Author Archives: Steven

Rotary Show & Hadley Cruise Night

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s not often we get a stretch of 3 good days in a row, so we took advan­tage of all of them.  The sea­son is almost over and soon it will be time to put the “Gray Lady” down for her long Win­ter slum­ber.  After a nice trip out to Boston on Sat­ur­day, we faced the dilema of hav­ing to choose between the Man­ches­ter On Main show, the Sims­bury Fly-In and Clas­sic Car Show or our local Chicopee Rotary Clas­sic Car Show, spon­sored by our bank the Chicopee Sav­ings Bank.  We opted to stay local and sup­port the local charaties, so off to the Chicopee Rotary Show we went.

We entered the 1951 — 1961 pro­duc­tion car divi­sion and man­aged a sec­ond place award!  We don’t have the award yet, they had a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher there tak­ing pho­tos and will do a photo plaque in place of a tro­phy, I’ll post a photo next week some­time when it is deliv­ered.  Inter­est­ing fac­toid, the pho­tog­ra­pher, Bud Shubach, a local pro was the same per­son Mary lee and I hired to do our wed­ding more than 32 years ago!  It is a small world.…  They also did a nice air bag deploy­ment demon­stra­tion, using 4 dif­fer­ent set-ups, two of them turned out to be duds!

Hav­ing a never say die atti­tude Mon­day brought another fine day, not want­ing to miss it I decided to attend one of the final cruise nights of the sea­son up in Hadley.  Mary lee opted out as she was exhausted after our gru­el­ing week­end sched­ule.  Spon­sored by the Hadley Young Mens Asso­ci­a­tion and held out in the farm coun­try off route 47 near the Con­necti­cut River, a great time was had by all, good food, great DJ and a nice turnout of about 60 cars.  We were hon­ored to receive the “Best Of Show” award, the only award given that night.  Thank you to the Brick­yard Drifters, you put on a very nice event, and while we may not be able to get back for your final show, we cer­taainly will see you again next season…

If the weather holds we plan on attend­ing the sea­son finale shows at the Knights of Colum­bus on Sat­ur­day and the Holyoke Sol­diers Home on Sun­day, see you there.

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“Cadillac Day” — New England Region Cadillac/LaSalle Club Event

Posted on September 17, 2011 | 1 Comment

Sat­ur­day dawns with a spec­tac­u­lar early Fall day, sunny, temps in the 50’s, great day for a road trip!  We left home at 9:00AM for our trip East down the Mass­a­chu­setts Turn­pike, it was a great ride.…  Boy, they sure don’t build cars like they used to, it was like rid­ing on our liv­ing room couch, the “Gray Lady” attracted much atten­tion on our 102 mile trip out.  I’m still a lit­tle freaked out by the atten­tion we get at 65 MPH, every­thing from peo­ple pulling along­side and giv­ing us the “thumbs up”, to peo­ple rolling down their win­dows and try­ing to carry on a con­ver­sa­tion, and this trip where a sub­ur­ban pulled up on our left side, snapped some pho­tos, moved back behind us to take some more, then finally came up our right side to take even more.  My god.… folks you do under­stand we are hurtling down the high­way at high speed, you really should be look­ing at where you are going!!  Never really though about “defen­sive dri­ving” until we started road trip­ping with this baby.….

We arrived at Cadil­lac Vil­lage, a huge Cadil­lac retailer, and today’s event spon­sor at around 10:40.  Our club get together was a social event pri­mar­ily, just a sea­son end get together, there was no judg­ing or com­pe­ti­tion, just a fun time to get together and talk Caddy’s.  Cadil­lac Vil­lage sup­plied all the food and drink along with a live band who played all day for our enjoy­ment, they even gifted every dri­ver who attended with a Cadil­lac Vil­lage logo camp chair, what a great bunch!  In atten­dance were some absolutely spec­tac­u­lar exam­ples of vin­tage Cadil­lac and laSalles, what a treat to see all of these fine auto­mo­biles in one place.  I’ve included just a cou­ple pho­tos here, but will get a full album up soon on the photo page.

We left for our return trip about 3:00PM and were safely back home around 4:30.  This 200+ mile round trip is prob­a­bly the longest trip the “Gray Lady” has trav­eled in the last 40 years, she did it with grace, style, and absolutely no issues.  A very nice day!

Tomor­row poses a dilema for us in that the Man­ches­ter Show (a 2000 car event), the Sims­bury Show (an antique car & plane show) and the Chicopee Rotory Shows are all sched­uled on the same date due to rain issues through­out the Sum­mer.  We really want to attend them all, but after the hec­tic pace of the last 2 weeks we are going to opt to just stay local.  so the Chicopee Rotory Club Show is it.

