Spectacular, Spectacular

Yesterday Baby Cakes and I went to the 2007 Brisbane Hot Rod and Street Machine Spectacular at the RNA show grounds. That is a picture of a $7.50 piece of paper (tickets were $15 and that's half of one...).

I had fun, the cars were shiny and pretty. BabyCakes had fun except for the fact that he only saw one person whom he knew. I tried to give him solace in the fact that whilst there might only be one person who he knew, his impact was such that the guy still refused to acknowledge him, 4 years after leaving the industry - I guess the paint business is pretty cut-throat!

We saw some pretty amazing cars, some for how low they were, some for how schmick they were, and some for the astounding design choices people make that don't gel with our sensibilities. I couldn't get over the pin striping on one car - they had spent so much time, effort and I'm sure money, on creating an absolutely seamless clean lined look and then put a pin strip on that looked like it had been done by a 12 year old boy with the wrong paint brush. It was a designed choice but it made no sense to me.

Equally stymieing but much more fun, was a Torana they put on a Dyno machine, just so we could see how much horsepower it had. It was a drag car which had the very cool number plates of "IN DEBT" which made me laugh. The MC then explained that the engine alone was worth $60k, and BabyCakes guestimated the total cost of the car around $130k. That's a serious hobby! The Torana had to be strapped to the Dyno with no less than 6 ratchet straps, had an engine of over 680 cubic inches and ended up on its second ear splittingly loud attempt that we saw, at the 719 horsepower mark. I think the street legal 6 cyl Mazda before hand managed around 370... It was loud and smelly, but impressive, made better for the fact that we actually managed to get a seat in the stands of the "Dyno Pit".

We saw some really cool 57 chevvies, lots of them, but this one was the stand out.

We will be trying to get in touch with the owners via the car club, to see if we can convince them to do a wedding *wink*

BabyCakes never ceases to be amazed what I can link back to the wedding.... He has admitted though that he's glad I'm excited by the wedding rather than the alternative!


We spent the rest of the weekend staying at BabyCakes' parents house. Mrs Cakes is not recovering from her chemo as well as we would have liked to have seen, and so we hung around to give both Mr and Mrs Cakes a bit of support and a bit of a change of pace. We managed to ply Mrs Cakes with a fair bit of food and some different food from that which Mr Cakes tends to supply. We also managed to impart tips and tricks of bulking out snacks and meals with vitamins and the ever important fluids. We were happy enough with the outcomes that we left ;) - BabyCakes probably would have stayed on a bit longer if it was thought to be useful. I'm glad on a purely selfish level that he's at home with the cat and me! :)