National G8 Meet: Day 1

Today was the first official day of the 2011 National G8 Meet!

Because I arrived yesterday, I didn’t need to check-in this morning… so I slept in for the first time in a while. When I woke-up and checked the various G8 Forums (like I do almost every morning) and saw a post about a local landmark that I just had to go.

I’ve been a big fan of the TV show American Pickers, and with their “headquarters” only 20 minutes away, I snuck-off before today’s G8 activities for a visit.

Antique Archaeology is just a little shop in a quaint town on the Mississippi River. Even with the location entered into my GPS I had a difficult time finding it… and ended-up driving around an circles for ~15 minutes. When I finally made it, I spent a few minutes looking around the shop…

It was really cool to see the items on the walls and remember the TV episodes were Mike and Frank picked them. I kept finding myself saying, “I recognize that thing… and that thing…”; It was very cool. I also took the opportunity to buy some Picker’s swag!

Because I got lost looking for the Picker’s place, I had to rush back to the Isle of Capri for the scheduled lunch. Fortunately, when I arrived there were still a few other people in line for food… so I wasn’t stuck eating alone. After the lunch I headed out to the parking garage and spent a few hours meeting people as they arrived for the festivities. It was great seeing the various things people have done with their cars.

In the afternoon everyone gathered to head to Cordova Dragway for some fun on the track. There was quite a turnout and really impressive to see the train of G8’s on the road. We arrived at the track and got together for tech inspection, numbers, etc.

It was really great to hangout with guys at the drags. There were quite a few first timers who were trying to figure out what to do. Fortunately there are lots of people who knew what they were doing, and it seemed like everyone received a good primmer.

I made a couple of passes down the track, but my car was running quite slow. I was a bit disappointed with the results, but I know that my car wasn’t setup to run at it’s best… heck, I didn’t even empty the bags out of the trunk! Unfortunately things were running slow, and after a GXP dumped coolant on the track, it was over an hour between runs. I wasn’t able to get into a grove where I could figure out how to launch my car, etc… so called it a night early. Not too much later we started to get a little rain, which ultimately put an end to the night (even before the bracket racing could declare a winner).

Tomorrow morning I need to be awake early to get my car washed before heading to the car show. Hopefully things will not be too busy and I can do a proper hand wash, but one way or another I need to get the G8 clean… this is after all the National G8 Meet!