VW experience, from his first car -- a '65 Beetle -- to his present '60 Ghia convertible. Along the way, he's owned splittie and breadloaf busses, Westies, Super Beetles, and a few others. He does most of his own work, and (perhaps as a result) has broken down in some of the most interesting places. His "VW Tent Page"
is popular among an extremely limited group of people. Elitist!
Tobin Copley and Christa Ovenell have been travelling together for 9 years. They have recently been joined by another VW nut: Russell Owen Copley. Their past trips include Vancouver-Southern Mexico-Prince Edward Island-Vancouver during the first three months of '95, and they were, with Ron Lussier, the driving forces behind the '96 "Top of the World" tour that led 14 VW busses from Vancouver to Inuvik, NWT. They look forward to renewed back-road exploring in the recently aquired not yet named '76 Westy they are picking up from San Diego on the November 7-9 weekend. Russell's first (cross-border) road trip! Christa, Tobin and Russell live on beautiful Bowen Island, just off the coast of Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Robert S. Hoover has owned and worked on Volkswagens since 1956. Other interests include amateur radio, horology and flying. Mr. Hoover is the author of numerous articles on computers and emergency communications. He makes his home in southern California with his wife, the portrait artist Jaysie Yates.
Tom was born in 1966, but failed to choose hippie parents (there were few of them at that time over here in Europe). This left him without early experiences in a "splittie" hand-painted with flowers. In high school he wondered why the teachers' parking lot was full of these strangly shaped, underpowered VW camper-vans. He went through all the teenage experience in a Golf instead of the rusty ex-federal-mail-service "bay-window" that would have been appropriate for such use. Years passed and he spent 26 of them getting convinced of the advantages of these rolling boxes. Check out the result of his developing passion. What had started slowly involved him quickly into the T3 syncro 16" association and peaked with Tom being responsable for the communications of the group. Nowadays his dreams for the future include meeting VW president Ferdinand Piech in an elevator, pushing the stop-button and not restarting again before the chairman had volunteered to launch a syncro 16" 150 HP TDI WESTFALIA version of the Eurovan's successor before the year 2000.
Unca Joel started driving Volkswagens in 1958, went through the Beetles and Squarebacks in the Sixties, took the Queen's Shilling and went off to Strange and Wonderful Places on the other side of the planet for a while, and when returned to the Land of His Birth, began driving the Biggest VW of All, the Bus, in 1970. Since then, it's been mostly Buses. Somewhere along in there was a stint at Learning (and other such things as Colleges are supposed to impress upon young and fresh minds. It doesn't work so well when the mind isn't exactly young or fresh). Miserable years spent wasting time in Aerospace Engineering, more years of Transition in English with forays into Philosophy, German, Psychology, Math and Computers, all eventually culminated in a real degree and a real job. Since then, it's all been downhill. A Jack of All Trades, and a Master of None.
