For those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie franchise “ The hills have eyes”, It’s a typical gore filled movie from the early 2000’s remade from a late 70’s movie of the same name, involving typically stupid victims being chased, killed, and eaten by mutant cannibals living in the desert southwest who are they/themselves byproducts of the nuclear testing in the late 50’s.
Whew..
Well I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to go to the desert southwest to see those mutant people….They are alive and well about 45 miles north west of Birmingham Alabama.
And they haunt car shows looking for hapless victims.
Today I took off. Now that the brake light issue was solved, and given that it was an otherwise cloudless low humidity, high 70-low 80’s kinda day,…I wanted to go to a couple of car show things, and enjoy the day, and the car.
I started at Cars and Coffee at 9 am.
This’ll be the second time I’ve been to C&C, and now that that is done, I can say that a car dressed as a late 60’s-Early 70’s muscle car is out of place in this venue. I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone that has been to these, but my local C&C is usually populated with Exotic Eurocars, a few High end Jap cars like NSX, and GTR’s , A couple of Skylines, a whole bunch of lesser ricers, and a few groups of late model muscle clustered here and there.
Then I get there.
I gotta admit, a whole bunch of folks look up and watch me come in, and after I park it and open the hood, there is a brief crush of people that flock to see what is under there that is making no kinda noise when it rolled in.
There was a very receptive reaction from a crowd of about 12/15 people. A few hang back and talk, but after a few minutes, everything goes back to the way it was…and I’m standing there, by myself. I walked the venue admiring the Mclarens, Lambos, Porsches, and Ferraris,… Then get back in the car and head out for venue #2.
Hoping I don’t get a flat, have car trouble, or suffer through any other issue that might strand me in the hills….that have eyes.
I’m in Warrior Alabama about 45 minutes later.
I get checked in, and registered. I’m at Rickwood Caverns state park. A beautiful venue, set into the lower Appalachian mountains. Evidently there are caverns somewhere in this park that are pretty freakin amazing, but am I gonna go off on a hike and explore some of that?.
By myself???
Whadya,…..think I’m stupid? It’d be my luck that I’d get back there, twist my ankle, have no cell signal, and the next thing I know, end up as the BBQ at some Mutant family picnic..
I chose to stay by my car, amongst the relative safety of the rest of the group.
There was this guy walking around with a stomach tumor so large, he had to use a walking stick to offset how much weight it was displacing on one side. There was this girl…standing next to her parents..
I’m thinking……she needs to eat.
But wait a minute……zoom in on her face…
She also needs to shave.
The band comes in, and dude shows up carrying something “ essential”…
The bottom of those pants are shredded, and dirty..And it’s only 10:30AM…
I think….” I’ll bet he smells”.
There’s an older red neck guy wearing a Harley shirt ( normal I know) it reads on back “I’m guilty of snatching kisses”
( and Viceaversa)
I had to laugh.
Ordinarily there is usually a fair amount of eye candy….the females that attach themselves to the guy cruising around checking out the cars…
But not today,….Not at Rickwood Caverns state park in Warrior Alabama…Today, I have to avert my eyes to avoid having my mouth fall open.
Not the ordinary “Whoa” kinda mouth drop you get when a 20 something wearing not enough clothes walks by mind you…
This was more like the whoa you get when watching some stupid person face planting on a fail video.
No eye candy. It was more like Eye irritant.
I lasted 2 hours…at 1:30 I’m out.
The car doesn’t have the drivetrain vibration anymore…That’s not actually a good thing though.
I now have to check myself..85 mph is way too easy…and the engine and car are happy to just keep going faster if I don’t watch it.
Since it was so early, I decided that I’d buy the stuff to break back into the brake system ( see what I did there?) and install the line lock in the front brakes.
That required a quick stop…
* different camera angles and lighting make this car look shorter than a notch sometimes.
I get home at 2:15, fully intending to do that, but Kate is Home…She asks me If I wanna spend the rest of the day with her…
So we go to Costco, and spend 500 bucks..
I told her that she’d have to help me bleed the brakes tomorrow at some point..She objects,…Ive already helped you Breed your blake’s……
“That was the clutch”….And it‘s “ bleed the brakes”….not,… “breed the blakes”.
She agrees.
I love this woman.