The Van Story- Part 3, The Dramatic Conclusion!

We pulled into the U-Haul on the edge of Las Vegas and spat out our thinly rehearsed lie to the kid at the counter, and at first it seemed to stick. He ran the info through his computer, but eventually we hit the same dead end. Unsafe, they couldn't get a truck, they couldn't rent a trailer, we were fucked. Again. Outside the sun was slowly falling and the darkness began to come creep over the desert. I could feel the world pulling us in, trying as best as it could to hold us in this god-forsaken Valley of Fire. The kid behind the counter had a devilish smirk on his face, and you could tell that he was the type of guy that gets off on the tiny sliver of authority they grant him there. Josie and I stepped away from the counter, defeated and tired. Josie, unable and unwilling to succumb to defeat, suddenly saw something that made her jump.
''What about that? That could work!'' she yelled. I turned my exhausted and sun burnt face to see the object of her attention: a bumper-mounted tow bar. When I saw the tow-bar she was pointing at, our eyes met, we both nodded at each other, and we made a silent pact there on the floor of the Las Vegas U-Haul: We were going to flat tow the van home. The look on the face of the kid behind the counter was priceless when we walked up and set our tow-bar, magnetic lights, and safety chain on the counter. He stuttered about for a minute dumbfounded, but finally, failing to find a reason to do otherwise, he clumsily took our money and we ran back to the truck, our spirits refreshed with our new plans. I was exhausted, but our new plans made me catch my second wind, and we drove off into the desert with a new hope and impetus towards success.

The creeping darkness over the desert had stirred some primal feeling inside me to run, I had a knot in my throat and a cold sweat took over me as a tired adrenal gland dripped cold pure liquid energy down my neck and into my soul. This fight to escape had become much bigger inside me; it was no longer just about a van in the desert, this was the ultimate struggle, this was pure survival. I felt with every iota of my being that failing to make it out this night was certain death, and there was no way I'd leave my van behind. The surrounding mountains became the gates of hell themselves, and I knew that one more night would damn me forever to stay and writhe for eternity in the Valley of Fire. I was going to make my escape from hell and steal one lost soul from the clutches of the Devil himself. I could feel the lines of Raoul Duke coming from my mouth, ''There was no turning back. Fuck no, not today thank you kindly.''

On the way back to Walt's, it occurred to us that we didn't have the right tools to properly install this already unsafe apparatus (i.e.: something to put a hole in the bumper to mount the tow-bar to), so I hopped on the next exit towards a place I was sure would have some tools, a Las Vegas Super Wal-Mart.

Now, there are few things in the world that can convince you that modern society might have been a mistake better than the fluorescent-lit interior of a Super Wal-Mart at sundown. It is, without a doubt- proof enough that mankind is willing to destroy itself to save a buck on bulk mayo and cheap beer. The store reeked of cancer, every synthetic and lead-coated plastic that you could imagine was on display, and the faceless mass of people that occupied the store moved as one slow, thoughtless body. Josie and I had thought that maybe we might be able to get something to eat, something we had neglected to do since California, but the shelves of the store offered us nothing of the non-chili cheese variety. We bought a cheap battery-powered red drill, and hit the road back towards the van. A bloated red sun fell completely behind the mountains on the horizon in our rear-view as Josie and I treaded on into the quickly darkening desert. During the drive I mentioned briefly that if Josie wanted, we could stay another night at some dive in Vegas and get started again in the morning, but Josie reminded me of a few key facts:

1. Flat towing a car is dangerous. To make a daytime trip through traffic and commuters would be dangerous for everyone on the road. All it would take to roll the whole rig would be one random mini-van cutting us off.

2. Flat towing is illegal on the freeway. The tow-bar itself expressly stated this fact in bold red letters on a sticker. The van would get impounded for sure and there was no way in hell that we would drive back, much less have the means with which to get it out.

3. The van had no plates, and without being registered was also illegal to be on the highway.

4. Waiting one more night was probably what caught most of the people in the trailer park there in the first place.
Josie made a strong case, as she often does, and so we were set. We would drive all night and flat tow our van home, sleep be damned. I pushed on towards the trailer park.

