On the road again, in the odd little car!

Well gang, here we are at the second weekend in July, and for all the MOPAR nuts on the eastern side of the Mississippi that can only mean one thing - Chryslers At Carlisle! Time for us to polish up our rides and head down to that sleepy little town in Pennsylvania for a couple of days of drooling over some of the coolest cars ever made, shaking our heads at some of the silliest, and fondly remembering some of our own prior cars. Here's what it looked like last year:

I think they had approximately 2,800 cars on display; down a little from the last few years, when it reached over 3,000, but still a LOT of cars. And as a very inclusive show, Carlisle allows a lot of Chrysler related brands, some of which haven't been made for many years (DeSoto, Plymouth), others that were at one time owned by Chrysler (American Motors), and now, of course, FIAT, which is actually the majority owner of Chrysler. So there's plenty of cars to see, kind of 'something for everyone'. Like this little Dodge Rampage, an odd little half truck based on the old Omni/Horizon. Billy was looking at one of these a few years ago.

Of course, for us 'older' guys, nothing brings back the memories like the cars we lusted after when we were kids. Like this 'Cuda.

Yeah, that's the ticket! And you can see where the 'strobe stripes' that I have on my car got started. Chrysler always had the coolest graphic packages back in the day!
One of the fun parts of going to the show is taking the old cars. There are some guys who put them up on a trailer, and pull 'em along behind a Ram truck, while others have them shipped in via an enclosed car carrier. Those are the nicest, most expensive cars you'll see there, and I suppose if I had a 'Cuda worth a quarter of a million dollars, I might be tempted to trailer it. Then again, maybe I wouldn't! Because to me, these cars were made to be driven. And the only way we truly preserve their special nature is by driving them. If you don't drive them, then they aren't cars any more, they're museum pieces. So, on Friday morning, Tommy will hop in my 'Bluecuda' and I'll crank up the 'Yellow Fish', and off we'll go.

It does take a certain amount of blind faith to make a journey like this in an old car. You never really can tell what might go wrong along the way. Especially with the crazy column shifter in this car. It has a nasty habit of getting jammed in first gear at the worst possible times, forcing you to pull over, pop the hood, and fiddle around with the linkage until you free the shifter. Loads of fun on the side of I-78 with traffic flying past at 75+ mph! But we had a lot of work done on the car this past winter, and it's running really well just now. So we'll say a few words to the god of acceleration, buckle the old lap belts, and hope that it isn't too terribly hot on the road.
I'll post up some photos of the place after we get back, and hopefully have some good tales about places we ate, cars we saw, and people we met.