With no particular plan in place, we awoke Sunday to a brilliantly sunny summer day and over coffee decided to make a last minute trip to Simsbury, CT to attend the Valley Collector Car Club’s 10th Annual Charity Car Show. What the heck, we could always relax while in Maine next week, packed a cooler, left the dog with a neighbor and off we went. We left around 9:30AM and drove out routes 10 & 202 arriving in Simsbury around 10:30.
We were put in class K and directed to park in lot 6.
Our Division K winner
The show is held in a beautiful Town, at a spectacular spot, the Performing Arts Center right in downtown. I was more than a little disappointed to find ourselves parked next to an ’80’s vintage Buick Grand National and on our other side, a ’57 Turquoise and White Corvette that we had competed against 2 weeks ago in Windsor, CT., I couldn’t help but think, geez what the heck type of class is this.….…
It was not until about an hour later that I realized every car in our lot was from a different class! We had cars from classes K, J, L, M all parked together. As Cadillac owners we are always at a disadvantage in a show determined by popular vote, but dramatically more so here, voters initially were not instructed to vote for one car in every class, and our class was actually parked in field #2, a couple hundred yards
away and worse yet, our field #6 was very hard to locate on the map handed out. This show has the potential to be a real standout, it was meticulously organized, had computerized balloting, was in a perfect location and had some very unique vehicles, 
but unfortunately we had no shot at being awarded anything the way it was set up. How can something so well planned and organized be so poorly implemented? People were handed ballots with no clear instructions on how to vote them, no one I talked to understood what they were supposed to do with the ballot until they began announcing instructions just an hour before voting was to close, electronically read voting is a great idea, that has the potential to be a game changer, but not unless they can set it up much more clearly.
On a brighter note, we had intended to order a Show Board while there from a vendor we had seen at other shows, we spoke to him earlier in the day and made arrangements to finalize the transaction later in the day. 
Not 45 minutes later we won a driver’s raffle and scored a gift certificate from the very same vendor in the amount of $125.00!!! After the show broke up, we met with him, he took many photos and will have a proof to us in a week or so. As usual, we were mobbed with people admiring the car and asking many questions about it, many times we had groups of a dozen or more at one time around the car, it is nice to know some others appreciate it as much as we do.….
Overall, a nice day, a beautiful ride there and back, perfect location, BUT sadly, not an event we would be in a hurry to go back to, not to take anything away from the Club’s efforts, our time and effort is probably better spent somewhere else.….…Of course, “Your Mileage May Vary”.