We got to the trailer park to meet a half-cocked Walt and his girlfriend Brenda, whom we were meeting for the first time. Apparently our small exchange of money for the van earlier was being put to work quickly towards flooding the desert with booze and cigarettes. Brenda had spent her whole life in the desert, you could tell by every crack and wrinkle in her dried out and tanned face. We all drove down the road to the storage yard to get my van; Josie and I in my Dad's truck, and Walt and Brenda in hers. For some reason that now escapes me, we decided to pull the van out of the yard with a towrope and Brenda's truck, I think because we weren't supposed to work in the yard or something along those lines. Walt and I tied the rope between the bumpers of the two vehicles, Walt hopped in the driver’s seat of my van and Brenda jerked away in her truck. I tried to switch places with Walt but he ignored me; this was still “his” van in his mind. The first time the van moved, Brenda slammed on the brakes to poke her head out the window and see what was going on. Predictably, the van smashed into the truck, cracking the turn signal and denting the otherwise relatively straight front-end of my van. Walt let out a laugh that confirmed to me his inebriated state, and I tried to interject, but it was no use. Eventually, we got my now slightly damaged but free-rolling Van on the street, and it was time to both literally and figuratively put the rubber to the road.



With the van out of the lot, I pulled the tow bar out of its box and fumbled with the bracketry. Admittedly, I had never hooked up a tow-bar, and what seemed so simple in the store suddenly seemed tough and confusing. Josie, being the quick thinker that she is, pointed to the bumper braces and muttered something. She pointed out that we could just drill one hole next to the existing bumper hole and be done and on the road, and she was partially correct. When I got up to go to our truck to get our newly purchased drill, a single bat circled the street light above us, adding to the anathemic and dreary ambiance of the desert at night. I shuddered, grabbed the drill and the brackets. Upon trying to use the drill, once more Josie proved her wisdom, as she had been correct in thinking that a place like Wal-Mart wouldn't sell drills with charged batteries. Brenda, watching over the end of a Kool 100 from her truck assured us she had a drill back at the trailer park, as her ex-husband had been an electrician, and had ''left all sorts uh that shit'' in her trailer when he left. Reluctantly, we secured the van to my truck with rope, and drug it down the street to the trailer park.
The sky was completely black when we pulled through the chain link gate on the trailer park. Denny had started a fire, and welcomed us to a beer. Josie and I declined, but Walt and Brenda obliged. A new character had emerged, a man whose name I never got, who looked like Jack Black's fatter cousin, with his largeness actuated by his largeness of presence and half-eaten box of pizza in his lap. He, Walt, Brenda, and Denny all took a seat to watch me struggle with the tow rig, peppering their conversation with jabs at California and my effort to return there. By this point, I was worn-out but determined, I had all the drive to finish but hardly the strength.

While I worked on securing the tow-bar, I overheard Denny and the Pizza guy talking:

“Denny- I want to move my trailer to the spot that Jeff left. That one’s got a tree.”

“Dammit, no! I gave you a tree, you never watered it, and you killed it. Nope, you’re gonna stay in that spot until you die! I ain’t gonna waste a tree on you.”



I got the hitch attached, and backed up my truck to it. As I locked the ball hitch in place, I realized I had neglected to check the plug on the trailer lights. Fuck me; it was the wrong goddamn plug. I decided to do the next best thing, which at the time made sense to be to cut off the plug all together and strip down the wires and splice them with electrical tape. While I was taping the growingly hideous ''adapter'' together, something got the Pizza guy's attention, and he started in:
''Well god damn. Y'all sure as shit ain't making it to Californ'ee.''
Busy trying to get the turn signals to work, I ignored him.
''Nope. I reckon you ain't even gunna make it to the freeway.''
Josie finally started in, ''Oh yeah? I'll be home tomorrow.''
I taped the rest of the wires to the tongue of the trailer and ran the magnetic lights back to the end of the van. Not only was the plug wrong, but the cord was too short. I extended them with whatever wire I could find, and after about an hour it looked like hell, but it was together. All of the lights worked. I checked the lug nuts, they were tight.



