For the last five years, over the second weekend in July, my wife, Carol, and I have packed up our camping gear adn driven our dune buggy from our home in Los Angeles up into the mountains to Big Bear Lake, California. There we spend the weekend in the company of about a hundred other dune buggy builders, enthusiasts, and their families, exchanging stories, talking about our cars and how they run, admiring each other's buggies, and driving the rugged and rocky mountain roads around the lake. It's the Manx Dune Buggy Club's annual Big Bear Bash and it is the highlight of our summer each year. I guess you could call it a vacation, or a weekend escape, or both, or neither.