40StudeDude
04-02-2004, 07:53 PM
How far is that?
Do you know how far Austin, Texas is from Denver, ColoRODo? Two ten-hour days at 65/70 mph…(average speed: 50/55 mph including gas stops, lunch, snacks, sightseeing, junk-yarding and running mostly two-lanes cuz I hate Interstates! And there are a lot of two-lanes in Texas!)
We’d planned on spending a week on this trip (left Wednesday morn @ 6:30 AM)…and we did, arriving back home on Tuesday evening at 6:30 PM)…on the way down it took six hours of driving to get to Texas…five hours out of Denver thru southern ColoRODo, an hour thru the panhandle of Oklahoma and the rest of our week was spent entirely in Texas!!! Texas IS big…
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-2.jpg
My impression of Texas?
As a veteran nation-wide rod-running hiway traveler and having never been deep south Texas (D/FW farthest south I’d been), I really expected the countryside to be as much like northern Texas…flat, hot, fields of scrub brush, cactus and oil pumpers…boy, was I wrong! Well, we got the oil pumpers correct…there’s apparently a lot of oil in Texas…if you don’t have an oil well on your ranch or in your back yard, go get one!!! We certainly missed on the rest of our assumptions.
Out of Lubbock the second day it was down, down and down (and coming from the Mile-Hi City of Denver I know what down is…I can feel it in my ears!!!), we drove thru miles of hills and trees and scenic areas. The trees were already leafing, flowers had already bloomed and things were greening up nicely…Denver is still experiencing late winter/early spring…Austin was hilly…guess that goes with what’s called Texas Hill Country…it looked more like the rolling hills of the Midwest than Texas. Austin is a growing city…and most of the drivers we encountered were “friendly”…no wildly waving finger gestures and no horn honking although most of the Texas drivers certainly need to learn a little road etiquette…they seem to have this attitude: I’m here right now at 70 mph and I need to be over there, right now, at 80 mph and if you’re in my way, too bad for you!!! Go ahead, cut across three lanes of traffic to get up the off-ramp! Some of the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered wore Texas license plates on their cars!!!
Of course, The Kontinental’s have absolutely nothing to do with this…it was my problem…those guys have probably learned to drive the same.
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-4-2.jpg
Traffic in General!
When it comes to timing traffic lights in Austin, I’m thinking the Austin traffic engineering department could take a few lessons from the ColoRODo department…waiting for the lights to change seemed like an eternity and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for each different light on each different block. There was no continuous “line”…so to speak…in Denver, if you maintain about 40 mph on long stretches, you’ll hit each light (green) and there’s no interruption in your way…not so in Austin on Congress Street (or others)…just when you got going, you had to stop! Congress Street was atrocious in it’s traffic…and I realize that’s a main street out of downtown…but the flow could definitely be improved.
Regardless of the civilian traffic, everything was within an easy drive of the Continental Club…including our hotel (three miles)…and Congress Street on Friday and Saturday nites was unreal with the amount of rods & customs parked and cruising.
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-5.jpg
Welcome to Texas!
Were Texans friendly? Never met a bunch of friendlier people…anywhere…from the maids in our hotel, to the waitresses at the restaurants, to people on the streets, to the spectators at the event where the three of us (me, my bro, Dan and our friend, Ron) spent lots of time explaining our cars (not that they needed much explanation anyway but we actually got tired of thanking everyone for all the compliments), to the Kontinentals themselves …of course, as hosts of the newest nationwide car event, they had to be…but that friendly attitude wasn’t just in Austin…I noticed it was in Texas everywhere.
Beatnik had promised me good weather when I sent my registration in…well, “good weather” can take many forms…it was cloudy and overcast…but it was also 80 degrees, all weekend…I did get a bit sun-burned Saturday afternoon when the clouds parted a bit…but cloudy and t-shirts is ten times better than 30 degrees and snow in Denver any day of the week…thanx Beatnik, you made good on your promise!
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-3-1.jpg
Any HAMBer’s at the event?
By now, you know who all was there…no sense listing all those HAMBers’ again, besides, I know I’d miss someone and then they’d be bent at me!
El Jefe, Beatnik, Buzzard, et al: your event should include secondary billing about it being an un-official HAMB convention!!! Besides meeting a lot of the Kontinentals, I met more HAMBer’s than ever before…and there were some HAMBer’s I didn’t even know were there UNTIL after I got home and checked the HAMB…and more famous guys, too -- Jimmie Vaughn, Jim “Jake” Jacobs (of Pete & Jake’s fame), Normie-Poo (Norm Grabowski), Foiled Again, Barnett, BobBleed, OGNC, RF (Custom Rodder) and of course, Ryan Cochran…and others, more than I ever expected…and magazines…Rodder’s Journal comes to mind in a big way, plus Custom Rodder and Hop Up.
