This weekend kicked off the first of many car/truck shows we will be attending this summer. And what a weekend it was. :)

It was only a 3 and a half hour drive there, which was good. Jeff & I passed by the exit for our hotel and continued on to the mall, where the show was going to be held. There were a few cars being put into the mall, and we came to give one of the guys a ride back to the hotel. The place we were staying (paid for by someone else), was 7 exits back the way we came, and with cramming four of us into Jeff's truck, that's about all I could take! I was stuffed up on top of the sub box; good thing I'm somewhat flexible!

We got our keys from the office, said goodnight to Chris and Josh, and headed to the room. We were not prepared for what we walked in to. Let's just say it was slightly below our standards. Ok, more than slightly. Since we were sharing a room with Mark & Julia, we couldn't really go somewhere else until they got there. But they got a pretty late start and weren't going to be in until around 2am. Jeff and I carefully got in the bed, making sure to knock the comforter AND the blanket on the floor, and tried to get some sleep. I remember waking up once when the came in, oh, and pretty much every time I moved.

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After a terrible sleep, we were all startled by a knock on the door at 6:30am. The wake up call was supposed to be at 7:15, so we thought that maybe they'd just gotten it wrong. (There was no one at the door). But no, at 7:15, the phone rang. Guess the knock was just someone walking by, being rude. The next adventure was taking a shower. It was so bad that Julia and I wore flip-flops in there.

Mark & Julia left since, Mark, as a judge, had to get to the show a little early. Jeff & I finished getting ready and headed out. After a brief stop at Burger King for breakfast, we found a car wash, scrubbed the truck down, and went to the mall. By then it was only 10:30, and we'd been up for 4 hours. Cars and trucks were starting to trickle in, so we walked around taking pictures as everyone was setting up their stuff.

That's pretty much what we did all day, just walked around the parking lot, taking pictures and talking to people. Had lunch in the mall and just hung out for the rest of the afternoon. Since Jeff was taking pictures for Jay (owner of the Show-N-Shine circuit), we got to mingle with the other staff and sit under the tent. If only we had done more sitting under the tent, and less standing in the hot sun. My shoulders would have appreciated it. :)

Jeff, Julia, & I drove over to Super K Mart sometime in the early evening, while we were waiting for it to get dark, so they could have the neon competition. Julia had decided to buy some towels to use at the hotel, and I desperately needed aloe or some kind of lotion. After the judges and other staffers finished tallying the scores, Mark & Julia headed back to the hotel to take showers and get ready for dinner. Jeff had to stay to take pictures of the neon. Not too long after they left, I realized I still had Julia's flip flops she used in the shower. I figured she wouldn't want to take one without them, so we called their cell and said we'd leave as soon as possible. A few minutes after we hung up, they called back and said they were switching hotels and did we want to go too?

It seems that once they got to the hotel, things had gone from bad to worse. All of the staffers for the show were staying there, as well as some of the show participants. At the end of the day they found things like: the same towels being folded up and put back on the rack, rooms not being cleaned at all, and a door standing open all day. Not the sort of thing you really want to come back to after a long day. After checking on prices and availability in the Comfort Suites across the highway, the 4 of us, and another couple with a toddler, headed over there.

Even though it was a bit pricey, it was worth every penny. A bed we could sleep in without worrying what was in it, a toilet that could be sat on, clear water from the bathroom faucet, fluffy pillows, need I go on? We got cleaned up, picked up Chris and Josh and went searching for food; it was a little after 10pm by then. After some wrong turns and fruitless drives down long roads, we finally found an Outback, which didn't close until 11:30. Yay!!

The food was good, the company was great, and the waitress was very pleasant; an overall great meal. Mark, Chris and Josh decided to check out the "nightlife" in Burlington while the rest of us went to bed. Despite the extremely comfortable mattress and the clean sheets, neither of us slept very well. We're both burnt pretty bad, so it was just very uncomfortable. But we must have gotten to sleep at some point, because it was 10:30 before we got up. Checkout was 11, so we rushed to get ready and get out of there. While eating the continental breakfast, we watched the news in hopes of more information on the bridge collapse. But CNN just wanted to cover "Bush in France."

So we headed back to the mall. The sun was painful on our already burnt skin so we stayed under the tent as much as possible. The audio contest, or DB Drag, went on for most of the day, until the awards at 4. We helped clean up as much as possible, said our goodbyes, and hit the road.

Despite the accommodations Friday night and the sunburn, it was a great weekend. Like I told Jeff, it's such a good break from the everyday life we live at home. And just think, only 2 weeks until the next one!