Back when I was in college I had a job building snowshoes and one of my tasks was painting the snowshoes with an international orange paint.
It was really bright paint.
As it was also a linear polyurethane paint, we sometimes had paint left over in the spray booth that would have to be thrown away because once it's mixed it goes off.
As it happens, I also had a 1963 VW van at the time that was in dire need of a paint job...
I expect you might know where this is going.
Anyway, the owner of the company said sure feel free to use the excess paint on your van and over the next few weeks every time I had a bit of paint left over I'd spray a panel or two on the van till, hey presto, it was international blaze orange...
Dude, you needed sunglasses just to look at it!
I was happy. I had a really tough paint job that would last forever and it was mostly free with a certain amount of sweat equity. Where's the downside?
In a word l-a-w-e-n-f-o-r-c-e-m-e-m-e-n-t... Unknowingly I had discovered the color of car that would make every law enforcement officer in the state of California foam at the mouth with an irresistible urge to pull over and hassle the hippie with the orange van.
Bummer is something of an understatement.
That said, it did teach me the importance to not stand out and be too easily recognizable to some groups of people. Which just underlines the third rule of VolksCruising...
Keep a low profile...
