This year was one of the most interesting SHO Conventions I have attended. And I've been to all but the first one. They are always fun, way low on sleep time, and way high on story telling. Here's mine for this year…

Me, with a white '90, and Steve Bates, with a (mostly) green '91, usually travel to these conventions together to cut costs. Well, this year my '90 had a special two piece crankshaft, and Steve didn't know if he would get to go until the last minute and didn't get his car prepped. Things weren't looking too good. So Steve gave himself a birthday present and rented a 2000 Jaguar S-Type V-6 from Hertz (not available in all areas). It wasn't an SHO, but I figured it would do! I immediately decided it should be named Nigel in honor of our Hoosier 2000 mascot. Why is it that British cars just seem to need a name? The three of us, Steve, Nigel, and Me (Fort Worth, TX) met up with David Bonds (Houston, TX) in Sherman, TX and headed for Joplin, MO. We arrived there around 11:00pm, and quickly found that the entire town was teeming with pre-teens. The Little League World Series was going on and we were up to our armpits in 10-year-olds. So, we made the wise decision to head on to Springfield, MO. It was 75 miles away, and at our 85mph pace, that was less than an hour. After a short nights sleep, and a stop for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel we were off once again. BTW, there was a nice looking red Gen. II at the Cracker Barrel, anyone we should have known?

We cruised nicely along, getting a few nice comments from truckers about the Jag. Seems it's the 1st one anyone had seen with a CB antenna on the trunk. Oh, this would be a good time to bring up what became affectionately known as the Bitch Box. (As an aside, the Air Force in the early '50s figured out that pilots would pay more attention to a woman's voice giving them warnings than a male one. The Convair B-58 was credited as being the 1st plane to use such a system. The system was officially known as the Audible Warning Alert, but was known to her pilots as The Bitch Box, or Bitchin' Betty.) Officially known as Hertz Neverlost, it is a Magellan GPS navigation system. Now, we were using it in a way that it was not really designed. This particular system was not designed to drive cross-country; it was designed to get you from the airport to your hotel. The entire country was divided up into maps, and they do not overlap, not one foot, not one inch. If you entered a city into the system not on your map, the system crashed. Not just call you stupid, which it did enough anyway, but shut down. Case in point, Springfield, IL (we thought of driving on over to Springfield, OH, just to make it a full set, and we haven't found Homer Simpson, yet) is not on the same map as Chicago. Also, occasionally, the actual road and the road on the map were not in the same place, although the railroad tracks were always in the right place. Does anyone know of a car that Hertz rents that will do 85mph through a corn field? According to our friend Betty, the S-Type will! It's only response seemed to be "Please return to the indicated route." in a firm but polite, female voice. We grew to hate that sentence. Hence, the term Bitch Box.

Just north of Springfield, IL our small Texas caravan attracted the attention of the Illinois State Police. Not for speeding, I spotted him before he could light us up with his nasty microwave emissions, but because we had Texas plates. Only on the back, because the first thing I do when I cross the border out of Texas is remove the front plate. Apparently, this part of our route is the prime drug running trail from South America, though Texas, to the upper mid-West. So this fine excuse for an officer, and his dog Budgie (which we knew because it was written on the window), came blowing out of the median and ran us down to check out the green Gen. II and Nigel. He slowly came up beside us to run our plates. We apparently didn't match the profile, oops, they can't do that anymore, so he turned around and headed back toward his parking spot. I really wasn't sure what he would do with the rental Jag and the CB antenna, but I was ready to hand over my bottle of Ibuprofen for the cause! Then we hit the fun that is Chicago. We were to skirt just under the southern part and head for South Bend. We did, but it took forever due to road construction. Actually, it looked more like road non-construction as nothing was going on, and it didn't look like anything had for quite sometime. We then found out that the Indiana State Police don't seem to care how fast you drive, but that's another story.

We arrived at the Holiday Inn in South Bend, immediately found Paul Thomas cleaning up his car (a sight we would see often during the week). We saw a few SHOs parked in the lot, including Crazy George's, we knew fun would soon begin. We checked in and headed over to the host hotel to the bar, where we usually gather. And found no one. So, we then headed to the parking lot to see who else was there, where we found Don Mallinson. He said we looked like we were going to the OK Corral for a shoot-out, we said we were just looking for someone to have a beer with. We did hope we looked more like the Earp's than the Clayton's did, however. So with Don in tow, we went back to the bar, and met up with some other folks for the week's first installment of story telling.

