SHORT SHIFT

I’ ve lost count of how many car events I’ve been to over the years — or, more accurately, I’ve never actually bothered to count. From the early, early days of various hot rod shows and circuit events with my dad, through to being deeply immersed in the import show and drag racing scenes, to the myriad events that the V8 scene has to offer, I’ve been to them all. While it’d be fair to say that I’ve probably attended more as a spectator than I have as an entrant, I’ve owned enough cars to have entered my fair share of things. Some of the memories from those events will last a lifetime; others, I’d happily forget about. Just prior to the previous issue going to print, my wife, my daughter, and I headed to Cruise Martinborough. Now that we’re living in Wellington, Martinborough’s only about an hour from home, so we’ve been over that way for various different things, although this was our first time at Cruise Marti. As I’ve mentioned previously, we run by the theory that, regardless of what other people say, we’ve got to attend every event we can at least once, as then we’ll know what we want to go back to and what can be skipped going forward. Maybe it was the location, maybe it was the smaller numbers for this type of event, but right from the get-go, the people attending just seemed friendly. It’s not the easiest thing doing events like this with a five-year-old, but I figured that, because it was school holidays, there’d be more kids around than there were. However, none of that mattered, as, everywhere we went, our daughter just seemed to blend in with the adults and make new friends, as did we. With Martinborough being a small town, overrun with cars and people from out of town, we inevitably saw other cruisers outside of the organized events. For us, at least, even just being at a mate’s rented accommodation one arvo — our own was up a very long, non-old-car-friendly gravel road out of town — led to impromptu meets and greets. What a good bunch of people we met! Of course, we could have been stand-offish and hidden ourselves away, but meeting new people is part of the fun at events like Cruise Martinborough, and putting in the effort is always well rewarded. While many of the people were met on a first-name basis only, I’ve no doubt that we’ll be seeing them again — if not, we’ll be meeting other like-minded good bastards. I hope you guys and girls get out there and do the same. Maybe we’ll be meeting you next …