Goodguys cruise 2010

Thursday morning, we met with Johnsons and Nystroms and headed for Des Moines. We drove south on Highway 15 to Mankato and then over to Albert Lea. A good choice of roads, no city trafficc. A real nice drive on mostly 2 lane roads.
At Albert Lea we met with Dick and Ellen from Britt, MN. After a short lunch the four of us continued towards Des Moines. In Akeny, IA we stopped for a "cool one" and some freshly made potatoe chips at "Chips". This has become part of the Des Moines tradition.
Terry Nystoms transmission decided to stop shifting at Albert Lea. He got it to shift into third after a bit and nursed it onto the hotel. We talked with Des Moines resident and friend Dave Ruhs, he called a friend that knew the tranny shop owner, pulled some strings and got Terry into the shop early Friday. After about four hours it was all fixed. They had to remove the valve body and unstick some valves and what ever.
While Terry was doing the tranny, I was replacing my brake light switch in the Vicky. It was a 4 minute job, but finding the correct part was about 3 hours! NAPA had a booth at the show, the counter guy finally found a switch for me at Car Quest in Akeny, drove his personal car there, bought it and brought it to me at the fairgrounds....that's customer service!!
We had a great time the whole weekend at the show, nice weather, warm on Saturday but it is July!! Over 3500 cars, and all are very nice. Rain cut Sunday short so we took the wives to the mall....what a nice guy!!
Monday we took off with aboout 20 cars for Clinton IA. Had a real nice drive, attended a cruise night there, did some shopping in the afternoon, a nice day.
Visited the American Pickers (from TV )store, neat to see.
Tuesday we left for Mundelein, IL to visit the Roadster Shop. Had a great adventure getting there, found dirt roads, took a detour, but had fun. The shop feed us lunch...wow what a spread. Wow what a shop!! Huge, many many projects, every tool you could think of. It was far better that any shop I saw in LA last month. They build beautiful cars.
From there it was off to see Rad Rides by Troy. Talk about an adventure.....the route took us right thru downtown Chicago....no other way to get there. It was a little white knuckleing drive. Traffic, then some rain and 22 rodsa and customs trying to stay together. Terry's 40 vapor locked twice, but both times was a quick exit out of traffic. I was holding my breath as we drove thru the tunnel and the few miles that had no shoulders. We had removed the hood louver pan before we left, but did not help. A quick bottle of cold water on the fuel block and we were off again. That was a drive that none of us will foget for a while, and one that none of us want to do again.
Troy feed us a great Mexican dinner, two free meals in one day...what a deal!
His shop had some awesome projects, all 50 and 60's cars, most with turbo charged engines, big engines. Awesome machines. They really have some great talent there.
In the morning we head for Indy. That should be a cake walk after todays drive.