The pizza guy continued: ''You ain't never seen the cops we got out here. Hell, they'll stop you just for fun.'' Walt sat by the fire and smirked, but said nothing. Denny joined in, eager to get in a few last jabs.

''You'll be lucky just to have that piece of shit hold together. You get a flat, all three of you are rolling over.'' I knew he was right, so I said nothing. Brenda must have taken this as a sign of yielding, because she offered, ''If you want, you guys could stay the night in my trailer, I got a couch.'' Feeling a strong sense of attachment to my kidneys, checking account, and car keys, I declined. This was it; we were set. The van was coming with us to it’s new home in California, and nothing could stop us.



I started the truck at about ten at night, walked the perimeter of our pathetic rig one more time, and shook hands with our hosts one last time. Josie hopped in the truck beside me, and I squeezed her hand as I threw the truck into gear. A half second later I felt the tug of the van behind us, and we rolled out of the trailer park gates.

After making the first turn onto the main drag, I began to get a feel for how the ride was going to be; the van pulled unlike anything else I had ever towed. When I made a turn, I would watch the van follow behind me, except when the van made the turn it would bump from side to side, barely staying in my lane. That meant no sudden movements for me, hopefully that'd be enough. I met eyes with a traffic cop at the edge of town, and did my best to play it cool. Sure as the pizza guy had warned, this guy looked mean as hell, so I made sure I came to a complete stop at the stop sign. When I did, something in the back of the van came loose, and I could hear it roll to the front of the van and crash. I could feel my heart beating up in my throat; if this guy flipped on his lights this whole thing would be fucked. The cop looked up, he must have heard it, but luckily he decided to let it go, and we rolled on towards the freeway.

There were no cars on the freeway, which is a strange thing for someone born and raised in the Bay Area where traffic never stops. I got the truck up to 50 mph, and things felt ok, but when I pushed 60 the whole thing felt unstable. I let it back to 50 and slowly rolled on; quickly doing the math in my head I realized what a long night it was going to be driving home to the Bay.

We hit traffic for the first time on the edge of Las Vegas. Other motorists gave us incredulous and terrified looks as they passed us, but I looked ahead from the slow lane. We made it through Vegas without event, and we pulled on towards the empty desert towards the California border. I kept the needle pegged at 50 while semi trucks passed me uphill. Right at the edge of Vegas, the fuel light came on, and I pulled into one of the last gas stations on the edge of town to refuel.

I pulled in, navigating our rig through cars full of twenty-something college kids and Asian tourists heading in while we were fighting to get out. I squeezed the truck to a vacant pump, and ran inside to fill up and grab some provisions for the road. Now, in Las Vegas, there are slot machines everywhere, but there’s something beautifully pathetic about the ones that are in gas stations. When I entered, there were a few people at the end of their rope wasting their last few dollars, still hanging on to a sliver of hope that they might win big despite the glowing monument over the hill that should prove otherwise. The guy behind the counter was having some cracked-out conversation with the drunks at the machines, egging them on, when I set my armful of energy drinks and bag of pretzels on the counter. He turned to me, apparently drunk and high on any number of illicit drugs and household cleaners.
“Weeel- you guys next to hit it big? How many days you guys staying?” I stood, trying to be as diplomatic as possible, and replied:
“No sir. We’ve had our fun. It’s time to go now.” Something about that changed him, the smile dropped off his face, and it seemed that the mask he had been wearing was suddenly lifted:
“Go now, then. Go quick, before they get you.” If I had been there myself, I might brush this conversation off as imagined, but luckily Josie was at my side and saw it too. Horrified, we ran back to the truck, filled the tank, and pulled away from the pump towards the freeway.

