and now for the Really Wild Part

After I came home from the memorial for Kenny "Panda" Rhorer I was enlightened and exhausted at the same time and I posted a face book update of  "have I got a story for you" or something like that.  But I had too much to catch up on to be able to sit down and write about the evening and tell the story like it deserves to be told.  Earlier I wrote about the memorial itself and it was honestly the best memorial service I have ever had the honor to witness much less be a part of.  Again, I would like to thank Panda's family for having me there and I am so thankful for all the kind things you said to me.  You  lost somebody you loved dearly and went out of your way to make me feel welcomed there, first class is all I can say.

When the service was over one of Panda's friends got up and karaoke'd the hell out of a song that I am sure had some special meaning.  If I am lucky enough to have done a good job and helped a family at their most horrible moments in their lives, people come up to me and always talk about the person that they've lost.  More often than not, the person they have lost was someone that I have lost as well.  After it's over, everyone who doesn't get up to speak comes up and says what they wanted to say but just couldn't.  For those people I say, "Ya know what, ya can" and you should.  There were quite a few people at the service and it was dark in the room so I couldn't really get a good look at every one's faces but for the ones that I could, everyone looked at peace.  As I put on my jacket and after having said goodbye to all of Panda's kids, I was telling  two of his boys that the only reason that their dad was so cool and loved by so many is because of the way he was raised.  There must have been amazing respect and love in that family.  Great people like Panda must come from great stock so to speak.  That in order to honor their father they had to live up to the name that he has made and strive to achieve what he would be proud of you for.  Shortly after beginning to have this talk with the boys an older, tough looking guy had walked over with his wife and just stood there and listened, I concentrated on the boys.  As I finished he took my hand and said thank you so much.  My son would have really loved this ceremony.  Like the  ass that I am I say oh, was he not able to make it tonight?  He said no he was here all along, "I am Kenny's dad".  Remove foot from mouth now!  He said some incredibly nice things to me and we parted.  PROOF IN MY GOOD STOCK THEORY!

I walked out the front door on to the patio to have a smoke before riding off on the old bike.  As I walk through the door a woman stops me and she has this absolute blank stare on her face.  "Can I speak to you please for a moment"?  Sure, what's up are you okay I asked.  She proceeds to lay some Wild Shit out on me that sent chills straight up my spine and as I sit here telling you this, I can't believe that I forgot all of this when I was writing about the service itself.  CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!  This is what started me writing about the memorial in the first place. Ya Ready?  Okay now get this.  I couldn't catch her name because she spoke very softly like a child not knowing what to say.  After she told me her name she didn't say much and her eyes welled up.  That was just incredible, what you said in there was incredible and I have never seen a person's life and memory celebrated in this way.  I told her that I understood and that losing Panda was a great loss for everyone.  Now here is where it gets weird.  She wasn't there for Panda.  She was on her way home when she saw Kiley's on the side of the road.  Now she had never been there before and she was a single mom with a young daughter and she didn't go to bars much at all.  She had moved here from Chicago  and  shortly after moving here with her mom and child, her mom dies!  She now has only one other person that she knows in Arizona, she moved here with her and it's her best friend.  She said that her mother was so hard and so tough that she would never let her cry.  She said that even as a kid, her mom always told her to toughen up and to be tough.  When her mother passed she never let herself cry so not to let her mom down.  Two weeks ago, the only person she has left on earth, her best friend blows her brains out and kills herself.  I am not sure but I thought she said with a shot gun if you can imagine but I couldn't make that out clearly. 

She said that she was driving down the road and overwhelming forces made her cross the lanes and head towards the bar.  She couldn't really stop it and didn't know why.  All she could feel was an invisible force driving her into the parking lot.  She parked and could not understand why she had to go inside.  The feelings so strong she could not resist them.  She said that she walked in just as I began to speak.  Somehow, someway this woman who didn't even live near there, who knew not one single person there much less Panda, was sent some kind of message from someone to stop and stop right there.  She didn't know what to do.  When she realized what she had walked in on she said she almost freaked.  So now I am standing there listening to all of this and I am thinking holy shit!  What do you say to someone who was just sent where you are, by A SPIRIT?  I said maybe this is your mom's way of letting you know that it's okay to cry and that you should go home and finally let it all out, get it all out and know that you should celebrate her life and not mourn her.  SHE SAID NO THAT'S NOT IT and then didn't really say anything.  I didn't know what to do.  If I had to describe the look and color of her face under any other circumstances, I would say that it looked like she had seen a ghost.  IN THIS CASE, SHE HAD ONE FOR A GPS!  I talked to her for a few more moments but she just shook her head and said "I have to figure out why I was made to come here", "do you think I was meant to come here to meet you"?  I don't think so, I think that you were sent here to hear for yourself that it was okay to live yourself.  She said no, I'm pretty sure it's you.  I wished her much luck, told her to be strong for her daughter, that they have to take care of each other now and I hugged her and walked briskly over to kick start my bike.  It was cold out for the ride home and no amount of layering was going to take the chill that had settled down deep into my spine away.  I sat down on the couch last night and thought about the evening and once again came to the conclusion that life is far too short, love everyone that deserves it, try to love the ones that may not and love yourself first and foremost because bad things happen in life and you need to be strong for yourself so that you may be strong for others...

Now that is some weird shit.  I think not only did Panda come and watch over his own Memorial Service, but I think that he got up to heaven and found these two ladies up there sad about their daughter and Panda said c'mon, I'll drive you down there, let's go.  ARE YA READY, YA READY?   (joke from the service)  I really believe that even in his very own loss, he was so amazing that he somehow made this all happen for this young girl just showing up, he had to have! I don't think me trying to explain how crazy this felt because I can't explain the look on her face, she was truly lost standing there.  But, like all you women, no matter what I said she just wouldn't listen.... 

It was a Memorial service that I will never forget, for a friend that I never got to meet.... 

What comes next?

Until we finally do get to meet up there man, know that we got you covered down here!

Best Friend I Never Had

I am not writing this in memory of this man as I have never met him.  I am writing this blog in his honor.

My friends, I want to introduce you to Kenny "Kung Fu Panda" Rohrer.

A few days ago I got a phone call from a dear friend, she was crying so hard that had in not been for caller ID, I would have never known who was on the phone, right up until we hung up.  We had left Barrett Jackson Car Auction on Sunday afternoon and headed home.  We took the 101 back home.  As it turns out, so did Panda, but he never made it home.  Details of the accident are sketchy at best, but we know that he ended up smacking someone hard from behind and as I understand it, he passed from this world to the next damn near instantly, at least I pray he did.  The call was to ask if I were willing to come perform the memorial service and to try and help this family begin healing.  How could I ever say no?

I am sure you are wondering why Jack Shit, the guy who lives to put smiles on people's faces would choose such a sad topic to write about going into the weekend right?  Please, allow me to explain my thoughts here.  You see, I live by very simple rules.  There is really no way to put every single person you meet through the ringer to see if they are truly worthy of all you have to give.  The people who come to me from other friends, already know that person and they immediately get the benefit of the doubt.  I always say, A friend to my friend is now a friend to me.  Does that make sense for you all?  As it turns out, Panda was not only a friend to my friend, but a friend to a great many friends of mine and those that he was friends with are stellar people, yet I never once had the opportunity to meet him or worse yet, I never got to ride with him and that saddens me.  As you may or may not know by now, I am an ordained minister.  I have performed a great many weddings and sadly nearly as many funerals.  To hear the pain in the voice of my friend is very hard for me to handle, when I care about someone all I want to do is take their pain away. 

Last night was the memorial service.  When I arrived, people were already drinking like it was an Irish Wake.  If you don't know what I am describing you are lucky.  We Irish have been known to mourn for months and never put the bottle down the entire time.  Last night when I arrived, I was a man with a plan!  I refused to mourn and I refused to allow anyone else to do it either.  This was the only rule of the service.  If tears are shed, they best be from laughing and remembering something hysterical that this maniac shared with them.  Pretty simple right?  Not so fast though.  If you have never gotten up at a funeral and eulogized someone, you have no idea how hard it is to keep your composure.  Now when it's someone you loved and they were not sick and passed on slowly, but rather ripped from your life it really ups the pressure something fierce.  I met with both of his wives, at least I think they were both wives, this guy was living large!  Hell, I left there and I am still not sure who was who?  For all I know, he was still married to both of them?  Anyway, as I began to explain to the family what I do, I asked who and how many people would be coming up to speak?  There was one for sure and maybe one of the boys.  Ut oh!  Now what?  Normally when I perform one of these I know the person well and I myself can go on and on but I didn't know Panda.  I made them a deal.  If I can make this about celebrating Panda instead of mourning him will you guys come up?  The answer was an overwhelming, probably not!  So I had a poem that I had written that was perfect for this and I did some banter with the crowd but at this point we were heading towards a two minute memorial and that was unacceptable.  How can you have 100 people there and no one has anything to say?  Well I opened up with what I had learned about this man and got the crowd worked up.  Then I explained my plan to all in attendance.  THERE WILL BE NO MOURNING HERE TONIGHT ---  TONIGHT WE CELEBRATE LIFE, NOT MOURN DEATH!  With that, the crowd went nuts and I could feel the tension in the room ease.  I said my piece and asked if anyone wanted to speak.  Panda's wife, one of them, got up and opened the "show" so to speak with the story of the night he got his nipples pierced and how he blacked out from the pain so bad that he was snoring and pissing himself at the same time.  Laughter and tears filled the hall and that was good.  As each person finished their story I of course had some smart ass comment for the audience each and every single time and kept them laughing.  The stories that we heard were just incredible!  As the service went on, I began to feel overwhelmingly jealous and a bit mad.  I was jealous that all of these people, many friends included got to spend so much time with this great man.  I was mad that my life had become so damn busy that I didn't see many of these friends much at all anymore.  Had I been available, I would have met this great man and he would have certainly been a big part of my life.  He was a huge part in every person whose life he entered. 

Well my fear of the 2 minute service soon went out the window and as we approached the 45 minute mark, I knew in my heart that we had done this great man, great honor and respect!  So many people got up to talk, nearly all of the 6 kids.  Imagine that strength?  We laughed HARD for nearly an hour.  Although so many knew him, very few knew him truly well.  Nobody really knew that every year during Christmas, he would find families that had nothing and he didn't even know them, he had only heard and out of his own pocket and his valuable time, go load that house up with gifts so that no matter what, those kids still had Christmas.  This was a great man.  I closed the service with a poem that I had written and thanked all for allowing me the privilege and honor of HONORING PANDA.  Today was his funeral and I was unable to make it but I understand that there were many hundreds in attendance. 

The world is a little bit less wonderful and beautiful without Kenny being here, but I bet my ass that Heaven is all that much better now for his arrival.  I hope God has a strong bladder, because this guy could make you laugh so hard people would piss themselves.

So why did I write this?  I wrote this to remind each of us, myself included, to love the ever loving shit out of the ones you care about.  Never let anyone leave your side angry.  Hold the ones you love and let them know that you love them every time you can.  Live each and every single day on this earth like it was your last because you never know, it may very well be.  Anyway, these were my thoughts on the whole tragedy.

LONG MAY YOU RUN KUNG FU PANDA!!!

Your attention please

Hey folks, I just want to welcome one of my oldest friends and most talented people I have ever had the honor to call my friend here with us to keep an eye on what's going on over here in Jack Shit's World.  I want you to look over to the right side of this post and see his link over there.  If I had a one legged man's chance in an ass kicking contest to make that link over there, go right here, I would, but I can't, sorry.  Click on that and then hit follow.  Richie has got his thumb straight up the ass of all things Cool and I mean that from the heart and as a compliment.  Every time something catches on and is suddenly really cool, Brother Pan has two for parts and one running!  Richie Pannera owns Dark Star Tattoo in Toms River, New Jersey.  Not only is he an absolutely Stellar Artist but he is truly a historian.  He has managed through his own collection of memories and scars and with the help of other east coast maniacs to damn near recreate Jersey Biker History through decades of life in Jersey on a bike.  It's all on his blog and it is fantastic.  You want to know where Jack Shit comes from, well this will give you a pretty good idea, I may pop up in some of those pics now and again.  His blog is Bikers, Hippies and Tattooed Freaks and it is a must follow.

Take a close look at this pic.  We also captured this moment on video and it has literally been viewed thousands of times.  The guy against the wall is another great guy and good friend, everyone calls him FAT BOB.  After a long hard day of chopper riding and partying up in Cottonwood at Smoke Out West, we went back to our hotel and had a few minutes to chill before the inevitable after party starts and for some reason always ends in our room.  Well Fat Bob was pretty buzzed and all he wanted to do was put his shorts on.  It sounds like a simple task but not drunk and not at this size.  If you look closely, he is leaning against the wall so as not to collapse and holding his chest because he can't breathe, Brother Pan is on the bed if you notice holding his chest as well.  There were another 4 people in the room and they were SCREAMING laughing.  This was a moment in my life that I will never ever forget.  I learned that day conclusively that laughter is absolutely contagious!

Richie's shop has one of the best logos I have ever seen, it's just simple and bad ass and looks killer plastered all over the world.  If you are somewhere worth being you will probably look around and see some stickers, you are damn near assured to see a DST sticker up there and of course the BAAS Metalcraft sticker too, Teach gets around!   I like to take one of his Dark Star shirts with me everywhere I go and get a photo while wearing it doing something great or someplace spectacular.  On my facebook, I have an entire album of those photos, I call it my dark star t shirt tour of the world.

I've known Pan for a great many years now and have never heard a bad word spoken of the man and that speaks volumes to me!  Go check out his blog, his website, his tattoo shop, his artwork for the Horse Back Street Choppers, his sick sick sick panheads and knuckleheads, well his shovels too and look at some old pics of Richie's infamous Pan Stock, held every year in Jersey as a celebration of all things cool.  I would never steer you guys, my friends, wrong so go check this guy out and tell him I sent ya.

 Oh yeah, if you want to get a rare and mythical Pan Stock annual T shirt, well you better roll your bike up into the burnout pit at his party and let it rip because it's the only way you will ever get one!

..... and oh yeah, he is the only other person who I have ever let ride my KNUCK and he rode the shit out of her!

Chester the Molester Sings

A few months ago Brother F Bomb and myself rode up to Flagstaff, Az., to catch up with the riders on The Cannonball. We left Phoenix and it was 112 degrees. We arrived in Flagstaff and it was 28 degrees. We arrived around midnight or so. Upon pulling up in front of the hotel door we immediately ran into Chicky from Vagabond and Pat Simmons from the Doobie Brothers, both exceptional people. We hung out till around 3 or 4 am and then crashed for a bit. In the morning after watching all the bikes leave the temps made it up to around 50 or so and we pulled out as well. By the time we reached Kingman, the temps had risen back up 99. As I pulled off of the highway I could feel it more and more difficult to keep the old knuck running and she was smoking like mad.

I got into the parking lot at the Harley Dealer, it was a designated stop for the racers and a great place to tighten nuts and check fluids. I rolled in, took my hand off of the throttle and my bike died right there. I got off her and went to kick her back over and the kicker felt like it was damn near welded in place. Oh no! I had gotten jammed up running low on oil and I could not get straight 50 weight and this "old bike" mechanic (allegedly) explained to me in no uncertain terms that the new W50's were just fine and they would mix with the straight already in the bike. I found this hard to believe but after a long debate and not having any other choice, I ran the oil. Well the result was damn near boiling the motor. The oils didn't "blend" together and I may as well ran it with no oil at all. We snuck our way into the service dept. and rolled her up onto a lift. Sadly the "mechanics" at the dealer didn't realize that I was not in the race on my 1947 knuckle because the race was 1915 and older bikes, they didn't know the difference. To make a long story short, we drained all the oil, replaced it with fresh straight 50, tightened down all we could and the bike fired right up. I jumped on her and tore down the road but she really didn't want to stay running. I had two choices to choose from and a decision needed to be made on the spot. Take off on her through grueling 115 degree temps on rt. 66 into Oatman and Laughlin and decimate a running knuck and be stuck in the desert or leave her in the service dept. until the following day and come back for her. Brother Bomb said why ruin a great party? We will go on to Laughlin, party our asses off and in the morning he would go all the way back to Phoenix, get his truck and come back for me and the bike. Really? Wow! What a gesture of true friendship! That is what we did. I hitched a ride with a Cannonball support vehicle and we partied our asses off and stuck to the plan. My bike had ridden through a temp. change of nearly 160 degrees in 16 hours, Arizona is insane!

By 11am, I had no choice but to leave our hotel. I was out on the streets of Laughlin and it was insane hot and I am now carrying on my back everything that I had packed on the bike. Yes, I looked homeless and the local homeless population noticed too. I started getting some real hard looks like I was invading their territory and no matter where I walked I would find one or more "locals" following me. I am not much of a gambler, at least when it comes to games of chance, with my life yes, with my money not so much. I ate lunch but realized that it would be at the very least another 4 to 5 hours before I was rescued. I could not sit in the sun any longer. I went into the Pioneer Hotel and had some lunch. Oh great only 4.5 hours left to wait. I reached out to F Bomb on the phone and he told me that the one and only road to get there was closed because of a horrific head on collision and he may not make it at all. Not such good news, worse yet, the entire town of nothing but hotel rooms was sold out.... DOOMED!

The night before while hanging in the Aquarius Casino, Bean're, Bomb and myself met this nice Country girl, her boyfriend and her mom. They were very friendly as most country folk are. I asked what they were doing in such an evil place as Laughlin and they told us that they were here for like 8 days and they were competing in the Western United States Karaoke Championship or some shit.... Wow, these fuckers are serious about Karaoke, who would have thought it? Well now I can sit at a slot machine for the next 24 hours, I can go and try and find a nice cardboard box to sleep in, I could go blow Asian men for a few extra bucks or I could pay 15 bucks and go into the Karaoke contest up stairs in the ballroom? Well the ballroom it was! Dark, cool and comfortable, it had my name written all over it. With the exception of course that I looked and felt like homeless guy. At least I had showered before being evicted. I was now a man with a plan! I had a full belly and a comfy place to hang until my rescue truck arrived. To say that the people in this show were freaks would be an understatement of all understatements, sweet 5lb 4oz baby Jesus were these people serious about Karaoke. I know this was a long story to get you to a very short video but you have got to check out this guy singing. What I thought would be a great way to spend an otherwise screwed up day quickly became torture. This pedophile looking son of a bitch was probably the more "normal" of the crowd. Well you judge for yourself and understand before you even watch it, I was hot, tired, cranky, abandoned and trapped. I just call it like I see it is all. Like it reads before you enter this page, brutal honesty is all you will ever get from me.... it's only a minute and a half video but you can hear by my tone of voice that I am not the happiest of campers...... Hope you enjoy it.

Traffic Jam, Arizona Style!

While taking some family out into the Sonoran Desert we drove up out of a dry creek bed to come across the traffic jam, Arizona style. It is hard to believe that rattlesnakes survive out here but cattle? How the hell can they survive in these conditions?

Up close at Barrett Jackson 2010

Quite of few friends asked about how close I got to the auction stage. It's hard to explain how cool it is and it is certainly hard make you really feel it by writing about it in a blog. Here is a short video to give you an actual taste of being right in it! I hope you enjoy and have a great week.

ALL THINGS COOL !

So by now you guys know me well enough or I hope you have been following along closely enough to know that Jack Shit loves ALL THINGS MOTORCYCLE!  I especially lean to the all things chopper side of life.  I don't just mean the bikes themselves as much as I mean the grittier side of it all.  I admire most the fact that man can even forge steel and then shape it into something amazing.  Then again, each time I flick my bic I am still amazed that fire comes out, oh well.  I believe that it's just the personalization of it all, the ART that I find in things still made by hand.  There are still somethings that have been made over the years that not one single item, one nut, one bolt has ever needed to be altered for it to be COOL.  Being an open minded human being, I don't reserve judgement for anything or anyone because in the end, the COOL tends to stand out far in front of the others!  I am a simple guy who just simply loves, ALL THINGS COOL! 

I was invited by a dear friend with some passes to join him and a few other close friends at the Barrett Jackson Collector Cars Auction.  If you don't know what this is you can either google it or watch for when it airs on the Speed Channel.  For those of you who know what it is or watch it and Gamble on how much a car is going to sell for know how cool it is.

It was my first time there so I'll lay out the event for you.  You pull off the highway and the dirtiest crackhead / tweaker combos that you have ever seen greet you in the street wearing a reflective vest and waiving a little orange flag.  Some you could see on their face that if they didn't get high soon, someone was getting smacked and others who must have only recently gotten high walked up to your window to talk at each "security check point" and direct your vehicle in a manner conducive to controlling flow of traffic.  Mind you this was halfway through the very last day.  We valet parked the truck for $20 so that we didn't have to walk 2 miles from the dirt parking lot and go back through tweaker alley on foot!  As you approach the main gate and entry doors the quality of degenerates working there goes up 10 fold.  You could see that these were your average alcoholic, coke fiends.  The best of the best of sleaze bags gets to work inside the event and clean the porta jons and such.  It's always nice to have some cleaned up street person standing there watching you pee.  Anyway, once you have survived the freak show to enter you walk in and Ford has the corner of the tent with the new Boss Mustangs and they are pretty sick.  These come with two sets of keys, one for normal driving and the other key, when put into the ignition the car then becomes a race car, wild!

Once you get past the Fords and your grandfather's Oldsmobile the tent crosses into another area that I have to admit made me cringe and vomit a little in my mouth.  It was those stupid little coffins that people are driving around in, Smart Car or some shit.  Now these guys must have had a study group done that says if you are cool now you must have FLAT BLACK for the counter culture.  So they have these little jelly beans all scattered around and the one FLAT BLACK BAD BOY!

I was nearly about to turn around and run!  I walked into the auto show and was surrounded by sales people.  Where is the Cool stuff?  As disappointment in the event started to well up in my brain I began thinking well at least it only goes for a few more hours.  Then out of the corner of my eye I see it, not only Cool but Super Cool!  Super Cars in-fact!  A brand new Lamborghini, a Ferrari that I have never even seen before and 6 more Super Cars all lined up side by side.  BAD ASS!  Every now and again you see one on the freeway out here.  Here more often than most places because after all, it is Snottsdale! 

Things were looking up now for sure.  Well they were for a few seconds.  This place must be organized by the Devil himself along with his minions.  Once you get through the Super Cars you are suddenly dropped into a God Damned flea market of people selling any and everything.  I didn't come to Barrett Jackson to buy hand crafted tree limb porch swings.  Nor did I come there to buy faux leather sneakers or have my complimentary one piece of jewelry cleaned.  What the hell is going on here?  I want to see the Auction damnit, I want to smell the blood in the air!  Now here is the biggest problem of the day.  Along with the boys today, the ladies joined us.  Ya know what that means?  You guessed it right I'm sure.  It meant that anything that we DID NOT want to look at, was so interesting to the ladies that they needed to stand there and check each and every aspect of it.  How the Mongolian etched grain of rice captures the sun if held this way and that-a-way.... I thought my head was going to explode.  As I make my way towards the Live Auction that you can hear over the loud speakers I have to keep doubling and tripling back to fetch these wayward shoppers.  I believe that I have them convinced to pick up the pace and come along with us when the worse possible thing could happen.  At the same time, Diane and Jill see the MASSAGE CHAIRS, we are now DOOMED!  I give up, I must carry on alone without the girls, I just cannot look at another USELESS PIECE OF CRAP item for sale and I am not standing there while they get a 20 minute massage from a chair.  I learn after I walk away that a fine upstanding gentleman was standing there after I left and was kind enough to offer each of the ladies their very own FOOT RUB.... yuck!  Dirty Prick!  On the flip side of me complaining here, I must admit that across from the 9 thousand dollar mattress they had for sale there I did find Gold!  Childhood memories raced back into my mind, check out this shit!

