Event Coverage Three Hot Rods, Three Teardrops, and Three Stooges

August 17, 2015 .....continued
Back on the road, I was kicked out of Petes car, because he said it was my fat ass that caused the car to bottom out. I still say shit highways. Lucky for me I got to cruise with Doug in the COE once again.


We followed Pete and "the other guy" to So-Cal in Sacramento just to make sure there no fluid leaks or other pars falling off. For some reason, I never got any pics of So-Cal. Gonna go grab John's photo's to supplement mine tomorrow......maybe.

 

Cant't seem to get together with the Roddermonster to get his pics so lets carry on.
Second stop was at Sherm's plating, not a lot exciting going on there so we went to Gary Matranga's collection. Some pretty nice looking rides there.
Deuce Sedan Delivery in progress


B-400 also in progress, this ride will be spectacular when it is done.


A line of Deuce's with old Indian's and Harley's flying overhead.


Nice Deuce woody, would love to have this in my stable


Stuff like this is why I love touring other peoples collections. Where else would you find a very early pedal powered propeller for a boat?

 

August 17, 2015
Stop number 4 is at Roseville Rod & Custom

First thing we see in the parking lot is this beautiful Buick Wagon. I am a sucker for wagons.

Interior of the Buick wagon


This is the wall in the main shop of Roseville. Every part hanging on the wall has a number beside it. I was talking to one of the guys there and if you want that part, you give em the number and they look in the catalog, give you a price and away you go. Apparently they have a major stash of old stuff on a farm not to far away and most of it is cataloged. So if you are looking for a specific part, these guys may have it and they seem very organised with it.


Skirts and grilles everywhere.


Very cool roadster going together in the shop


Love the instrument cluster in this one.


Got back to the hotel after a long hot day and found buddy Dale Gerry's COE from Kelowna in the parking lot. He has been building this ride forever. More pics of this one later.

 

August 18, 2015 Day 2 of Hotrod week.
Started the day at Denbeste Motorsports in Windsor CA. Crazy collection of Cobra's, Mustangs, and GT40's. Wild racking system makes them look like a collection of Hot Wheels.


Stop 2 was at Fred Stokes Ranch.
Love this COE. Got one in my garage that needs lots of love and attention.


Period correct Signal Gas Station, would have loved to get a picture in front of it with my Model A


Low Horsepower pickup truck in the garage.


His Oil can collection is more than spectacular. All housed in a specially built building for display.


Stop 3 was Cotati Speed Shop in Santa Rosa

MMmmmmmm ............ Louvers


Awesome collection of machines to build anything your heart desires.

Another fuel miser being built for cruising.

The start of a really nice Woody project



August 19, 2015 Day 3 of Hotrod Week
Started off at Royal Trucking in Concord, CA
This was a big flashback place for me. Tons of old Slot Car stuff that I had not seen since I was a kid.

Stop 2 was at Carbuffs Inc in Concord. Lots of Schwinn "Crate" original bikes and pedal cars hanging on the wall and lots of cool cars on the floor.


Stop 3 was Hot Rod Garage in Martinez. Very unassuming as you walk up the driveway to this goldmine of parts and neon.


Parts, parts and more parts, hanging everywhere. Tons of stuff, and very well organised.


Good thing there wasn't a pit in here or there would have been a pile of hot rodders piled up in the bottom, as everyone was walking around staring at the ceilings.


This room really caught my attention. The Neon collection here is spectacular.

 

August 20, 2015 Day 4 of Hotrod Week
This was the day of the Poker Run, a combination of dead camera and trying to read directions while driving by myself and taking in the scenery results in very few pics taken today.
Started the day following Ron Bougie and his goofy sidekick in Ron's handcrafted roadster pickup. Yeah, I know, its not HAMB friendly but if you want to go for a butt clenching ride in the twistys, this is the car. It now has a blown, 3.8 V6 in the box. It used to have an LT1 with Porshe transaxle, but Ron pulled it after having too many issues with the shifter.


Saw this at the first stop, Hmmmm, grandsons may need to have one of these in the near future.

At the end of the day a bunch of us went down to the TESLA factory and convinced them to give us a quick tour. We did not get the full tour but got a mini tour. I was the first one to the gaurd gate and the best expression of the day was the gaurd when I told him I was here to exchange my battery pack.

 

August 21, 2015 Day one of the big show. A random sampling of stuff that I liked

Who doesn't like the tether cars?


