What a wonderful venue for a show! Beautiful!
I know what it's like to travel the country. My worst trip was a drive from St. Louis to Tulsa, Oklahoma for a Jaguar Concours in my XK 150.
It was the trip from hell! We started out before daylight to get a jump on the drive. Clicking along at about 80 mph with the dim glow of the Jaguars Lucas Driving Lights to light the way we didn't have time to avoid a dead animal in the road. The car climbed over it with a horrible thud but luckily sustained no visible damage. It was sickening. Then it started to rain. It stormed all the way. We stopped under bridges to avoid hail several times. I can still hear that thumping on my roof. Ouch. Finally outside Tulsa we hit construction and the road was torn up. It was loose gravel, wet tar and mud soaked tarmac for 50 miles. The mud splashed so high from surrounding trucks and cars the pathetic English windshield wipers were needed to wipe a clean spot every few seconds or else the windshield would go completely brown. Fresh rocks and tar were adhering to the car like velcro. Then the road narrowed to single file and we were stuck behind an old piece of crap American Taxi that was blowing oil all over the front of the car. The windshield got so bad I had to reach out with rags to un-smear a spot to see to drive. The wipers were useless. And it was STILL raining. I invented new curse words.
Imagine my delight when I showed up at the Concours hotel and watched the XK's in my class, every single one of them, come out of their enclosed trailers and roll into place. I invented even more curse words!
My wife and I worked all through the night, missing the planned dinner, until nearly 1am and then got up at 5am to begin detailing again before the 8am Concours.
I had to de-grease, de-mud, de-tar, even de-blood and de-fur the car! I know it's gross but when I washed the undercarriage the water ran red. It was horrible.
Anyway, all our work paid off when we took home First Place! We slept well that night.
Thanks for the memories, JB
Your story will help keep me sane this season :up