Saturday - car show, parade, alien ball, pool party

(Award winners have been moved to the "Read More" section-- see link below.)

ok, saturday.

1. The car show

with the wireless network already set up in the conference center, and the car already washed, we didn't have to get up too godawful early this year-- 7am. I think we got to the car show around 8:20, a little later than we'd hoped, but with some finagling and me running about with a laptop trying to figure out where the wireless signal could reach in the parking lot, we got just the spot we wanted-- right in the middle of all the cars, not up at registration this year.

Setup involved only minor panicking and grimness on my part, and the guys at Mohawk Motorsports were very friendly and helpful when i was setting up my cam near them. Steph was so familiar with the setup by this point that she was able to do most of the setup at the car while I worked on the conference center.

This year I actually turned in my raffle tickets, bought extras, and tried to keep checking them periodically, though I did miss the last several calls. Oh well; I've kinda resigned myself to the fact that if i'm running around doing allpods stuff, I'm probably not going to be winning any raffles or car show trophies :) (not that spacepod is show car material these days-- egads.)

Let's see, the issue of attendance. A lot of people have been discussing this. I don't believe the number of cars was significantly below last year, though it was somewhat less. The vendor floor was definitely not crowded the way it has been in the past, and we hear that is due to last minute cancellations on the part of some vendors. Vendors that I am aware of were Mohawk Motorsports, Ronal wheels, Bugstuff (Pam and Kirk), a guy who was chipping 1.8T's-- I'm not sure which company, and as always Rich's VW toys over in the corner. I was really pleased to be able to get the Johnny Lightning models of the Isotope NB and of Randy from TVA's beetle as my sporadic searches for them in stores had not turned up anything.

I was able to photograph almost every car in attendance-- there were a few that I skipped and a few where I doubled up and put two cars in one picture. I had to use two pictures to get the whole Ladybug setup this year-- I told Tina she was going to make me buy a wide angle lens cause I can't photograph her stuff with a normal one!

The web cam uploads went smoothly and I put out Allpods business cards this year, all of which were taken before the show was over. So hopefully lots of folks are visiting the site!

Stephanie had the great idea of walking around with the video camera and doing a sort of running conversation about all of the cars, so we did that at the last minute before the awards ceremony (and I'll be getting that video up soon, it needs some editing though!)

We scrambled to get set up to type out the awards that were won and discovered that the beloved tangerine iBook which has travelled with me to all four R2k's had died! We'd hardly been using it and somewhere along the line it just up and died. John again magically appeared at just the right moment, brought us another laptop so steph could type up the awards, and just generally was our unflappable hero yet again.

I snapped web cam shots of people being handed their awards, while stephanie typed, and after the awards steph started breaking down the cameras while John and I tried to get the awards file from his PC to my Mac so I could upload it to the site.

I've gotta take a moment from my own story to say how excited I was that my friends BJ, Ollie and Maria won second in their class! They have the black retro styled NB with the teardrop trailer, and they'd done an elaborate display of what they call "cheese"-- wonderful old picnic stuff from the 50's, some tiki stuff, a victrola, etc. BJ said it was her first trophy, and she was pretty damn excited. I've got a picture of her with the trophy somewhere which I need to get uploaded.

I usually rush around right after the awards are over to be sure the cams are all packed up before the parade starts, but I also usually wind up waiting in the very hot car for a good 20 minutes after the packing is done and before we leave the parking lot-- so even when I saw cars starting to leave the lot I figured I had time to work on getting that file transferred.

But before we could get it transferred, Steph came running in and said that we had to leave NOW. Cet and I grabbed the rest of our stuff and ran out to the parking lot-- ours were the only two cars left!! The parade had left us behind!

It was somehow just the saddest sight to see spacepod left behind by the parade in that parking lot, when the last time i'd seen him he was surrounded by other bugs.

2. The parade and my yearly meltdown arrives late

So yeah. By the time we got in the car and tried to catch up with the parade I was feeling pretty stressed and pretty sad and, as per usual, had my one break-down-and-cry moment of the trip. And here I thought I wasn't going to have one! We sort of trailed along after the police bug, which was obviously meant to be the last bug in the parade, me crying and steph trying to comfort me.

The parade didn't seem to last very long this year-- maybe we'd missed an entire loop or something.

Anyway, we retired to the hotel for a while, and then decided to go have dinner somewhere before the party.

3. We escape to Red Lobster. Yum.

I guess I don't have anything more to say than that. It was yummy :)

4. Arriving fashionably late to the Alien Ball

Back at the hotel steph proceeded to apply the "rainbow alien" costume, which involved a cloud of toxic fumes around her head (and rainbow striped hair). I didn't really have a costume; just the spacegrrl shoes and my silver deely- boppers.

Everyone was sitting down eating when we arrived (which was sort of how we'd planned it). We sat down with Shelley, Jacob, Virginia, Clem, Teresa, Star, and Josh. The world's loudest mariachi band was playing, making conversation nearly impossible. After a while, they stopped playing and David took the mic to make some announcements, including the Hall of Fame inductee.

