Bug’n in July 2009

As I wrote in my “Things I Love Thursday’s” post this week, the 10th Annual Bug’n in July car show was this weekend!

This is their commercial for their event (from the NAVWC website)

In the previous years, it has been so hot it was hard to sit out there (even under the pavilion) for 2 days, but this year it was absolutely perfect!  Alex’s bug was looking great as usual!!  Everyone always loves to come by and hear the bug’s “story”

Alex’s bug

Alex’s display in the hood of the bug

Picture of the three owners and the bug’s “story”  Love this!

Since the first day is literally all day, I usually come about lunch and hang out the rest of the evening.  Of course, there is a lot of walking around and of course sitting by the bug.  Boredom usually leads to me taking pictures so of course that’s exactly what happened! :)

   Sadly this is not anywhere near all the pictures I took…these are only the ones I took of us, the first day, at the car show…sad I know ;)

As I mentioned in my TILT post, they usually do a cruise in after the first day.  Basically, all the cars leave the show site (there’s this huge caravan of vintage and new show VW’s) and head to Steak n Shake, a 50s style diner .  It’s neat to watch and always cool to see people’s reactions (because some of these bugs are amazing!).  If you recall from my TILT post, the first year we had a major misadventure on the way back to the cruise in so we’ve only gotten to go once before.  This year, we were pumped about going so we left the car show around 4ish, dropped my car and some of his stuff off at his house, and then headed back to the show site to meet up for the cruise in.

Back at the show site getting ready to leave for the cruise-in.

  We finally headed out and what a site we were! Note:  these images were taken looking out Alex’s windshield so not the best quality, but here they are nonetheless :)

     

Everything was going smoothly until the next traffic light.  We were in the back of the line and we noticed they were all pulling over to the side of the road. 

Following them, Alex pulled over as well and we got out.  Apparently that gray bug in the front had completely died.  This brought back lots of memories for Alex, because as I mentioned earlier, his bug messed up before the cruise in in 2006, but we did not have the crew of VW enthusiasts that the gray bug had!  If anyone could fix it, it would be these guys!

Several of the guys tried to push start it by literally pushing it around the corner for about a block and then using the VW bus in front of us to push it for another block.  I have seen Alex push start his own bug many of times, but I have never seen anyone use a bus to push start one (and sadly I didn’t get any pics!)

Meanwhile, the rest of the bugs pulled into a nearby parking lot.  People kept pulling in and getting out to look at all the cars, so it was a little like a traveling car show :)

Eventually, they gave up on push-starting the bug and just pushed it into the parking lot so they could take a look at it and see if they could fix it (You can even see the people that have gathered across the street watching the spectacle)

 Poor Alex has had to push start his bug many times so this is nothing new for him!

While we were waiting to see if the “bug doctors” could cure the sick bug, more and more VW’s started stopping in.

 

I wasn’t kidding when I said it looked like the show just changed locations!

Eventually, the bug was pronounced dead and they went back to the show site to grab a truck and trailer.  Instead of just towing it back home, they wanted to go to the cruise-in anyway so we all ended up following the dead bug the rest of the way.

As we were nearing the cruise-in site, cars started trying to cut in and I made the comment, “You would think that these people would notice it’s a whole line of VW’s and they wouldn’t cut in” and Alex jokingly said “Yep, it’s literally like a funeral procession…you just don’t do that!”.  Yeah…it was funny at the time (I think the sun had gotten to us! ;))

Anyway, there was another show going on at Steak n Shake so it was packed when we got there. 

It was a muscle car type show so it was interesting to see all these German VW’s mixed in with all the American muscle cars.  I don’t think any of them minded because they all are car lovers :)

After we walked around and looked at the other cars (which I have to say was a nice change since I had walked around the VW car show at least 10 times), Alex and I went inside and had a milkshake and split a plate of cheese fries (two of my favorite things at Steak n Shake…brought back many memories of late night dinner/snacks here during high school).  Afterwards, we headed to his house to eat dinner with his parents.  As I’ve mentioned before, Alex’s mom is an awesome cook (probably where he gets it!) and this dinner was no different:  mango chutney chicken, creamed corn, and salad…yummy!!  After dinner, we all settled in to watch a Bristish cooking show called the Two Fat Ladies and enjoyed homemade peach cobbler a la mode.  Around midnight, I finally made my way home exhausted and stuffed! :)

The next day, I arrived around noonish, just in time to hang out a little before the awards ceremony.  While I was there, I did get to witness the annual engine blow competition.  Basically they take a junkyard engine, fix it enough to wear it will run, and then they run it wide open until it seizes up and dies.  They allow the patrons to buy time slots indicating when they think it will stop (Alex won it the very first year!).  Last year, it ran FOREVER and they didn’t even have spaces listed that far so this year there were twice as many spaces as normal.  Keeping last year in mind, most people wanted the hire spaces, but I think just about every space was filled by the time it started.  Well, you can see what happened below

As you can see, all those spaces were not needed as it did not run for very long, but it was still fun to see them blow up an engine  :)

After the engine blow, it was finally time for the award ceremony.  Unfrortunately, Alex didn’t place in any of his categories, but I think he had fun nonetheless.  Even though we didn’t have any trophies to display, we took our annual picture (although we had one the day before, we wanted one with our matching green attire and yes this is the green attire I eluded to buying in my Not Me! Monday post :))  I loved it because people kept coming up and asking me if I realized I matched the car! ;)

I liked the first shot better, but Alex wanted the whole car in the picture so we did another.  You can even see the heel of my green shoes in the first one! 

All in all, we had a great time and had fun catching up with the people who have been showing their cars for years :)  So, Alex packed up the bug and headed out.

So, the little green bug went home and was parked until next time (or until Birmingham Bug Blast in August :))

As I mentioned earlier, I took lots of pictures from the show and even though this post was FULL of pictures, it was no where near all the ones I took.  So here’s a slideshow from the weekend.  If you’d like to see the entire album, please click on the yellow icon in the bottom left corner and click on the album title to go to my Picasa album.

Enjoy!