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  • GONE 2012: Day 2

    Posted on September 22nd, 2012 tcorzett No comments

    GONE was in full swing today… the car show in the morning, cruise in the afternoon, and a dinner at night! With the rain yesterday my car wasn’t looking at it’s best. There was just enough dirt that I didn’t want to do a “waterless wash” so I headed back to Total Detailing Auto Spa. I probably just needed to hose-down the car, but figured a full wash would be nice.

    For the first time in the life of the G8 I took it through an automatic car wash. Yeah, I know others have done it before, but I’ve always hand washed the G8. While the car looked great, a little piece of me died inside… ‘sigh.

    I arrived at the car show and took a few minutes to take care of the little details. I don’t have many appearance mods, so figure the show is more for fun than winning a trophy, but I wanted to put my best foot forward. All the hard work seemed to work as quite a few people commented on how great the G8 “cleaned-up” after my long drive.

    Most of the early afternoon was spent walking around the car show admiring all of the different things that can be done to a G8. It really is cool to see how each owner has chosen to customize their car. Trying to pick a car for each of the show categories was really hard!

    After the car show everyone grouped together for the cruise. The route was the same as last year, but without the stop at Poopy’s for dinner; we also started a little earlier… all so that we’d get back to the hotel before dark.


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    Since I had the route programmed into my GPS I became one of the “locals” who were designated “leaders”. The idea was to break-up the cars into groups of ~10 with a leader to keep people together and on route. I’ve lead quite a few cruises before, so did my best to keep everyone together… it didn’t take long until I had ~30 G8’s in line behind me!

    Leading a cruise can be a little stressful… trying to keep everyone together, not getting lost, avoiding speeding tickets, etc. Fortunately I was able to relax a bit and enjoy the drive. Unfortunately I wasn’t really able to drive “spirited” through the hills, as I didn’t want to leave people behind, but oh well.

    Mid-way through the cruise we stopped-off at a little island for some photos. Driving up to the island I was really impressed to see the previous two groups of G8’s waiting… a crowd of people lining the road watching us drive up. All told there were 51 G8’s parked on the island!

    The drive back to the hotel was nice, and the scenic views were highlighted by the clouds and setting sun. Being in the lead I spent most of my time looking at G8’s in the rear view mirror, but as we approached Bettendorf (and people knew where they were going) they started to drive a bit more independently. Now with cars all around me, driving towards the sunset, I felt right at home!

    We pulled into the hotel just as the staff was rolling-out dinner. It’s been quite cold the past few days, but that didn’t spoil the fun. After some much needed grub some people headed inside to the casino, others took-over a lounge for consumption of beer, and a few even went to a local cruise night.

    Tomorrow is the last day of GONE and consists of an awards banquet and a cruise to Pontiac, Illinois. It’s going to be difficult to say goodbye to everyone, but it will be good to check-out Pontiac again… and at some point I need to start my journey back towards California.

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