Ode To A J4 Van

Cold air silently immerses your feet, lapping up around the foot pedals. Grinding on through a lowering night, dragging the wheel at or after each corner, you wonder how man in his infinite wisdom saw fit to manufacture a van as contrary as this one. Struggling earnestly up unfairly-graded hills, the blackness locked around you pierced only by headlight beams. A murmur, sometimes a song, friends around you and a rel ctant admission that such trips can be more than tolerable.. Through locked-up, deserted towns, fighting rain as well as the road, a rapid descent and a pack frame jabs you in the back and someone wants another comfort stop. Just as your head tries to go to sleep another deserted settlement appears out of a murky night. Gently descending the gears you pull over and gratefully resign the front seat. Then back with friends jammed at interesting angles approximating comfort on a leaking kapok mattress. "Ten Four, buddy," murmurs Ken, now at the wheel. I wonder which is worse, a leaking water-bed or a leaking kapok mattress?

Anon.