For as insane as the last 24 hours had been, the drive was surprisingly uneventful. We got some strange looks from weekday commuters in Bakersfield when the sun came up, and each stop for gas took a lot of quick judgment, since our tow-bar rig wouldn't allow us to use Reverse. At one point I had to back away from a spot, which required me to unhook the van, Josie hopped in behind the wheel, I pushed it into position, then ran back to the truck, re-attached the tow-bar, and pulled away with the truck.

We pushed like hell up I-5 towards home. The sun was bright upon us; I was on the verge of insanity because of the lack of sleep and my diet of energy drinks and anything else I could grab without slowing down from the counter of the few gas stations we stopped at along I-5. My eyes were dry and tired, and I almost missed the sign for 580 through Tracy. Amazingly, we pulled onto the home stretch down the Altamont at close to noon, and we pulled into Josie's mom's house at about 12:30. I didn’t have a spot for it at our house, so we’d leave it there for now to re-shuffle the cars. The goddamn thing held together, and we were home. I dropped the hitch, ran my dad's truck over to a gas station, topped it off, scrubbed the bugs off the grill with the windshield squeegee, and rolled the truck through the auto car wash. I dropped the truck back at my dad's, Josie and I loaded our bags in the 57 and drove home. I woke up at about 9 at night on my couch to a frantic call from Josie's mom, shouting, ''What the hell is this Van doing in my yard!?!''

The Dragoons Nite of The Hot Rods- 7/16/11 Antioch, CA

The Dragoons- Nite of The Hot Rods, 7/16/11 Antioch, CA

If I were older, I'd probably be sitting here rattling on about how nice it is that the younger generation is carrying on the tradition, blah blah blah, but I'll leave that to someone else. As someone in the same relative age bracket as most of the Dragoons, I'm really happy to see my contemporaries doing cool shit and making this great show happen in Antioch, of all places. This show is always impressively packed with killer cars that always makes you take pause by the end of the night and wonder how, exactly, these punk kids (and punk-kid-minded adults) manage to drag such top quality cars out to a parking lot next to a public fishing pier by the railroad tracks. The secret? Honestly, if you met these guys you'd do anything you could to make what they've got going on out here a success. I was booth-bound for most of the show, but thankfully MLV held down the fort for a few minutes while I ran frantically to take a few pictures of the beautiful show. Custom cars, punk rock, and great people, if that's not enough to get you out to a show I don't know what is. Enjoy:

















Mrs. Gambino's new Cadillac:



Check out this cool in-progress custom:





















Thanks for reading!

The Van Story- Part 2, Past the Edge of Oblivion

Part II- Past the Edge of Oblivion

When we got out of the truck, a old man wearing aviator shades was walking out to greet us. He introduced himself as Walt, and we got to talking. The more Walt, Josie and I talked, the clearer my understanding of this place became; this wasn't a place that people came to by choice, but rather a place of last resort for people who had expended all of their other options. Walt had been married once before in Utah; his wrinkled forearm still bared her name on a tattered banner over a shaky rose. He was living here, not sure for how long, seeing how things went with a much younger girlfriend out here in the trailer park. Everyone here, it seemed, had some story about how they were just passing through. Nothing about this town had any sense permanence about it; it was as if the whole goddamn place could just pack up and leave in the middle of the night without a trace.

Walt told me he had a couple of vans back in his heydays, and how he had picked this one up as a project a few years back to relive some of those wild times. The 300 six-cylinder in it that his daughter had insisted over the phone was rebuilt and running seemed to be neither; it had been ''installed'' by a shady mechanic in Utah, and Walt's decision to sell it was largely due to the fact that he couldn't afford to pay the guy to finish it. My heart sunk a little when I heard that, but we had already come so far I was still excited to go and see the van. With the desert sun straight overhead, we decided to get down to business, and Walt hopped in our truck as we headed over to the storage yard down the street to go check it out.

