I fondly remember the first car show I entered Greta into (Greta is my affectionate name for Dream Cruise #38 / 58). It was at the Ford Sho-N-Go held at Ford World Headquarters in 1999. Man, it was hot that day...sitting out there on the asphalt parking lot for 8 hours waiting for the results of the judging. The judging format was kinda neat...you were given an envelopeto place on your windshield and a perforated sheet listing all the different classes at the show in which to vote. So every attendee and every car owner at the show had the opportunity to vote for their favorites in each class by placing a perforated tally into the respective car's envelope.

At the end of the day, a marshall came around and picked up each envelope and took them back to the judges area to tally up. Here my Greta was sitting next to highly modified GT's, Cobra's, Saleen's and McClaren's. There were about 25 cars in my class and with all that testosterone muscle out there, I didn't figure I had a "snowball's chance in hell" of winning. To even place would have been cool. Well, they started announcing each class's runners-up and winners and with over 40 classes and 90 degrees outside, this became an ordeal, and naturally, my class was one of the last. There were so many cars in my class, they announced they were going to give 3 runners-up and 1 winner. They announced the runners-up and I was not amongst them; dismayed, I started to walk away knowing that my car couldn't have won. Gotta about 20 steps heading toward Greta when I heard my name over the loud speaker to come up and get my first place trophy! Ninety degrees or not, I ran back to grab Greta's 1st placer before they changed their minds. It was awesome and
made the day's ordeals worth it. Made it even nicer was the fact that my peers had voted for my car and not some judge with a checklist; and I loved the look on some of my competition's faces when I got into Greta with the trophy and drove off into the sunset...smiling contentedly.

"There are two types of people, the one's who finish what they start and so
on..." John Byrnes