This has always been one of the big draws for me to attend Pleasanton. I spent a big chunk of the day talking to the guys that build these Marvelous, miniature, mechanical masterpieces. Or MMMM for short

 

I am going to finish this story even if it kills me........
I live in the on an acreage and internet service sucks, so I only seem to get updates done when I can load some of the pics with a little bit of speed.
On to August 22, 23 2016 Day 2 and 3 of the big show. Following are random pics of stuff that I liked at the show that were mostly HAMB friendly

Paint on this 59 was spectacular!


Maybe I am spending too much time talking to Roger and Dan Jetter, I am getting an itch for a Caddy


Some inspiration to get my Burb on the road


Orange Smooooooothie


Best Grille in the park.


Best Licence plate on the park

One day I will have a tub


So Clean


The dash in Dale Gerry's Decoliner


Does my ass look big with a tandem axle?


Met a guy in the hotel parking lot. My car looks taller and I am missing 3 inches out of the top. Mine used to sit lower but I was tired of the diff banging on the frame. I drive too many miles to get beat up like that.

If you ever go to P-town, check out the model railroad display on site. Some very cool stuff including this drive-in theater that is an I-pad playing American Graffiti

 

August 24 2016 We start heading for home after changing a motor mount the night before in the hotel parking lot. Don't know where the pictures are from that adventure, but it was entertaining. We only got as far Bakersfield when I started getting a bad vibration from my driveshaft. We managed to find a hotrod shop and they swapped it out and we were back on the road in about an hour.

Lake Tahoe in the distance. Was a place that I had always wanted to see. In the end, just another lake? Sometimes your expectations are more than what life delivers. Don't get me wrong, still a beautiful place, but too many people for me

From Lake Tahoe, we went to Reno to catch the Harrah's museum. Wow, what a collection of cars. If you have the chance, stop in and see this place. Not a ton of hotrods but an amazing collection of one off automobiles. I rattled off a ton of pics, but seeing as how most are not HAMB material, you will have to go check it out yourself.


Cool Shifter, cannot remember what it was in.


My all time favorite Big Daddy car.


Hwy 95 north of Winnemucca, NV Not too many bends in this road.


Took a picture of the GPS for comparison to another GPS post at the beginning of this thread. This one did not change for almost an hour.


Don't know why, but I love pictures of my shadow chasing me down the road.


A couple of attempts at artsy shots at sunset on HWY 95 just outside Rome, OR




How could he smell us coming. We all pulled in for gas in Jordan Valley, OR. Cop pulls in seconds later. The gas attendant warned us that he was a real dick, so we better take it slow. The douche strutted around the gas station like a peacock. Wonder how guys like that get a badge some days.

 

Very cool, lots of awe inspiring photos! Thanks for sharing

 

As long as you're posting we'll be watching!
No matter how long it takes

 

I agree

 

Thanks for the kinds words guys. I made a couple edits to the previous post. Will try to get more done today.

 

August 26, 2015
We tried to find a place in Jordan Valley to call it a night, but the town is pretty small and not many places to kind of blend in. We went down the road a ways and pulled off into the middle of no where and called it a night.

Another boondocking sunrise. Hewey and Dewey my traveling companions are always a little slow to rise. By the time the sun came up I had already had shave and scrub and was ready to motor down the road..........that would have to wait another hour. Almost like traveling with teenage girls Ha ha


We cruised into Nampa, ID and stopped for a quick breakfast at McRotGut and then I led the boys to the secret destination of the best painter in the world, Charley Hutton. The address for the Color Studio is not readily available but I did some internet sleuthing before we left because I thought if we came close to Nampa, we were going to stop in. When we pulled up, Charley and crew were hard at work, and forgot to close the shop door. So we wandered in and he gave us a tour of the shop. We bought some t-shirts and then he asked us to pull our cars up in front of the shop and we had a group picture taken. If you have never met Charley, I have to tell you, that he is one of the most down to earth guys in the hot rod industry. At the time we visited, he had the Oldsmobile that just won the 2016 Ridler award in his shop.


Coming north out of Boise, ID, and all the way home we started running into these signs. IT was a hell of a summer for forest fires.


Coming north out of Grangeville, ID on Hwy 95, it started to get pretty thick.

This is looking directly at the sun at 4 pm on a "no cloud" but lots of smoke day.