Now, for those out there who have never seen a storage yard in the middle of the Nevada desert, you may have missed an important lesson in humanity. The dry air and sand preserves everything like I imagine an Egyptian tomb might, so you get to see in one moment decades of mummified remains of the people who had passed through this place before, either chasing or running from the eerie glow of Vegas over the hill. Walt's space was as sad a display as any, a few pots and pans from a house he once had, old dress clothes from a time he had a reason to own them, and outside, sitting timeless and incredible, was the van; it's faded paint was the color of the desert sand and seemed as old. I’m not sure what you’d call it; if it was a girl you’d say it was love at first sight, but right then I knew that our destiny was intertwined, and there was no way in hell that I’d leave this beautiful piece of machinery to die a lonely death out here in the Nevada desert.

Despite the mechanic's best effort, the van was in great shape. The body was pretty straight, there was absolutely no rust anywhere inside or out, and all of the important stuff was there. The 300, which had been a selling point for me, didn't appear to be rebuilt but it still seemed fairly fresh. When we pushed it forward to see the whole thing, a few cockroaches scattered from where the wheels had been, seemed to consider hiding for a second, then gave up and resolved to lay out in the sand and die. I looked over the suspension, everything was there and secure, and this looked like a deal. A little disappointed that it was more of a project than I had anticipated, Walt shot me an excellent price in California dollars, and we headed back to the trailer park to finish the deal. I began to consider briefly just how I was going to get the van back to the Bay Area on the drive back to the trailer park, but I remembered the U-haul down the street and the thought left my mind.

Walt and I stepped into the only real doublewide in the trailer park, everything surrounding it was an actual trailer- each with sun-baked tires full and Bearing Buddies greased to maintain the illusion that some day they might hook up and roll out of this place. The interior of the doublewide was remarkably sparse; there were two recliners, a TV on a stand playing god knows what, a table in the kitchen, and a shotgun and rifle leaning in the corner. On the table sat a single Crock-pot, and the smell of beans burning in the bottom of it was unmistakable. An older man sat in one of the chairs looking like a redneck’s caricature of Fred Mertz, and introduced himself as Denny. Denny had a sharp wit and a mean spirit about him, but overall was pretty welcoming considering that I was a stranger in his home. I paid the Walt, we did the paperwork, the Van was mine, and it seemed the difficult part was over. Now all I had to do was get it home.

Walt, Josie and I headed down to the U-haul to rent a Tow-Dolly. The U-haul, as it turned out, was ran through the local hardware store. I looked through the store, was relieved to see a few appropriate trailers out in the storage area out back, and I went to the counter, and attempted to rent one.

“Uh, we don’t rent trailers here”, said the kid at the counter, confused, I replied,
“But you have tons of them out back”.
“We used to, sure, but we don’t no more. Company’s coming to pick up the rest of them this week”. I pushed a little more, but the kid was unrelenting. It was about noon, and I figured we had plenty of time to figure something out. We went back to the trailer park; as it turned out Denny had been in town the longest, so Walt figured he’d know where else to try. Denny seemed to remember there being a spot the next big town over, a place called Mesquite. It seemed a reasonable place to go, since I had no map or place to reference where it was. As it turned out, Mesquite was a few minutes drive from the Arizona/Utah border, in the absolute middle of nowhere. Walt decided to join us for the drive, probably because this was the most exciting thing he had done in months, and him and a tired Josie made polite conversation during the drive. I kept my eyes on the road ahead, having no idea of the strangeness that we were headed for.

This is the point in the story where things take on a mystical sort of feel; even now, thinking back, I question if this series of events actually happened. I’m glad I had Josie with me to assure I’m not crazy. I don’t know if it was the almost total lack of sleep, the desert sun, or the malnutrition from not stopping to eat, but the next few hours seem a little fuzzy. Before I go much further, here’s a little back-story on me. It’ll make sense later:

I was about 22 at the time we went to Nevada. My first real job out of High School when I was 18 was working as the Yard kid for a construction company, which meant that I was there to help out, order and deliver materials, and keep track of where all our supplies were. The company was an electrical contractor, and with the rising price of scrap our wire supply was under constant threat of theft. After a few break-ins, my company decided to rent a storage shed from the company across the street so the wire would be a little more anonymous, as well as under video surveillance and behind a gate. I would pull wire from the storage shed for my bosses almost every day to get it ready for the crew to take home in the morning, and since my bosses wouldn’t give me a gate key I had to go in the lobby of the Storage yard and ask for them to let me in, which they always did. After being at the company for about three years, and seeing the family that ran the Storage place almost everyday of it, we got along pretty well, always waved at each other in the morning, I’d share a smoke with them every once in a while, and we’d talk about whatever was new on the block and whatever damage our employees had done to their yard, which always ended in me either sweeping up or getting the bosses to pay for the damage. The husband was an old curmudgeon with a white moustache, he disliked our company about as much as I did, plus he chain-smoked and drank black coffee, so we had a lot in common. The wife was a red-haired British woman; she had an accent thick as the rose-glasses she always wore. About a year before the trip to Nevada I had quit the construction company to go back to school full time, and I said goodbye to the nice couple across the street on my last day, thinking I’d never see them again.

Anyways, back to the desert. We followed the hand written directions that Denny had given us through the desert to the surprisingly quaint town of Mesquite. Between all of the signs advertising golf, the RV resorts and signs advertising “early-bird specials” in the windows of diners, we could tell that the three of us, Walt included, were probably the youngest people in town by many years. I followed Walt’s instructions, and parked near the gate of the yard where again, I could see a few single-axle trailers that we needed. The trailers were being rented through a Storage yard, so we went inside the air-conditioned lobby to rent a trailer. Walt led the way, and Josie and him started talking to the couple behind the counter. Something seemed off to me, and although my fatigued mind couldn’t quite place why I stood at the back of the room, unable to participate in the conversation. When Josie told them the make and model of our truck, the red-haired lady entered the info in her computer without a problem, but things got a little tough when it came to what we would be towing.

The computer system, which always seems to be the thing that keeps us in the “old car” world from getting what we need from the person behind the counter, no matter what the store, only had certain cars listed in the database, and 1963 Ford Econoline apparently wasn’t there. 1963 Ford was, but Econoline was not. The lady entered 1990 Econoline, which is a radically different vehicle in both weight and construction, and probably outweighs the 63 three-fold, so predictably, the computer showed our F-150 half ton wasn’t rated to tow it. Now, in all honesty, it probably wasn’t rated to tow the 63 Econoline either, but safety be damned, we were going to pull the Van with our truck. Besides, she was already “lying” by entering 1990, I wondered if I could get her to err on our side and the side of reason. Finally I joined the conversation, frustrated.

“Look, the Van is about the same weight as a 1963 Ford Falcon [probably not, but still closer in weight than the 1990 they had entered], just put in that and see if we can tow it”. She replied in her thick British accent:

“I can’t just add things in that are false, it’s a liability for our company”. The man with the white moustache sitting next to her sipped his coffee, and nodded his head. All of a sudden it hit me, and my initial nausea made sense: THIS WAS THE SAME COUPLE FROM ACROSS THE STREET FROM MY OLD JOB IN CALIFORNIA!!!!

I couldn’t believe it! Surely, they’d remember me, and I’d be able to seal the deal, and we’d be on the road! I couldn’t have been happier, our problems were almost over. I figured I could draw on my intrinsic old-world Italian charm, shoot a wink and a smile and we’d be on our way. I don’t know what it is about passing through Vegas, but throw in even just close proximity to cheap booze, flashing neon, and gambling and every Italian American suddenly thinks they’re either Nicky Santoro or Frank fucking Sinatra. Besides, these guys knew me, probably better than anyone else in Nevada at least, of course they’d help out a friend in need.

“Hey”, I said, “didn’t you guys run that Storage yard in Livermore? I used to work across the street! Remember? Small world, huh?”

