Nostalgia

Today is the Woodward Dream Cruise… and Boy! am I ever nostalgic about this event. The Second Mrs. Pennington, my buddy Greg, and I participated in the first-ever Dream Cruise back in 1995… in this car:

And dang but we had us some fun! And one not-so-fun moment, too, when the car inexplicably died… just quit running… and wouldn’t re-start. Greg, TSMP and I pushed that two-ton monster about six blocks to Greg’s house where he diagnosed the problem, fixed it, and we jumped back into the fray. It’s GOOD to have a GM power train engineer as a friend, and even better to have him hanging around in the back seat when your vintage auto-machine decides to go belly up on ya. But I digress.

I can think of a lot of places in the world I’d like to be at any given point in time. But today? There’s NOwhere I’d rather be than on Woodward… laughing, joking, having a beer or two, and ogling all the fantastic cars that turn out for Da Cruise. There are a lot of good links, with lotsa pics of stunning machinery, and here are but a few you might wanna look at… assuming you’re a gear-head.

Jalopnik
FERNDALE: Woodward Dream Cruise coverage -- 8/16/08
VIDEO: Morning at the Dream Cruise -- 8/16/08
Big Boy dishes out old-fashioned favorites -- 8/16/08
All you need to know to navigate the Cruise -- 8/16/08
MARK PHELAN: Classic cars delight fans -- 8/16/08
Photo gallery: GM Parade of Cars in Ferndale -- 8/16/08
Photo gallery: Dream Cruise 2008 - Pontiac -- 8/16/08
GM parade celebrates a 100-year history -- 8/16/08
PONTIAC: Woodward Dream Cruise coverage -- 8/16/08
Other cruise happenings -- 8/16/08

That ought to hold ya for a while.

(Photo: My old Cadillac, in my old driveway, in old Ferndale, Michigan. The photo says 1992, but I think it was more like 1995...as we did The Cruise shortly after I acquired the Caddy.)

Update: I just had to add this lil blurb from the Mark Phelan column, linked above (coz not everyone chases every link, ya know):

'Run what you brung” is the street-racer’s motto, but run what you love will be the rule as Woodward Avenue turns into the world’s largest car show today.
The Woodward Dream Cruise may also be the world’s most egalitarian, democratic event, uniting car lovers of all ages, incomes and races in a parade of more than 30,000 vehicles.
From teenager with their first cars to retirees driving the cars they longed for when they were young, the Woodward Dream Cruise has become a spectacle that unites people from throughout metro Detroit and draws visitors from across the country and around the world to see the Motor City at its best.
[...]
There's no telling what you may see, though, from Ford engineers taking the new 2010 Mustang out for a spin to the 1932 Buick sedan that 67-year-old Ken Materia of Flint souped up with a high-output Chevrolet small block V8.

Dang. I SO wanna be there...