BirkinBernie

Sep 18, 2005 Pay no attention to the gauge on the right. All traffic laws were strictly adhered to. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. While a few of the participants were urged to slow down and behave by various local authorities, I escaped the trip with no "official" conversations. While there was some mechanical mayhem, I know of no contact damage or injuries during the trip. The Tour organizers provided Garmin route files that could be loaded into the appropriate model Garmin GPS. It proved to be faultless - I don't remember deviating from it once. They also provided a file containing a route book with not only detailed route instructions, but extensive lists of things to do in the cities we visited.

Sep 15, 2005 7:30pm The 14th and 15th are a blur. Once cleaned up, the car was, much to my surprise, not seriously damaged. I bought and borrowed the needed parts from friends all over town. A neighbor stripped and painted the roll bar, I cleaned, fabricated, drilled, riveted - and shopped. A buddy helped place the snaps in a new boot cover. Exhausted, on the 15th at dusk, I pushed the car into the garage and stood there looking at it - it was ready to go! I dam near cried - friends can do amazing things and they had come through for me in spades. I had taken lots of pics of the damage, and my classic car insurance company said to call them when I got back from the trip. In the end, they went above and beyond to make everything right. And I was leaving for Austin (the first tour stop after Houston) in the morning!!

Sep 13, 2005 6pm The visitors flying over for the USA Tour were arriving in Houston on the 14th - I was to leave in the morning to join them. Long story short, the ni-cad battery pack for my new lipstick camera (hooks to a digital camcorder) decided to short out and set fire to the contents of the boot while I was in the house. Luckily, a neighbor saw the fire and alerted us. I was able to put the fire out before the fire dept arrived. The car was nosed into the garage. We dodged a bullet - the fuel filler hose was burnt and blistered on the outside, and blistered on the inside. It was about to burn through to 10 gallons of gasoline. Gone was almost everything outside of clothing I needed for the trip. But our house was not damaged.

Well, of course! All I can say is, DOH!

Holy smoke, where did you find this! That is my car on the right, and this was taken around 2001. Mitch Leben (yellow) was picking his car up that day to take it home to Houston. Mitch, Dick Brink and I went for a drive and stopped at a park for a couple pictures.