See you there.….…

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31st Annual Melha Shriners Vintage Auto Show

Posted on September 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

Mary Lee and I returned from our epic adven­ture on the high seas on Fri­day.  We sailed on the NCL Dawn out of Boston to the beau­ti­ful island of Bermuda.  I won’t bore you with the details here, but we were upgraded to a suite prior to sail­ing and if you are a cruise fan and inter­ested, you can find the full review and pho­tos that I posted on the Cruise Critic forum here;

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1479913

Now that we are back home, it has been a whirl­wind try­ing to do laun­dry, dig­ging through the paper­work piled high on my desk, and we still found the time to attend the Melha Shriners Vin­tage Auto Show today.  This show was another rain date resched­ule from ear­lier in the sea­son and we are glad they finally got a good day to put the show on.  The Shriners do so much good work for chil­dren with their vast net­work of hos­pi­tals.  We here in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts are for­tu­nate to have one of these facil­i­ties right here in Springfield.

The show had a great turnout, and I apol­o­gize for for­get­ting my cam­era, so no pho­tos of the event today.  Suf­fice it to say there were many great exam­ples of clas­sic auto­mo­biles on dis­play to the delight of the crowds.  Late in the after­noon, at the awards cer­e­mony, we were a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed to not be included in the “Top 15″, and I had just turned to my wife and said, that even though we got skunked, it was still a great day.  The day bright­ened dra­mat­i­cally, when the very next announce­ment was that we were the “President’s Choice” award win­ner!  What a great fin­ish to a great week!  We will cer­tainly cher­ish this one, and look for­ward to sup­port­ing the Shriners again next year.

Going to be very busy this com­ing week and we have a full sched­ule for next week­end with a New Eng­land Region Cadillac/LaSalle Club event in Boston on Sat­ur­day and the 10th Annual Chicopee Rotory Club Clas­sic Car Show on Sunday

See you there.….…..

 

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Hurricane Irene

Posted on August 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

Well it’s been quite the year here in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts.  Hor­ri­ble Win­ter with record amounts of snow­fall, col­laps­ing roofs, school clo­sures, major trou­ble all around.  Then sum­mer arrives and we are greeted by a June 1st Tor­nado caus­ing a great amount of prop­erty dam­age, with sev­eral peo­ple killed.  The sum­mer con­tin­ued with great amounts of rain­fall, we had one of the wettest sea­sons any­one can remem­ber and last week we expe­ri­enced the fringe of the Earth­quake that shook Vir­ginia, it was a freaky expe­ri­ence to say the least, I can’t imag­ine what it really would have been like if the epi­cen­ter had been closer than the 500 miles away that it truly was.….

Yes­ter­day we were tar­geted with Hur­ri­cane Irene and for­tu­nately we escaped unscathed, we had very lit­tle winds and no more than 3″ of rain here, though just less than 20 miles away they are deal­ing with severe flood­ing, power out­ages and trees down.  Dur­ing the storm, our back­yard pond was vis­ited by this crit­ter, he doesn’t look to happy.  Of course the nasty weather caused us to skip the Deer­field Lions Club event in Deer­field, MA as it has for the major­ity of our sum­mer week­ends.  When we return from Bermuda on the 9th our sched­ule gets chaotic, the Man­ches­ter and Sims­bury, CT shows along with a local Rotory event are all sched­uled on the same day due to weather resched­ules.  The Shriner’s show rain date is also here, so we are going to have to decide what we can and can­not do, bum­mer, they are all for good causes.  Ahhh weel, it could be worse..

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Final Buttery Brook Cruise Night?

Posted on August 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Dis­gusted with this season’s string of weather can­cel­la­tions and know­ing Hur­ri­cane Irene was bar­rel­ing straight for us, we decided last minute to attend the but­tery Brook Cruise night.  This will prob­a­bly be our last one this sea­son, they have 2 more sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 2nd and 9th but Mary Lee and I are sail­ing off to Bermuda from Boston on the NCL Dawn on the 2nd return­ing on the 9th.  Got to see some old friends, who we may not get to see again until cruise nights resume around Memo­r­ial Day next year.  Our friends Roy & Mary Jane won an award and qual­i­fied for the Monthly award next Fri­day.  I won­der if they will allow us to vote by absen­tee ballot?

