dream cruise

This year is Bobo's first Woodward Dream Cruise.  On Friday night the kids and I rode down to Woodward and pulled up a piece of grass to watch the cars go by.  Here's Bobo posing with a fabulous example of Toyota engineering.

We ate popcorn and watched the show.  I picked a spot next to two old guys so I could listen to what they said about the cars, but they were mostly discussing the paint jobs and body work.  Traffic was pretty free-flowing at first but after about a half hour it was pretty clogged and everyone was going about two miles an hour.  Bobo figured out that we wave to cool cars, so he waved all by himself to people, which was completely adorable.

I gave the kids the camera to take turns taking photos (it keeps them interested).  Here are some of the vehicles that caught their eye:

 

On Saturday, my uncle and aunt from Ann Arbor came over for the day and we met them in the afternoon to hang out for awhile.  Here's a shot Nut Brown took of us.  I'm wearing pink, talking to my uncle in the hat, and my aunt is in the blue chair to my right.



 

Once again, the kids had the camera.  Nut Brown also ran over to hang out in the landscaping with some other kids when he got bored.  Here are a few of the 4,386 photos that we came home with from Saturday (you think I'm kidding?):



This last photo my uncle actually suggested I take.  He said, "My father - your grandfather - used to own one of those- it's a 1954 Plymouth (i don't remember the model)."  So I ran over and took a picture, and when I came back he said, "Actually, I'm wrong - it's a 1955 Plymouth xxx.  You can tell by the extra chrome pieces it has around the back windshield.  So it's not the same car that my dad used to drive."  I said wonderingly, "You are just full of trivia!" and he laughed and said, "About some things."

 

We walked up to the Chrysler display at the corner of 13 Mile and Woodward to check out the new Viper for Grandpa.  Photographs are courtesy of Nut Brown:

 

We also checked out the new 2014 Jeep and Nut Brown discovered the truth behind marketing: it's all hollow.  (He was trying to climb on the 'rocks' that were strewn around for atmosphere.)

Then when we were walking back to our car in the neighborhood behind Woodward, we randomly passed this:

The official pace car from the Indy 500 a few years ago.  Just parked in our neighborhood.  We also passed a Lamborghini parked by the side of the road back in the neighborhood as well.

I love dream cruise weekend.  It's so fun to live in a place that is so completely focused on one thing.  Detroit IS the Motor City.  There are two new families in our ward this summer, young people (younger than us) who have finished college and are living the dream: they've come to live and breathe cars in Detroit and work for the auto companies.  We passed a guy from Australia who was telling someone, "There's nowhere else for a petrolhead to be than in Detroit this weekend."   I'm not defending the car companies, and Detroit city certainly has problems, but I love being in a place that is so obsessed with and passionate about something.