United We Stand

Almost a decade ago, one of my best pals (Blake) and I went to Australia to experience an event put on by The River City Coupe & Roadster Club. I lead the series of articles that followed with this:

“The last time my attorney and I traveled together, many folks came to the conclusion that we should have been killed or at the very least, arrested – on general principle. The backlash was like a shot to the kidney delivered by the most powerful of heavy weights. Neither of us expected a good time to be so damned expensive, but it seems as though we are both still making payments on a mortgage neither of us had signed up for.”

Blake and I have gone on a lot of adventures together… and in those travels, I’ve learned a lot about culture, people, and the different ways different people do things. That trip to Australia though… There was something about it that not only changed the way I think about traditional hot rodding, but the way I think about the world in general as well.

It’s normal for Blake and I to get into some kind of shenanigans on these trips. Neither of us follow any kind of social or legal rules to speak of, so seeing the reaction from a different culture gave us a perspective that’s not often seen. The folks in Melbourne, for example, are often more forgiving to the aftermath of a binge drinking session than the folks in say… MARYLAND. Or the folks anywhere in American for that matter.

It’s a cultural difference.

And that contrasted so uniquely with the way we all (Australians and Americans) thought so similarly about this tiny little niche in the car world – traditional hot rods. If quizzed, both the American and the Australian subjects would return answers so similar you’d suspect plagiarism of some kind. We all knew cars and we all knew how they should be and should have been.

Point being, the little inconsequential differences that are often made consequential by ego and fear didn’t matter if the world were narrowed to what actually is important – hot rods.

No politics. No hate. Just a point.

And to follow that point, I thought I would remix the photos I took (Blake might have taken some of these) on that trip into a gallery today. Some of these were published back in 2012, some were not… I love all of them a lot more now than I did then because… well… sentiment.