Fall is coming

Saturday we had 6 cars gather at the Cracker Barrel in Central Park, Fredericksburg, VA at 7AM for breakfast then we left for the 7th Annual Reva VFD show. The trip was an uneventful 59 miles to the show and when we arrived about 1/3 of the space was already taken! We found some spaces where we could all park together and have a grassed area to erect the 3 canopies. This was the first time we had attended this show because it conflicted with other shows we attended in the past and last year it rained. So this was going to be the year we tried it out. The venue is so pleasent and tranquill, you can see the rolling Virginia landscape in the pictures, some with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background. The day was perfect, puffy clouds and blue skies, temps in the low 80’s and a little breezy.. ..Like I said almost perfect! The VFD served breakfast and lunch that was great and reasonably priced. The restrooms were inside and clean. They had some vendors selling their wares and DJ Ron was playing the music, taking requests and making announcements so I knew that part was going to be cool. And Ron had a new helper? I don’t know if it will grow up to be a guard dog or what but for now sleep was high on it’s to do list.

The judging was done by participant’s ballot which is ok but sometimes not fair, you have to be careful about this type of judging.. ..But I didn’t care because the Princess won a trophy so life is in balance for me! Arnold won Best of Show with his red ’39 convertible which is very nice. About ¼ of the cars were new to me and the one I liked the best was the light green ’56 GMC PU. It had just the right amount of bling and the rest was subdued, nice job! The red Mustang with the 6cyl was cool too.. ..Most of the time more/bigger motors are the best but sometime the little motors are nice too.. ..Did I say that? Having rode motorcycles for 40 years I have seen just about everything in or on two wheels.. ..but the red retro Harley was just perfect! I have never seen anything like that and it was done just right.. ..It’s like someone blowing cigarette smoke in your face after you quit.. ..Almost makes you want to go back! I need to get over that!

The show was over around 3PM and the 80 or so cars that attended left for parts unknown. We cruised to Foster’s Grille in Stafford, VA and had late lunch/early dinner while we waited for the VA Stockers to setup their cruise in the parking lot. This cruise is always under attended and I don’t understand why. The location is great; it is easily accessed from any point on the compass. The lot is large, well lit and little used by “normal” traffic. The food is terrific at Foster’s and they have restroom facilities that are always kept up. I know Dan passes out over 100 flyers a month for the cruise at various shows and cruises we attend but the people just are not coming. Maybe more advertising, maybe a show in the spring to kick off the season, maybe it needs to be every Sat evening so people won’t have to figure out if it is the one Sat of the month that the cruise is happening.. ..I don’t know but we need to figure it out, it’s too nice a place to let go to waste. Tonight there were about 20 cars coming and going.
We cruised home after Foster’s and when I put the RedRat on the rack and shut it down the clutch went to the floor and did not come back up! I think it is a terminal deal; something is broken in the linkage mechanism. The car was too hot and I didn’t have the proper attitude to work on it then so it’s going to be something to do next week!

Sunday we left Stafford for the 8th Annual Herndon Classic Car Show in Herndon, VA. Since Dan & Ramona grew up there I thought it would be special for them to lead the convoy to the show, and I didn’t know where it was anyway! Since the RedRat was broke I took my truck, which made for an interesting convoy. Since I typically don’t like to go up north where my pain was for many years, we had never been to that show. The show is in the Municipal Center and sponsored by AARP. Some of you know how I feel about AARP but I put my big boy pants on and decided it was OK to attend because of the worthwhile group the money was going to.. ..George Mason University School of Nursing! In fact there were a few students from the school walking around offering to check your blood pressure.. ..I told them that it was useless to do mine because I was suffering from terminal immaturity and was on the downhill slide to oblivion anyway.. ..I got a deer in the headlights look! I think they were too uptight? The Princess got a primo parking spot and set up the Princess Express for all to enjoy. I guess it worked because she got a Top 20 plaque and so did Dan & Ramona! The venue was one of the best we attended all year! They had car hops, with poodle skirts and cat eye glasses taking orders and delivering food from Subway.. ..a neat touch! And the Chorus of the Old Dominion was strolling around crooning near some of the cars, check out the u-tube clip; www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgnzZSrJsKU There were vendors aplenty and some of the display cars were scattered around in special parking lots named; Elvis, Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Jerry lee Lewis and more. The day was perfect and the only negative thing was the condition of the restroom facilities. They were porta potties and were located too far from the attendees. When we arrived they had not been serviced and were in horrible condition. I noted that on my registration and told the people at the registration booth. One of the registration people took it upon herself to go and purchase cleaning supplies and clean up the porta potties as well as she could. That helped and all were thankful for that one person taking responsibility to do that but the solution would be better restroom facilities, more restroom facilities and better monitoring of their condition throughout the day. This marred an otherwise superb event.

There were many cars that were new to us and some very nice ones at that. I liked the red/white ’57 Corvette the best but the silver ’99 Shelby was cool too. There was a pink/white ’57 T-Bird that fit right in with the theme of the show. The orange dune buggy was the nicest one of those cars I have ever seen, and I saw a lot of them in SoCal in the 60’s & 70’s! We like to attend events that have a lot of “spectators” that are not “car people”. They ask questions and it makes for a great day spent sharing our passion of all things automobile! We will return next year.