Which, as it turned out, was me. I had no idea-- David said that no one had any idea, he hadn't told anyone. I remember when he held up the "reverse engineered from UFO's" framed poster I thought, "Man, I would LOVE to have one of those". Ha! Now I do! Anyway, I was very happy to get the recognition and I felt pretty honored to be put up alongside Debbie Duderstadt, who has been so generous to the show.

Attendance at the ball was really very low this year-- it's no longer the main event of the night, and things broke up after the award, there was no dancing. We headed out and got ready for the pool party.

5. The pool party is a bust

So we got to the Sally Port, found the pool-- no party. Tried to find another pool. Asked at the front desk-- and the guy said the pool party had been cancelled! "The DJ" (Russ) was spinning in the bar, but otherwise, no party. We headed for the bar and ran into Susan Hester, Tina, and Lisa Herr sitting outside the bar. We chatted with them for a while, then the whole BJ-Ollie-John-Shelley- Teresa-Star-Josh-Charles gang arrived and we decided to see what trouble we could go stir up. Well, except Ollie, who was tired and decided to go to bed.

6. But that's ok

So we drove around Roswell, out to the racetrack, but all of that was over, tried to find the bowling alley but it was closed, stopped at Sonic for a drink, drove out to Wal-Mart where John and Charles did some "geriatric drag racing" (a drag race conducted at speeds of 10mph or less), and finally wound up just hanging out in the parking lot of the Days Inn while John negotiated with Charles over a PIP rack that Charles was selling.

Which was actually one of the best parts of the day, for me, cause BJ and I got to sit around and gossip which we only get to do once a year, and is kinda hard when Ollie is never more than two feet from her! Not that I don't love Ollie, but, you know.

AWARD WINNERS:

DISCLAIMER: these were typed hastily as David read them off. There WILL be errors. Bear with us. We have the original sheets david read from and will correct the list in the next couple of days.

Barbie Beetle

Best Alien Theme Cameron and karen talley
Best Art theme rhonda murry
Best paint tina ward
Most unique ryan schultz (son of kirk and pam of bugstuff)
Best of Show Barbie Tina Ward

There were no 98 stocks.

98 modified stock
3rd place Janet Brannan and Lucy
2nd place Virginia Allen
1st place Joyce Hough

98 custom

3rd place Lisa Herr and Dayz Bug
2nd place Earl McCutcheon and Cueball
1st place Greg Knoll

99 stock

3rd place Judy Carle
2nd place
1st place Chris Sharp

99 modified stock

3rd place Matt Karvinsky
2nd place John "Cetacean" Steele and Cleo
1st place Jacob Shirley and Beetlemania

99 custom only 2

2nd place Beth Tichenor and Little Green Apple
1st place Tina Ferrell

2000 stock

3rd place Wayne Yault
2nd place BJ Keifer and Rodney
1st place Richard Montana

2000 modified stock

3rd place Ray and Angie Townsend and Pisant
2nd place Ian Herrington
1st place Jim D'Englere and Bo Bug

2000 custom

3rd place Sue Isley and Ciaobug
2nd place Nate Pizell and Kizmet?
1st place Dusty Silvester and Bumble Bug

2001 stock

3rd place Stephanie
2nd place Brian and Naomi Miller
1st place Scott Mathison

2001 modified stock

3rd place Candy Taylor
2nd place Edward Fitzgerald
1st place Cindy Kollard

2001 custom

3rd place Brent Combs
2nd place Jennifer Russell and Blue Smiley
1st place Tom Perrone

2002 stock

3rd place Fred Mead
2nd place Ruby Alexander and the Texas Mudbug
1st place Jamie Knoll

2002 modified stock

3rd place Myke and Amy Burks
2nd place Carolyn Fleet and Tumblebug
1st place Amy Houston

2002 custom

3rd place Chris Williams
2nd place Anna McCollum
1st place Rich Bailey

2003 convertible

3rd place Dave Wuertz
2nd place Steve Carrabas and Trixie
1st place Sue Kelley

2003 stock

3rd place David Johnson
2nd place Doug Djizy
1st place David Stevenson

2003 modified stock

2nd place Allan Yoder
1st place Rhonda Murry

2003 custom

3rd place Brian Williams
2nd place Susan Hester and Stitch
1st place Frank and Linda Forthall

Best Bud Vase Rhonda Murry

Best Exterior Graphics Tina Ferrell

Best Alien Theme Lisa Herr and Dayz Bug

Best Toy Display Yellow 1HOTPOD with mountain range

Furthest Distance Karen and Michael Reed from Salem, New Hampshire, with about 2400 miles

Alien's Choice Police car from Rogers, Arkansas

Best of Show Chris and Carrie Day

Posted by lisa at June 21, 2003 06:51 PM