Well, it was a smash. I'll be going back to those gigs as often as I have free time to do so. Good bunch of people, a coffee shop right there and a whole bunch of really neat things to look at. It seems like maybe I've been focused on our little part o'the hobby for a bit too long, and I maybe forgot there were things out there like chopped '40s sleds and cab-over flatbeds. Very cool stuff.
There had to be 200 or more cars there, and I was joined by Paul Rich in his speedster and a guy with a Spyder whom I'd never met before. It had the James Dean treatment, minus the "130" and lettering. Nice guy, but I didn't get his information. It was the same 550 in the photos above.
The coolest thing that happened to me the whole day was when this guy and his kid came over to look at the car; Dad was trying to impress upon his son that he could make anything he wanted to out of his imagination and some study time.
I asked the kid's father if he had ever had a Volkswagen and let the kid climb all over the Hoopty, looking at this and that, asking questions and playing with switches. When the father said he had owned a VW Beetle back in the day, I threw him my key and told him to keep it under 100. He was stunned.
He puttered around the parking lot for a few minutes, and when they got back I gave his son my "Stay in School" speech. I was careful to emphasize that he'd have to stick with math through the boring algebra and geometry to get to the fun part -- trig -- and that if he got good at that, then he could build a car.
I think the speech was exactly what the Dad wanted his boy to take away from experience, because I got an e-mail to that effect from him yesterday, saying that "Math can be Cool," was something he had a hard time illustrating to his son -- who is struggling with it.
Pretty cool, huh?
The rest of these are pretty much just eye candy:
