I made plans with a few buddies to make the trip to Lethbridge this weekend. Five guys planned to come down from Camrose for the 6+ hour drive to Lethbridge. My buddy Ken came down on Thursday morning for a business meeting in Calgary and stayed at my place, and we headed out from Airdrie on Friday about noon. I made a last minute decision before leaving to take my Trans Am instead of the Corvette, mostly because the air conditioning works and the Vette does not, but I also knew that the Vette wouldn't be favored there because it's 'too new'.
It was 31 degrees when we left Airdrie with the Trans Am and the 70 Mustang Boss 351, and less than an hour into our trip the air conditioning in the TA quit blowing cold. >:\ I also remembered that I had loaded all of my camera equipment into the Corvette and then left without it, which was a very disappointing mistake. So my apologies to you all for only having a few pictures from my cell phone.
The temperature was 35 degrees when we arrived at Lethbridge and still climbing. While the Mustang was fine on the highway, it struggled to stay cool on the city streets. So we parked the Mustang at the motel and set out to find a solution to fix the Trans Am's air conditioning. I picked up a refill kit at Canadian Tire and we went down to the exhibition grounds to find some shade to work in and see what was happening with all the show cars. The kit didn't work like the instructions said it would (maybe I will do an article on that process), but I did manage to get it working again so we could at least be comfortable as the temperature hit 37!
We got in line and waited to register for the cruise. I haven't been to this show for several years, so this registration process was new to me. They never used to do it this way, but now they block off and shut down 3rd Street for the cruise, and don't let any other cars in. So here's a few tidbits of information for you on that stuff. Between the city and emergency services and the car club, they cap the number of cars that can participate in the cruise to 800. There is a strong preference for antiques and muscle cars, so they do indeed restrict the number of 'newer' cars that they will allow in. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when they told me that my Trans Am was 'too new', and I couldn't put my 19-year-old car in the cruise. I was also told that if I tried to sneak into the cruise that I would be given a ticket for 'stunting', which I thought was preposterous, but whatever, just let us register the Mustang and the Deuce Coupe and we would cruise in those. No can do, they needed to see the cars in order to register them. So we had to go back to the motel and get the Mustang and get back in line again, but we finally got one car registered.
Once the cruise got underway it was pretty awesome. It wasn't nearly as busy as I have seen it in previous years, but that could also be due to the fact that they were restricting the cars. The police presence was minimal and unobstructive. They still allow a little bit of playing around, short bursts of speed and power displays with small burnouts, as long as people weren't being stupid or dangerous. Props to them for that. At one intersection a new Volkswagen Rabbit pulled up beside us and I had a momentary flare-up of anger that she could have her car in the cruise, but my Trans Am wasn't good enough. She was young and cute, and worked at one of the local automotive shops, so clearly she had an 'in' and I did not.
We spent a couple of hours downtown and cruised for a bit and then parked to let the car cool and just walked around for a while. The rest of our friends finally arrived after having some car trouble with the Deuce, but Rick had come ahead of them and managed to get a cruise sticker so at least they could ride with him in the 36 sedan. The streets downtown were packed with people, and the beer gardens were so full that you couldn't hope to get into them. When we'd had enough, we decided to leave the downtown area to find a restaurant down on Mayor Magrath where we could watch the rest of the non-paying cars cruise, and see some Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs, Challengers, and plenty of the 'new' stuff that wasn't allowed downtown. Honestly, the cruising on Magrath was just as good as it was downtown, and many people had lawn chairs set up along the boulevard to watch, and it was more comfortable too with grass and trees for shade, and more space for people compared to the crowdedness of downtown. We turned in for the night around 12:30, and it was still busy outside with lots of cars still cruising.
Saturday morning we spent a lot of time trying to find a place to be able to work on the Deuce, and the boys finally managed to find some great guys at the local Bumper to Bumper who let them bring the car into a bay and got it up on a jack to pull the rear apart and find a shredded axle bearing. There wasn't much we could do, so Ken and I went to watch the 100 Footer races.
Around 3pm it was finally decided that there was no replacement bearing to be found, so the guys were hatching a plan on how to get the Deuce back up to Camrose. Nathan, who wasn't able to get his rat rod back together in order to make the trip and had instead stayed home, was now hitching his deck trailer onto the back of his truck to make the trip to haul the Deuce home. We felt bad that the guys had come all this way and then not even got to see most of the show, so we offered up our AMA memberships to get the Deuce towed at least part way back, and then Nathan wouldn't have to travel so far. At that point, we all just decided to head for home.
It was an interesting weekend, but still reasonably fun overall. Not as good as it has been in years past, but that's the way these things go sometimes.
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