 

August 27, 2015
We stopped for the night at the Clearwater River Casino & Lodge just outside of Lesiston, ID. When we pulled in to the gas station parking lot on the same property, there were cops everywhere. After things settled down I went into the gas station/convenience store and asked the young guy at the counter what was happening. He replied with a grin, that a guy was jaywalking. I laughed out loud, because 30 minutes earlier there had been 5 cop cars and a fire engine there. Love guys with a warped sense of humor.
If you are rolling through here and need a place to crash, this place is great. We ended up talking to two Native Americans that were working security for the casino and we told them we just needed a place to park for the night. They told us the best place to park and also gave us the access code to the washroom and shower facility in the campground that is also part of this casino complex. We chatted in the parking lot for an hour with them. Great people. We saw one of them in the casino later that night and she gave us all ballcaps with the Casino Logo on them.

I had been on the web then night before, courtesy of the casino, and I found that there was a car show hosted by one of the car dealers in Lewiston that kicks off the weekend for Lewistons Hot August Nights. We figured, what the hell, we still have time left before we need to be home.

I love panels, and with a logo of Burt Monro's Indian, it can't get any better


Severely polished teardrop, I doubt mine will ever be close to this shiny.


These louvers blew me away. The workmanship was flawless


Yeah, like I said, I love panels. I have a 51 Suburban and looking at the body work and paint on this panel I wonder how he ever got it so perfect. You cannot say straight, because there is not a straight piece of sheetmetal on these trucks.

 

August 28 2015
I split up from Pete and John at Lewiston and headed north up Hwy 95, then east on Hwy 5 to St Maries, then north on Hwy 3 to Hwy 90, east on 90 to 135. I had taken 135 a couple years earlier and it was such a peaceful place I thought I needed to take it again.

Big Sky Montana was incredibly smoky. This was another look at the sun at 4 PM along the Clark Fork river.


My last camp spot for the trip. Beautiful spot next to the Clark Fork River.


Nobody for miles around.


The view out my teardrop door in the morning. Still so smokey you can't see the mountains on the other side of the river. Places like this, I wish I had a fishing rod. Fish were jumping everywhere.



Driving through Polson MT, I saw this mural and had to stop for a pic. I have been to Polson a bunch of times, but have never been west bound on this road, so I have no idea how long this mural has been here.

 

Epilogue- March 11, 2015.......finally finished documenting this trip.
Thanks for coming along for the ride,

So that is about it, 3 weeks on the road, somewhere around 2900 miles and lots of laughs along the way. If there is one thing that I really need to stress, it's this. "Get out and drive your hot rod" We met so many awesome people along the way. I have so many more pictures that I did not post here. Hopefully one day when my memory starts to get foggy, they will take me back, out on the open road, enjoying good times with my buddies. Pictures of your truck pulling a white box with your hot rod in it, just won't do the trick.
Stay safe and keep the shiny side up

 

Epilogue #2
After getting back from the trip at the end of August, my job started looking like it was going to end. I started training people in India how to do my job. November 4, 2015 was my last day. So what do you do when you have no work?......Hit the road
But I think a great writer used to say..........that's another story.

 

Thoroughly enjoyed this thread, thanks for taking the time to document it.

 

THANKS !!!! this gives me a lot of inspiration to get my 52 canned ham finished & behind the 49 F 1. Great coverage of a great road trip.

 

Thanks for the ride, I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Tom

 

Thanks for taking us along on the trip b-bop. Your thirst for adventurous travel in your Hot Rod is unrivaled on the HAMB.

 

Great trip thread. Thanks for all the updates.

 

A good buddy owns a '47 Kit Kamper (the original teardrop), and we both had a heavy hand in its restoration. The agreement is that each of us can use it whenever we want to. I can't wait to get my T-V8 Hot Rod finished; they will look great together.

 

Thanks B-BOP , loved the trip . When I grow up I want to be just like you . LOL, Blue .

 

Great read . Enjoying life and what it offers. Thanks for sharing.

 

Great post!
I need to get off my old ass and have some fun.

 

Really enjoyed your post, I think that there will be a dozen or more Hamb r's who will being looking for and building trailers so that they can get out there and keep on trucking like you have shown them how....

 

Thanks so much for sharing. I really enjoyed the trip, but would have enjoyed it more if I'd been there.

 

What a FUN trip or TRIPS! It's been a plan of mine and a buddy to take some long road trips when we retire. Hopefully we will have as much fun as it looks like you fellas had! Thanks for the inspiration! Joe

 

Thanks for the pics and the story. It's great encouragement to everyone to just get out and use our cars, and see the countries.