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Hole In The Wall Gang Event

Posted on August 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

After debat­ing go or no for an hour due to the weather, we took off for Ver­non, CT and Scran­ton Motors to attend the ben­e­fit for the Hole In The Wall Gang’s Kids Camp.  The show seemed to be lightly attended, prob­a­bly due to the threat of inclement weather and the fact that this was a rain day resched­ule from an ear­lier date.  Not a lot to report here, bor­ing time was had by all.…  High­light of my day was when the dealer’s choice award was announced (Scran­ton Motors is a Cadil­lac, Buick, GMC dealer) and they chose a Corvette, huh?  Kind of says it all…

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Friday On Wheels — Pittsfield, MA

Posted on August 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

This evening we trav­eled up into the Berk­shires to Pitts­field, MA for the “Fri­day On Wheels” event.  Great weather, great ride, really nice area of Mass­a­chu­setts.  North Street down­town was closed for sev­eral blocks for us to dis­play our cars.  Got there around 4:00PM and was directed to park across from the church on whose lawn the stage was setup.  Two dif­fer­ent blues bands played for us live, food ven­dors every­where and a great late sum­mer evening.  Not sure how many cars were there but it looked like hun­dreds, crowds looked like they could eas­ily num­ber well over a thou­sand if not much more!

I was pleased that the ’38 LaSalle that got skunked in Agawam two weeks ago won the Berk­shire Bank award, that car deserves to be a win­ner!  I’m not sure who the top 20 win­ners were because we were so spread out they had no award cer­e­mony for them, they just deliv­ered them to the vehi­cles.  No award for us this time, but it was a great night out.  Tomor­row we are plan­ning on the “Tuned By Tuna” show in Spring­field, but the weather looks shaky and though it is a rain or shine event, we won’t be there in the rain.

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Cadillac Day, Stoughton, MA

Posted on August 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

Sat­ur­day dawned with a heavy cloud cover but fore­cast was for no rain until late in the day, so what the heck, off we went to Long Cadil­lac out in Stoughton, MA for “Cadil­lac Day” spon­sored by the New Eng­land Region Cadil­lac LaSalle Club.  We left about 8:15AM and motored East down the Mass­a­chu­setts Turn­pike for the 60 mile trip, arriv­ing in a lit­tle more than an hour.  This was the longest trip the “Gray Lady” has taken since we have owned her, and it went with­out a hitch!

Upon arrival, we were invited to dis­play in the des­ig­nated 1950’s era show­room, staged for this event.  We shoe horned her in, join­ing a gor­geous 1958 Black Sixty Spe­cial and a beau­ti­ful 1959 Red Con­vert­ible already there.  These 3 cars stuffed that room to the gills, these new build­ings sure were never made for cars of this size!  It was really cool to see her stand­ing on the floor and imag­ine that this was how it used to be 53 years ago, it was a once in a life­time photo event.  Thanks to all for a fun day!  Spe­cial thanks to Long Cadil­lac for host­ing the event and even sup­ply­ing lunch for all of us.  Too bad they are so far away, these are the kind of peo­ple I’d want to do busi­ness with when buy­ing a new car.  In the mar­ket for a car, and in their mar­ket area, see these guys I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Atten­dance was some­what damp­ened by the threat of rain, but there was a nice selec­tion of cars rang­ing from 1930’s through the 70’s.  It was great to see such a col­lec­tion of vin­tage Cadil­lacs in one place.  In my neck of the woods, we are lucky if we see 1 or 2 at a time, I’m guess­ing there were about 35 vehi­cles rep­re­sented here, this was a real treat and we are already mak­ing plans to attend the Fall Cadil­lac Day Sep­tem­ber 17th, hosted by Cadil­lac Vil­lage in Nor­wood, MA., spon­sored again by the New Eng­land Region Cadil­lac LaSalle Club.  See you there!

Fac­toid of the day.…. You are prob­a­bly not going to believe this, but our 125 mile round trip used only 8 gal­lons of fuel!  A 5,000 pound car, 300 horse­power high com­pres­sion motor and 15+ MPG absolutely amaz­ing!  This was our first straight high­way trip of any dis­tance and our first oppor­tu­nity to check the mileage, I was expect­ing around 10 MPG and so was very sur­prised.  Really look­ing for­ward to our next long haul.  The only issue we expe­ri­ence on the high­way is peo­ple com­ing up along­side us, rolling their win­dow down and try­ing to carry on a con­ver­sa­tion at 65MPH!  What a hoot.…..

The “Crusin’ On Main Street” event in Man­ches­ter was resched­uled to next Sun­day due to bad weather today.  This sets up a real dilemma for us next week­end, now there are 3 events on August 14th, Man­ches­ter, CT., Ver­non, CT., and the very large “Tuned By Tuna” show, right here in Spring­field, MA.  Looks like we will be stay­ing local at the Spring­field show, but we really did want to go to Man­ches­ter.  Also on our sched­ule this week is the Berk­shire Bank Foun­da­tion “Fri­day On Wheels” Clas­sic Car Show in down­town Pitts­field, MA., where they close Main Street to dis­play the cars, have 2 live blues bands sched­uled and will attract hun­dreds of cars.

