Day 8: The Michigan Vintage VW Show
As we headed down to the park where the show was being held the weather looked doubtful. It held out for awhile and I got some swap meet hunting done. Then the organizers had us arrange a bunch of the cars into a big huge Herbie 53 and then a 50 to celebrate the 50th Birthday of the Karmann Ghia. A plane flew overhead and the local fire department came by with their ladder truck to get some shots of the spectacle. An amazing thing happened...there were enough Ghias, about 60, to circle the whole number. Having that number of Ghias show up in the heart of the Michigan rust belt was an amazing show of support for the trip we were making. All too soon it started drizzling and later got heavier. One of the regular events, the pass and review as moved inside the big tent and I was asked to bring the T34 in for this honor. After lunch we called it a day and headed off to our next hotel. Some of the cruisers decided to go to a movie but those of us not interested ended up spending the evening in the back yard of a local having a barbeque.
Day 9: VWofA and Karmann
The next morning the weather looked bad again as we set off up another of Michigan's cratered freeways heading for VWoA headquarters. They first treated us to breakfast and then we spent a couple hours getting the full tour of their museum from our own party member Clark Campbell. Clark had pulled a '63 Ghia convertible named Ruby out of their collection and shipped it to California to join us on the cruise. There was some pretty cool stuff in the collection and while it is no Wolfsburg Autostadt it has a well picked representative collection of Volkswagens and memorabilia. While we were there the VWoA employees had a chance to come out and check out the 30 or so cars in our group. From there we had another 45 minute drive over to the new Karmann facility in another Detroit suburb. In Plymouth Karmann had built a large factory to build convertible top systems for the American car market. The facility was still empty but will soon be equipped for their first project with Pontiac. They fed us lunch and then took us to see several working models of their products. From there they had all the Ghias drive into the empty factory where we pretended to be the last Karmann Ghias made in 2005. We said goodbye to several members of our troupe here and headed for our next dealership meal at Ed Schmidt VW in Perrysburg Ohio. The rain followed us much of the way there so I was thankful I had found replacement blades at one of our previous dealer stops to replace the NOS blades I started the trip with. That night Bill Smith rebuilt Rachel's carburetor in our bathroom sink as the rest of us partied a bit. The hardest part was now behind us and the days from here on out would be easier to complete.
Day 10: Sidetracked Looking for a Part
Tuesday morning the weather had improved a bit but as we were heading with it we were to find that we weren't out of it yet. We had added a newlywed couple yesterday to replace Jim Kikuchi who was heading back home. Cullen and Alexandria had been married on Saturday in Pennsylvania and spent their honeymoon with us for the next week. The lunch was a Disney Herbie gig at a minor league baseball game on the other side of Cleveland. To avoid the toll road we took a state highway paralleling Lake Erie. Lunch was not provided that day so we found a nice restaurant next door to the ballpark. The rain started up again sending the fans home early and chasing us to our cars as well. We were headed to Pennsylvania now and took back roads out of Ohio. We had to take a detour just before the border and someone expressed an urge for ice cream so we stopped in a little town at the Dairy Queen. Before leaving town we asked for directions to get through the rest of the detour Shortly after entering Pennsylvania we turned south for the Pittsburgh area where we were due for supper at Bilco Motors in Wexford. But shortly after going through yet another small burg called Greenville we passed what has to be a VW landmark in the area. As we went by Rachel called on the Walkie Talkie for us to turn around and stop so she could look for a carburetor to replace her still questionable unit. The owner of this collection was a Mr. Hoovler and was very glad to see us. Seems he had wanted to join us on our cruise but had too much work and was unable to get away. So when we showed up he quickly called his wife to ask her to bring the camera down for this big event. It was fun roaming the property seeing these quiet rain coated remnants of days gone by. After supper we were invited down to a local shop in Pittsburg before heading to our hotel. The building was in an old part of the city and looked to be older than the first auto.
