I made it to MG-98 on Saturday and made the nearly 500 mile round trip in a
single day. I left my house at 4:30 am and met up with Larry Macy at about
5:45 - we made the remainder of the trip together. The pre-dawn hour drive to
meet up with Larry was very pleasant and peaceful in the topless C (sun rise,
birds chirping and all that).
Larry and I agreed that we would install CBs (that's Citizen Band Radio) to
communicate with each other while driving. It was only a marginal success as
it was very hard to understand what was being said over the wind noise. But
all-in-all, it served a useful purpose and the term "Pee", used by Larry on
several occasions, could be differentiated from the other most frequently used
term - "what?".
On the way, the C developed a "top of the tank" leak that I learned of when
Larry noticed a growing puddle under the C after filling up at a gas station.
Undeterred, we continued along our way in octagonal bliss. I was impressed
that Larry's Midget seemed to cruise at a comfortable 70mph - there were a few
times where I lost sight of him in the rear view mirror but I think this is
because Larry needed to adjust his tonneau. BTW, Larry has this great system
for keeping the passenger side tonneau taught - he keeps a collapsible chair,
and some other odds and ends, on top of it! Along the way I took a few camera
shots of Larry cruising down the highway with his tonneau system - we'll see
how these turn out. Anyway, the trip there was a real joy and even better
when we started meeting up with other MGs - the first of which was this guy
and gal driving a CB MG from ALASKA - now that's a long trip!!
We arrived about 10 am and there were about 50 cars already on the field.
Neither Larry nor I had pre registered (I guess we're just lazy) and had to go
through that routine. Once on the field Larry and I learned what happens when
you over fill a C crankcase with oil - it ends up on the front of Larry's
Midget! Anyway, no problem, I had glass cleaner and body detailer that
cleaned up most of it - anyway, we found David D. spontaneously waxing the
engine hood on Larry's car a few hours later and he made it shine like new -
it's good to have a guy like Dave around.
The show was spectacular - I am always impressed with seeing so many other MGs
in one place. They use to be so commonplace.
I met a few listers that I had not seen before including Dan Ray (although I
missed the Tohoe parked a mile away), Mike Robson (uh, I'm 43 not 44), Bill
Schooler (yup, I thought you were Bill Spohn too and thought it very ironic
that you were parked next to a GT with a union jack painted on its top!!!) and
of course Kevin Richards who was bubbling all over about his car and his first
MG gathering (I couldn't really tell if he was excited to be in the company of
all the MG stuff or just happy that his car made it or both) - either way,
this is probably why he forgot my name. I missed John Rossi and Gene Fox but
said hello to your cars (did they mention that??). A few folks from my new
local "Keystone" club were there as well including Rick Brown with his nicely
done GT.
The trip home was fortunately, uneventful. I headed out about 4:30 pm and
passed about 50 MGs on Route 70 prior to heading north on Route 81 - you were
all looking good and I was sorry to have missed the day's evening events - I
was very tempted to just get in line and head off to the banquet with the rest
of you but ....
One last thing, Larry and I came up with this brilliant idea - display our
online badges in the windshield next to the show ID placard to garner online
votes. This strategy failed us as neither drove home with awards.
Kudos for the MGs of Baltimore crowd for Hagerstown event - good job.
Dr. Doug
69 C Rdst
69 C GT
69 B Rdst
76 B Rdst
|