Car Number 38
I fondly remember the first car show I entered Greta
into (Greta is my affectionate name for Dream Cruise #38 / 58).
It was at the Ford Sho-N-Go held at Ford World Headquarters
in 1999. Man, it was hot that day...sitting out there on the asphalt
parking lot for 8 hours waiting for the results of the judging.
The judging format was kinda neat...you were given an envelopeto
place on your windshield and a perforated sheet listing all the
different classes at the show in which to vote. So every attendee
and every car owner at the show had the opportunity to vote for
their favorites in each class by placing a perforated tally into
the respective car's envelope.
At the end of the day, a marshall came around and
picked up each envelope and took them back to the judges area
to tally up. Here my Greta was sitting next to highly modified
GT's, Cobra's, Saleen's and McClaren's. There were about 25 cars
in my class and with all that testosterone muscle out there, I
didn't figure I had a "snowball's chance in hell" of
winning. To even place would have been cool. Well, they started
announcing each class's runners-up and winners and with over 40
classes and 90 degrees outside, this became an ordeal, and naturally,
my class was one of the last. There were so many cars in my class,
they announced they were going to give 3 runners-up and 1 winner.
They announced the runners-up and I was not amongst them; dismayed,
I started to walk away knowing that my car couldn't have won.
Gotta about 20 steps heading toward Greta when I heard my name
over the loud speaker to come up and get my first place trophy!
Ninety degrees or not, I ran back to grab
Greta's 1st placer before they changed their minds.
It was awesome and
made the day's ordeals worth it. Made it even nicer was the fact
that my peers had voted for my car and not some judge with a checklist;
and I loved the look on some of my competition's faces when I
got into Greta with the trophy and drove off into the sunset...smiling
contentedly.
"There are two types of people, the one's who
finish what they start and so
on..." John Byrnes
