Cars & Coffee

Cars and Coffee. the concept is simple; car enthusiasts gather early on a weekend morning, before the soccer moms & the honey do-er’s hit the road. Bring your car to a desiginated location, usually an out of the way place, hang out, and then be gone. No “civilians”, no kids dripping ice cream over that freshly waxed paint, no little dogs running about like at a cruise night or a regular car show. Start at 7:00 and be done by 10:00 and home by 11:00.

Lars Anderson’s Museum of transportation, in Brookline, MA, started one in recent years, and I went to a few this past summer. It was a blast. The first one Dad & I went to, I don't think he was really psyched about it when we got  there. Not alot of vintage cars, at least at that weekend. The funny thing was watching people with $50K+ of new automobile, not being able to parallel park, or back up into a spot without 5+ gear changes.

I went one on my own a few weeks later, and it was ok. But I felt out of sorts. It's tough to relate I’m too young for the old guys with vintage Porsche’s and too poor for the investment bankers that have the new Ford GT. I’m too old for the young crowd that brings a whacked out Subaru STI that has more horsepower than all of my cars combined. But later on I found my speed. The older guys are psyched to see and talk to a younger guy that likes that 68 Jaguar, and the young guys like hearing stories about the days when your first car was 20 years old.

The last one I went to was with my brother in law. Bringing an MGB to one of these events is pretty wild. Your intentions don’t get questioned, you know your cars, you respect what everyone brought. My Brother in law was suprized at how I’d get into a conversation with a total stranger about a Lotus Elise, and shift into the merits of a vintage Chevelle vs a 442.

As this year’s car season winds down, I’m already looking foreward to an early dew covered morning, and unleashing all 60HP of my MGB down the Jamacia way to next year’s cars and coffee.

CD