My '64 VW Type II camper and I are celebrating 28 years together, in part due to John Muir's book, which is one of the first things I bought after getting the Bus. A couple of years ago I picked up a '72 Karmann Ghia and another copy of the Idiot book to haul around with my Phase I tool kit and spares. I am looking forward to seeing the documentary.  

The manual was my first repair manual I ever owned. It saw me through some tough times. I've been looking forward to the release of your film for some time and haven't herard anything about it for a while. How's it coming along? Any ideas when it will be completed?  

Thanks for joining my website Sean!  

Hey allright! I would love to see this piece of filmwork, adding it to my growing montage of bus/life highlights. Keep up the good work, and thank heavens for the Idiot's Guide!!  

I am battling my illiteracy, in the hopes that someday I can read this book.  

In the mid 1970s my best friend and I obtained Idiot's guides to keep our personal VWs running. We became sufficiently proficient using this book that we actually opened a de-facto VW service shop. I am in Colorado; If you're in the area I'd love to talk to you. Now have Vanagon Syncro Westfalia and a couple of old Porsches; My whole hobby started with Muir's book!!!  

Can't wait to see this movie. Picked up my first copy from a friend when I got my first bus and still have it. Sort of hard to read some of the engine building pages due to a thin coating of assymbly lube, but I still use it. Have other nicer copies of newer editions, but my first one is still the one of choice.

I built my first engine using this book as a guide and still refer to it, but more than that I refer to the ideals in it when it comes to travelling in a bus and repairing things along the way. Recently I broke a valve in the middle of nowhere Utah. Limped 150 miles, pulled the engine, tore it down to a short block, put it back together with new heads, and was on the road again, all in a day. It was the fix it yourself spirit and the roadside repairs as part of the adventure ideas from the book that made it a fun experience to visit and make new friends and get to know my bus better, rather than a $1000 nightmare at a small town auto mechanic it could have been had I never read this book.

Richard  

A tribute to a great book and a smart man. I found one of these books in a bay I recently purchased. It's pages were smudged with grease and there were notes in the inside cover that were dated over 20 years ago. Maybe some of the knowledge of the previous do-it-yourselfers will rub-off!  

This is a great idea! Muir's book amused and enlightened me to no end, and I'm constantly recommending it to others. I first encountered it not long after reading Persig's famous Zen/Motorcycles book, and there is a nice chemistry between the two. I have several other authoritative VW technical references, but there is no more inspirational guide. Muir's tone, vocabulary, and philosophy are emulated, consciously or not, by a great many people in the air-cooled VW community, especially those of us with Bus in our souls. I look forward to seeing the film!  

Sean- Great site! It is about time that John Muir's work goes noticed! I really do not feel as though people give Muir the credit he is due. The "experts" seem too critical of his work methods- I have been following his advice for 17-18 years and I have NEVER been misled by any of Muir's methods. To all the people who are so quick to be critical- lets see you do better! I have always felt that Muir's contributions to the Bug and Bus are mystical and mythical. Although I was never lucky enough to meet him, through his book and my working on Bugs and buses I feel as if he is next to me smiling and nodding in approval. Recently, I was lucky enough to acquire a mint condition 1969 Idiot manual- I had been searching for 10 years. Thank you for this site and preserving John Muir's memory.  

Great site, Sean! Is the Arizona photo the one you took from our property on the morning that you left to continue your trip to CA? With the Rodeo-Chesdiki wildfire only 14 miles away today, we hope that the view and our access to the mountains will still be a reality afer the next few days. Good luck with putting the film together and we enjoyed you and your "crew"'s visit. The '63 ragtop was delivered to my sister on New Year's day, btw. The Westy is fueled and prepped for an evacuation if we're told to go. Wish us luck.
All The Best,
Rob & Susie Muir  

Dear American Dream: I like your website - particularly some of the sunset shots with the van in the foreground - I envy your experience, but only a little. I feel inspired to encourage Ben & Toms' independence, and hope to see them struggling underneath a half-raised, rear-engine, slightly rusted VW someday, and to hear shouts of joy mingled with the whistle of that little engine that always can. And with that run-on sentence, I commend you, and proudly proclaim you as my brother to anyone listening.  

Dear Sean, We enjoyed your brief stay here, in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, and we wish you well on your movie.

Susie Muir(married to Rob, eldest son of John Muir)  

Sean Solowiej is the American Dream! Bravo! Don't ever stop.

Julian Semilian  

I look forward to seeing yr film, esp. since I had this very same manual back in the late 70's when I had my very first (and only) car which was a beat-up old black bug. Named Boaz, or as my father called it, Bozo.
Reading the previous comments regarding freedom, lifestyle, and cars, well, I can't help but shift uncomfortably in my dialectical bucket seat: it is both a)true, and b)a car commercial.  

A thought I had a while after we talked during your visit to our repair shop
(Valley Wagonworks, San Anselmo, CA - the place with all the VW vans): The
most important aspect of van culture, and the reason I have stayed
entrenched in this dwindling niche market, was - and is - FREEDOM. This
is/was the main ingredient for all those folks from the sixties who hit the
road in their various rolling contraptions - freedom to be who and what you
are, freedom to pick up and GO, wherever the winds blow, where the climate
suits your clothes. Freedom from the rest of the stuck, stuck world, from
the daily grind of mind-numbing dullness. The VW van was the perfect
companion to the soul of the archetypal gypsies who awoke reincarnated smack
into the midst of the American Dream. Whether they are aware of it or not,
my clients/patients/customers are all descendants of this same clan and
share something of the same quirky spirit.

Good luck with your work, and please keep us posted!

Coby Smolens (owner of Valley Wagonworks - the VW van repair and restoration
shop in San Anselmo, California)