I stood awkwardly shooting the best Ring-a-ding-ding smile I could muster for what felt like hours. The man with the moustache looked deep into my eyes for a second, and for whatever reason, didn’t smile back. Thinking back, I must have looked ridiculous, with a few days beard, a pit-stained shirt that was the only one I had packed, and a greasy sunburnt forehead bearing a mouthful of unbrushed teeth. I never got the terms of how exactly they ended up here, but for whatever reason they seemed to regret it, and my mentioning of their old life actually seemed to make them more upset and less reasonable! Apparently, they weren’t too happy out on the edge of the desert. Eventually, after about a half hour of back-and-forth, they told us to go to another U-haul, rent a truck and a trailer, and tow it that way. I didn’t like that idea, but I did like the idea of the opportunity of a fresh start by going to another rental space, so, defeated, the three of us hopped back in the truck and headed back into the desert. My mind, still blown from the lack of sleep and the smallness of the world was only focused on the drive.

Stoneypalooza and The Strangers BBQ 7/9/11-7/10/11

It's not my intention for this blog to become a deeply personal account of my travels, but this weekend my personal life and my show-going life are inseparable and indistinguishable. My wife has been having a really tough time getting around lately. She's had a hard time walking, and hasn't been able to stand for long periods of time on her own for a while now. We recently started seeing a neurologist about it, and she's been going through pretty intense treatment for what we learned was an inflammation of her spinal cord because of lesions on her brain. Its scary stuff, and not something to be taken lightly. She's been knocked down for a few weeks, and really hasn't left the house, aside from coming to the shop, for about a month. I stepped up and with the help of a few friends we've been running the shop in her absence. The past week was particularly tough, because not only did she have to deal with the side effects of some pretty harsh medicine, but also because we've been waiting for a blood test to reveal what life-long condition we'll be up against. Well, Friday's doctor appointment revealed that she has MS, a yet uncureable auto-immune disorder that's going to require long term treatment, but the fact that we now know what we're dealing with has been surprisingly comforting. Also, the harsh medicine seems to have worked, because after a few weeks of being house-bound Josie's feeling much better and is back on her feet again. Saturday was her first full day back at the shop, and since she was feeling pretty good we decided that we'd drop by Stoney's Third Annual Pre-Strangers Show "Stoneypalooza" on Saturday night.

Stoney's street was packed with a gathering of cars so top-notch that they would make any automotive outing worthwhile, and it was really great to get to meet the owners in such a laid back and casual environment. Not only were there amazing cars and great people, but Stoney's wife Brooke cooked up some killer food, which for me, put this shindig over the top.

It was really great to get out again and to be greeted with open arms by both friends and complete strangers. I was busy stuffing my face and avoiding some heinous creation called a "Blanco Basura", but Josie managed to step out and take a few pictures out front under the streetlights. The lighting didn't allow for great full-car shots, but enjoy this tasty sampler of the Stoneypalooza awesomeness:



Stoney's Cadillac, hours after having the front end air-bagged, tucking Tru=Spokes like it ain't no thang.







The Starlight Crew made it. Hopefully next time we'll have more time to talk!



Starlight under streetlights





Some killer endless line by Phil:
















We had a really great time, but had to head out early so I could get up early to set up for the Strangers show. Thanks again to Brooke and Stoney for their incredible hospitality and generosity, it means a lot.

I woke up the next morning and headed South to San Jose for the Strangers BBQ at an ungodly hour. I met Josie's Mom and Uncle down at Kelley Park to set up for the show, where we took our usual spot on the grass. I didn't get to stick around too long because I had to pick up Josie and open the Berkeley shop, so I only got a few pics as cars rolled in. I headed out around 10:00, and there was still a line of cars into the parking lot. Here's what I got, and a huge thank you to the Strangers Car Club for hosting this excellent event:

The roof on this wagon is fantastic:







































That's all I got. I wish things could have been different, and that I could have stuck around and hung out, but that's just not my life right now. Josie and I are really optimistic about the future, now at least we know what we're up against, and we've got a plan to treat it. Tomorrow is promised to no one, and things could be a whole lot worse. Not everyone gets to have what we have, and I'm the luckiest guy in the world to have her. It's also great to know that we've got great friends and a great community of like-minded people out there to fall back on when we need someone to talk to. Thanks for reading.