How to tell every Hamber apart from normal looking hot rod types? Duh…we’re all normal looking types…so, I’m thinking we need to have some sort of HAMB name-tag to spot each other…
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-3-4.jpg
A successful event!
I think each of us that attended owes The Kontinental’s a huge round of “attaboys”…your event is going to grow astoundingly…and whether you Kontinental’s believe it or not…IT IS now nationwide! The bands were outstanding, the weather was great, South Congress was unreal (the Paso of Texas?), each of you deserve a huge pat on the back for your part and El Jefe deserves a big hand for obtaining the bands/groups for this and centering everything around his club…
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-3-5.jpg
Headed home.
We went to San Antonio on Sunday to see a nephew and headed for home on Monday morn…finally drove in rain (something I hadn’t encountered since last July) for about an hour or so out of San Antone…then more two-lanes.
Texas two-lane highways!
Two-lanes always prove interesting…anywhere
However, this was shot in a very small wooden-sidewalked “town” in the Texas hills…almost missed it, but my old eagle eye spotted the true signs of lots of rusting steel hiding back there in the scrub trees!
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-3.jpg
Texas two-lanes put other states’ INTERSTATES to shame…I’ve never been on wider or smoother roads…ANYWHERE. In Texas I drove them easily in my lowered ’57 Bel Air (no air bags, no hydraulics – it sits this low all the time!!) …and that’s a compliment, Texans….I’m thinking other states could take lessons.
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-4.jpg
The rest of the trip home was warm and sunny…with a few more stops along the way to check out the rusted steel still laying around and there is still a lot of it out there.
Would I go again?
If I had to do it again…hold on…HAD to do it again? No “had” about it, I’d go at the drop of a clutch…even tomorrow…’ceptin’ maybe I’d drive the ’40 Stude (instead of the rad ’57). Lemmee see now…it needs a new motor – the small blok 400” has got 118,000 cross-country miles on it…it needs a new interior -- the old two-tone green velour doesn’t fit the whitewalls, hubcaps, fender skirts and running boards…it could use a new paint job -- the old lacquer is starting to check…but the tires are good and the brakes are fair….wahhaaaahhahahahaha, hell yeah….I’ve got a whole year!!!
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-4-1.jpg
Do you know how far Austin, Texas is from Denver, ColoRODo? Two ten-hour days at 65/70 mph…(average speed: 50/55 mph including gas stops, lunch, snacks, sightseeing, junk-yarding and running mostly two-lanes cuz I hate Interstates! And there are a lot of two-lanes in Texas!)
We’d planned on spending a week on this trip (left Wednesday morn @ 6:30 AM)…and we did, arriving back home on Tuesday evening at 6:30 PM)…on the way down it took six hours of driving to get to Texas…five hours out of Denver thru southern ColoRODo, an hour thru the panhandle of Oklahoma and the rest of our week was spent entirely in Texas!!! Texas IS big…
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-2.jpg
My impression of Texas?
As a veteran nation-wide rod-running hiway traveler and having never been deep south Texas (D/FW farthest south I’d been), I really expected the countryside to be as much like northern Texas…flat, hot, fields of scrub brush, cactus and oil pumpers…boy, was I wrong! Well, we got the oil pumpers correct…there’s apparently a lot of oil in Texas…if you don’t have an oil well on your ranch or in your back yard, go get one!!! We certainly missed on the rest of our assumptions.
Out of Lubbock the second day it was down, down and down (and coming from the Mile-Hi City of Denver I know what down is…I can feel it in my ears!!!), we drove thru miles of hills and trees and scenic areas. The trees were already leafing, flowers had already bloomed and things were greening up nicely…Denver is still experiencing late winter/early spring…Austin was hilly…guess that goes with what’s called Texas Hill Country…it looked more like the rolling hills of the Midwest than Texas. Austin is a growing city…and most of the drivers we encountered were “friendly”…no wildly waving finger gestures and no horn honking although most of the Texas drivers certainly need to learn a little road etiquette…they seem to have this attitude: I’m here right now at 70 mph and I need to be over there, right now, at 80 mph and if you’re in my way, too bad for you!!! Go ahead, cut across three lanes of traffic to get up the off-ramp! Some of the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered wore Texas license plates on their cars!!!
Of course, The Kontinental’s have absolutely nothing to do with this…it was my problem…those guys have probably learned to drive the same.
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-4-2.jpg
Traffic in General!