See you there.….……

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Friday Night Cruise

Posted on August 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Look­ing to change things up a lit­tle and with an eye towards shaky weather, I took a shot at attend­ing the Agawam Cruise Night spon­sored by the Val­ley Cruis­ers.  The weather was mar­ginal at best, with some large dark clouds float­ing around.  My route to the show took me over the Memo­r­ial Bridge in down­town Spring­field, and as I was nav­i­gat­ing over the span I couldn’t help but notice the angry look­ing storm clouds to the south­west, it made me very ner­vous.  This was the same bridge fea­tured in many you tube videos when the tor­nado struck Spring­field on June 1st.

Well, I expe­ri­anced no rain, but the threat of bad weather keep many away.  The event was very sparsely attended, and I felt kind of out of place as most of the atten­dees were club mem­bers.  No awards tonight, but it was fun to get the “Gray Lady” out and roll her around a bit.  Our weather has been awful and event after event have been rained out or resched­uled.  Our busy upcom­ing week­end looks to be a washout again.  We are sched­uled to be in Stoughton, MA at Long Cadil­lac for “Cadil­lac Day” spon­sored by the New Eng­land Region Cadil­lac LaSalle Club and then Sun­day in Man­ches­ter, CT for the “Crusin’ On Main Street” event which can attract upwards of 2000 cars.  Time will tell.

Fin­gers crossed.….

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What A Wasted Weekend

Posted on August 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

It has been a slow week, wanted to do cruise nights on Tues­day and Fri­day, but weather man­aged to nix both of them.  Tues­day was just to hot to bother, and Fri­day again saw the threat of severe thun­der­storms.  good thing we can­celed Fri­day because a very severe band of storms ran through, with trees down, large hail and very heavy rains.

My sched­ule is so messed up!  I com­pletely for­got about a show I wanted to attend in Stafford Springs, CT on Sat­ur­day, which was a beau­ti­ful day by the way.  Busi­ness and Board meet­ing com­mitt­ments have really messed with my mind, it’s not like me to miss a great day for a show!!

Sun­day I had the oppor­tu­nity to attend “Cars Of The World” in War­wick, RI or a big show on the Con­necti­cut shore, I opted to skip both in favor of a local show to ben­e­fit the Shriners Hos­pi­tal and children’s can­cer char­i­ties.  While it was for a good cause, it was a ter­ri­ble day.  I won’t name the show, in an attempt to pro­tect those who are doing the right thing, for all the right rea­sons in a very bad way.….  It was sunny and very hot when I arrived to find we were park­ing on an asphalt lot, great, hours in the blaz­ing sun, with no shade in temps that were 90+  Low bud­get DJ and not a lot of activ­ity all con­tributed to a few hours of my life I will never get back.  The top­per was when they announced the top 10 awards and best of show.  The major­ity of win­ners were all Chevro­let, I’m told, just like what hap­pened last year.  The stun­ner though, was the best of show, a car that shall remain un-identified, it was not a Chevro­let.  It was a con­vert­ible, met­alflake pur­ple, that was painted in his garage for $300.00, had rusted bumpers and an orig­i­nal shred­ded inte­rior that was holier than a cathe­dral on Easter Sun­day!!!!  In fact, not 20 min­utes before the award I was talk­ing with the owner of the car who was admir­ing our paint job, when he was telling me how they painted it.  OMG, what were they think­ing, OK I get it, you want to give your buddy an award, so put him in the top 10, but “Best Of Show” are you kid­ding me.  We will send a check next year because it is a really good cause, but there is no way we’ll be attend­ing again, I’d have more fun tak­ing a nap!  Pho­tos show a cou­ple of beau­ties that were awarded noth­ing and com­pletely over­looked.  The ’33 Lasalle was an obvi­ous stand­out in that field and did not even get in the top 10!

Hope­fully, the com­ing week will be bet­ter, we are really look­ing for­ward to “Cadil­lac Day” spon­sored by the New Eng­land Region of the Cadil­lac LaSalle Club and Long Cadil­lac out in East­ern Mass­a­chu­setts on Saturday.  Sunday will find us down in Man­ches­ter, CT where they close 1 mile of Main Street and could attract hun­dreds if not thou­sands of cars.  Fin­gers crossed for bet­ter weather.

Talk later.….

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