Monday was a great day, as we actually got some sleep. Then it was over to be officially registered, and then off with a group to the Studebaker museum. Point of trivia, the HUMVEE plant was originally a Studebaker Military Vehicle plant, so in a way Studebakers are still being manufactured. Then we had lunch, cleaned up Nigel from the bug infested trip through the Mid-West (I'm still looking for the Hertz guys in the green Jaguar coveralls to come clean it), and then it was off to the College Football Hall of Fame to meet up with everyone else for some good talk, and the first banquet. The Tire Rack dude was informative, not boring and most important, relatively brief. Then it was back to the Marriott bar for more lies/stories.

Tuesday it was Divorce Derby time. There were many cars lined up, the crowd was restless, or rather, hungry, and since Steve and I aren't married (definitely not to each other!) several of us went to find breakfast and the Auburn-Cord-Duesenburg Museum. On arrival, we found Ransom Holbrook disassembling part of his engine. The dreaded awful banging noise had been heard! We left Nigel to be judged (where were those Hertz guys?!) and went to see some of the finest cars ever built. We talked to a docent that actually worked there. He told us you could pull the engine and transmission from a Tucker in less than 45 minutes. Anyone who has even considered pulling one of our engines no know for sure that no one at Ford has ever seen a Tucker! He knew because he had done it several times. We stopped by the NATMUS museum and the air museum at Grissom AFB, and then it was off to Kokomo for the costume party. I went as an unemployed computer geek with a broken crankshaft. I looked perfect! Tyce Carlson was our guest speaker for the evening. He turned out to be quite interesting, and seems to be a really nice guy. I didn't recognize him with out a sponsor hat or a helmet on. It was nice to see him in is "normal state". We were serenaded by a barbershop quartet, who was actually quite good. Then a bunch of us went go-cart riding. I kept up my streak of good luck by having my first cart run out of gas in mid ride and my last ride to be in a car with a flat rear tire. I was; however, sending out a shower of sparks that no one wanted to get behind! We then headed out to find a place to grab a quick beer, and found that Indiana rolls up the streets at 9:30. We found an Applebee's open (barely) had nice a wind down from the racing, and talked of go kart and SHO problems.

Wednesday it was the covered bridge tour, which we missed due taking too much time for breakfast, and on to Indy. We went strait to Indy and went through the Motor Speedway Museum, then did some souvenir shopping and back for the parade lap. It was quite the thrill to drive on the track (or in my case ride) knowing how much history took place there. Then Steve and I parted company with the rest of the group to visit some friends of mine in Indy. We saw lots of downtown and the Broad Ripple district, and enjoyed the company of folks who really miss Texas.

Thursday was the exciting trip down to French Lick. Just one question, who named this place? After a bit of a stutter start we were off to some of the narrowest, twistiest, curviest roads I've seen in a long time. Don, with help from Tim Wright, had prepared the rally sheet. The markings were dead on, except we never actually found the beginning. Doing math while driving, talking on the CB, looking out for the next marker, and not running into a tree was rather interesting. What was the .8 mile mark that was about 80 feet, Don? Nigel was in the lead with about 10 SHOs in tow. The Jag handles differently than my SHO. It is a very well balanced automobile, but doesn't have the oomph due to extra weight, a lot less HP (when the crank is in one piece), and one of those automatic transmission things. We apparently didn't travel at quite the rate of a few other folks, but then we didn't hit any trees, either. Sorry, Ron. :-) We hit the resort, a.k.a. the big ol' building on the right, and unpacked and unwound.

The Resort is a rather impressive structure, especially if you are into late 19^th century architecture. The lot we parked in was originally built to hold 30 private rail cars. Now that would be an impressive site! I will say that the Resort's showers put out more water at a higher pressure than any hotel I have ever stayed in. I haven't had hair that clean in a long time! Around 6:00pm I ran into Terry Earwood, our guest speaker for the evening, in the lobby. I was the poor soul who dealt with setting up the driving school at the Dallas Convention in 1994, and spent quite some time speaking with him then. I was glad he remembered he was supposed to know me. He is not only a truly world class driver, but could make a good living as a stand up comic. The banquet time came and the fun began. Steve and I received our own 'No SHOw SHO' award for bringing Nigel the Jaguar and entering him in the Car SHOw. We as a group raised nearly $10,000 for the Red Cross, a record for us, and large amount for a group our size. I almost busted a gut listening to Terry's 'speech'. We finally found the hotel bar, and talked until way too late in the usual last convention night style.

Friday we were off to Memphis for bar-b-que and blues. Beale Street was a really pleasant experience. Some of the best blues I've ever heard, and we just wandered around the street. I can now tell you exactly when the Fed-Ex planes LEAVE Memphis. About 2 hours after you get back from Beale Street. Saturday we were home, and Sunday Nigel went back to Hertz. I was rather sad about both.