When it comes to timing traffic lights in Austin, I’m thinking the Austin traffic engineering department could take a few lessons from the ColoRODo department…waiting for the lights to change seemed like an eternity and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for each different light on each different block. There was no continuous “line”…so to speak…in Denver, if you maintain about 40 mph on long stretches, you’ll hit each light (green) and there’s no interruption in your way…not so in Austin on Congress Street (or others)…just when you got going, you had to stop! Congress Street was atrocious in it’s traffic…and I realize that’s a main street out of downtown…but the flow could definitely be improved.
Regardless of the civilian traffic, everything was within an easy drive of the Continental Club…including our hotel (three miles)…and Congress Street on Friday and Saturday nites was unreal with the amount of rods & customs parked and cruising.
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-5.jpg
Welcome to Texas!
Were Texans friendly? Never met a bunch of friendlier people…anywhere…from the maids in our hotel, to the waitresses at the restaurants, to people on the streets, to the spectators at the event where the three of us (me, my bro, Dan and our friend, Ron) spent lots of time explaining our cars (not that they needed much explanation anyway but we actually got tired of thanking everyone for all the compliments), to the Kontinentals themselves …of course, as hosts of the newest nationwide car event, they had to be…but that friendly attitude wasn’t just in Austin…I noticed it was in Texas everywhere.
Beatnik had promised me good weather when I sent my registration in…well, “good weather” can take many forms…it was cloudy and overcast…but it was also 80 degrees, all weekend…I did get a bit sun-burned Saturday afternoon when the clouds parted a bit…but cloudy and t-shirts is ten times better than 30 degrees and snow in Denver any day of the week…thanx Beatnik, you made good on your promise!
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-3-1.jpg
Any HAMBer’s at the event?
By now, you know who all was there…no sense listing all those HAMBers’ again, besides, I know I’d miss someone and then they’d be bent at me!
El Jefe, Beatnik, Buzzard, et al: your event should include secondary billing about it being an un-official HAMB convention!!! Besides meeting a lot of the Kontinentals, I met more HAMBer’s than ever before…and there were some HAMBer’s I didn’t even know were there UNTIL after I got home and checked the HAMB…and more famous guys, too -- Jimmie Vaughn, Jim “Jake” Jacobs (of Pete & Jake’s fame), Normie-Poo (Norm Grabowski), Foiled Again, Barnett, BobBleed, OGNC, RF (Custom Rodder) and of course, Ryan Cochran…and others, more than I ever expected…and magazines…Rodder’s Journal comes to mind in a big way, plus Custom Rodder and Hop Up.
How to tell every Hamber apart from normal looking hot rod types? Duh…we’re all normal looking types…so, I’m thinking we need to have some sort of HAMB name-tag to spot each other…
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-3-4.jpg
A successful event!
I think each of us that attended owes The Kontinental’s a huge round of “attaboys”…your event is going to grow astoundingly…and whether you Kontinental’s believe it or not…IT IS now nationwide! The bands were outstanding, the weather was great, South Congress was unreal (the Paso of Texas?), each of you deserve a huge pat on the back for your part and El Jefe deserves a big hand for obtaining the bands/groups for this and centering everything around his club…
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-3-5.jpg
Headed home.
We went to San Antonio on Sunday to see a nephew and headed for home on Monday morn…finally drove in rain (something I hadn’t encountered since last July) for about an hour or so out of San Antone…then more two-lanes.
Texas two-lane highways!
Two-lanes always prove interesting…anywhere
However, this was shot in a very small wooden-sidewalked “town” in the Texas hills…almost missed it, but my old eagle eye spotted the true signs of lots of rusting steel hiding back there in the scrub trees!
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-3.jpg
Texas two-lanes put other states’ INTERSTATES to shame…I’ve never been on wider or smoother roads…ANYWHERE. In Texas I drove them easily in my lowered ’57 Bel Air (no air bags, no hydraulics – it sits this low all the time!!) …and that’s a compliment, Texans….I’m thinking other states could take lessons.
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-2-4.jpg
The rest of the trip home was warm and sunny…with a few more stops along the way to check out the rusted steel still laying around and there is still a lot of it out there.
Would I go again?
If I had to do it again…hold on…HAD to do it again? No “had” about it, I’d go at the drop of a clutch…even tomorrow…’ceptin’ maybe I’d drive the ’40 Stude (instead of the rad ’57). Lemmee see now…it needs a new motor – the small blok 400” has got 118,000 cross-country miles on it…it needs a new interior -- the old two-tone green velour doesn’t fit the whitewalls, hubcaps, fender skirts and running boards…it could use a new paint job -- the old lacquer is starting to check…but the tires are good and the brakes are fair….wahhaaaahhahahahaha, hell yeah….I’ve got a whole year!!!
http://photo.starblvd.net/40studedude/4-4-1.jpg