Have Minibus, Will Travel!

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As I approach retirement age, I dream of traveling around, with a friend, possibly (heh heh heh ... you know who you are), just to experience a little of the wonder of faraway places, and the satisfaction of living out of a camper!

However, the Recreational Vehicles (or RVs) that one sees on the road, are slow, clumsy, gas-guzzling, polluting eyesores at whose wheels I simply cannot see myself.  On the other hand, the adorable little Volkswagen campers of the Sixties were just the job!  What does one need?
*  A place to sleep.

*  A place in which to handle minor urinary emergencies, if someone else is at the wheel!
*  A place in which to keep your clothes and equipment, maybe a guitar, some folding chairs, or even a sitting area, where you could relax and upload your blog, or catch up with your e-mail.
*  A table at which to eat in air-conditioned comfort, if it is an unbearably hot summer's day, and you don't feel like hanging out with the natives.

Most times, you don't need to do all the above at the same time; so the enormous luxury RVs are really unnecessary.  At an absolute minimum, a minivan in which the seats fold aside to allow someone to sleep on the floor would be fine.  I don't really need anything much larger than a minivan, though minivans are (at present) very heavy vehicles.

(A lot of the weight of modern minivans has to do with how the manufacturers have chosen to address safety issues.  They're building tanks, instead of providing limited protection for the most common types of safety and collision issues.  I hope the federal government is not mandating that cars should protect their passengers from head-on collisions at 200 mph; there's a law of diminishing returns here.  The more your car protects you, the heavier the other car has to be, to survive the impact.  To survive a head-on collision with a construction vehicle, for instance, one needs another construction vehicle.)

Anyhoo ... more to follow.