They also had one hell of a neon sign selection there.  From 1930's original signs to some incredible re-pops and let's face it folks, neon is on my list of ALL THINGS COOL!  I just love neon signs.

We made our way without the ladies into the next tent but first stopped for a quick 7 dollar Lemonade.  I would have bought a hot dog too as I was starving but on principal alone, I could not see myself spending $12.50 for a tiny hot dog and a drink, I just couldn't do it.  We made our way towards the Live Auction and came across this display.  This is the bike Paul Yaffe made for Arizona's 100th anniversary as a state.  It's all done in and out of copper, apparently it's abundant here.

You guys can make your own decisions here on Cool or not with this..... I'll take Long Jon's Copper Chopper Panhead anytime.  With that, we enter the final gate, you can see the cars being staged to come across the stage, we made it finally into the Auction, my God it was a magical place.  The building is so big that they have huge video screens on each side of the stage so that people can see what is currently being bid on.  You would think this would have helped someone not buy and win a bid on the wrong vehicle but it did not!  Television does this event no justice whatsoever.  To stand only feet away from the stage was wild.  The air was electric with energy.  The money was flowing like mad.  I guess for some either the "economic downturn" took another turn or they just weren't giving a slight shit about it this day!  I think pics will be better at showing you how very close we were to the action.

At one point, I was so close to the stage that I thought they were going to hand me rags to start wiping down the cars as they got pushed up.  It was definitely something cool to experience.  The sad side of the coin was that they say on the Sunday, the final day of the Auction, the deals are just insane and they were.  It killed me to not have throw away income any longer and to see what some of these hot rods were going for was like getting kicked in the nut sack over and over again.......  the deals were unreal!

After you leave the Auction tent you enter into the tents of the sold vehicles and my God did they sell some cars.  There was in one tent alone an entire lane of nothing but original corvettes of every great year.  There were muscle cars that look as though they just came off the show room floor.  Cars you have only heard of and maybe seen on a tv show sometime.  It was some sight.  Here are some of my favorite cars sold.

Here's the world's largest bike, cool? NO?  But it sold!

The hotly contested Ambulance that supposedly carried JFK's body

I think this was Bret Michaels' Camaro, he's not, but the car was way Cool

Just a sick old nomad!

One of my favorite Chevelles of all time

All in all, it turned out to be a great day hanging out with great friends, the auction and the experience were well worth going to at least once in your lifetime.  I am not a car guy by any stretch of the imagination but even if you aren't, COOL IS COOL...... and these cars and the entire atmosphere were way cool.  Could I have stayed home and watched it on tv?  I sure could have, but it wouldn't be half the fun of living it! 

There was however a very sad note to the event.  You could feel it the moment you walked up to the front gate of Westworld.  The women were lined up everywhere.  At first my friend says " wow, there are a great deal more women into cars then I thought"... I just started laughing.  They were not there to find a car or to find a great deal on a new oil painting of fruit, because they had them for sale there, they were there shopping alright.  Perhaps shopping may not be the best way to describe it, HUNTING and GATHERING was much more like it.  These ladies may have driven up in an old Toyota Camry but they were planning on leaving on a Jet or a private helicopter, at the least a limo, hell even a decent clean taxi would do this late in the game.  You could see these older ladies completely covered with "bling" and mid sized heels being closely followed by the younger ladies with heels so high I didn't know how they could walk much less run.  You could feel the desperation to find a "catch" at the auction.  You would see guys getting the long hard looks up and down as they walked by the ladies.  The ladies must have some type of scanner hidden that was running credit reports as each potential sugar daddy walked on past.  Each time that the girls would walk away to use the Homeless guy maintained bathroom or to shop, we would immediately have a gaggle of women around us, then the girls would return and the ladies would just step away.  Imagine how bad it had to be for them to be hanging around the likes of us?  My God, ladies, the ones of you alone out there in this economy shopping for your billionaire, ( millionaire's don't really count anymore) I feel for you, pickings are slim and competition is ferocious..... all I can say is hang in there and keep on fighting the good fight. 

See ya down the road!