<VV> Concoursphobia, Part 2 (message 1 of 2 long-winded parts)

[norman.witte at comcast.net]

I tried sending this as one post, but it's not appearing so I am going to send it in two parts.  Sorry if the whole thing also posts as well.

This post may be viewed on line at
 http://www.wittelaw.com/personal/homecoming06/part2.htm
This post is a follow up to my promise to take the dive and give concours a try and then to report back to VV about the experience.  In addition to keeping my promise, I am reporting in about the DACC Homecoming this weekend.  
 My Corsa convertible spent most of last week in the garage instead of being driven.  Monday it got a thorough wash job.  Tuesday I did not have time to work on it because I attended a DACC planning meeting for the 2007 International 
Convention. (Without disclosing any details, I can say that you folks are in for a treat.)  Wednesday night I spent taking care of a bunch of miscellaneous things I have been meaning to fix.  I pulled the driver's seat and put the chrome pivot cap back on, vacuumed the car, did some minor finish work on the carpet under the dash, touched up some paint flakes on the instrument panel, touched up the trunk paint, fixed the lighter, and painted the jack and jack handle.
Thursday night I went around the bottom of the car and polished the wheels, wheel well trim and rocker panel moldings.  I put the lower shrouds on the car, and did some fairly cursory cleaning underneath the car, mostly in the form of squirting Armorall in the wheel wells and on the chassis to at least make the dirt look black.
All told, I had about six hours of prep in, most of which consisted of stuff I would have done with or without the concours.  True concours prep consisted probably of an hour or so of work.
 Friday after work, I got home, we loaded the cars, and headed for Plymouth.  All day the forecast had called for thunderstorms on Friday and Saturday, and the sky was threatening.  However, the skies were clear for the hour and a half drive to the show.
  For those who haven't been, the DACC Homecoming is a very pleasant event.  It is run on a very laid back basis.  The hospitality room is unbeatable, with sandwiches, pizza, pop and beer.  The hotel has a continental breakfast, so we didn't spend a dime on food all weekend.  There were probably a hundred cars there over the weekend.
We settled into our room and Jake and I took a stroll through the parking lot to look at some of the cars before we called it a night.
Saturday morning we had a judge's meeting at 9:00 a.m.   We had twelve cars competing in concours and we agreed that we were going to run the judging by CORSA rules, except for the timing of judging stations, which we could not do due to lack of manpower.  Ironically enough, I was paired with Pete Cimbala to judge undercarriages.  Other judges were Phil Raker, Clark Hartzel and Sam Christ.
Despite the forecast, we had good weather on Saturday.  We started judging at 10:00 a.m. and finished at about  3:00 p.m. or so. It's quite a bit of work to judge concours but it's a good experience. Judging undercarriages I realized that quite a few of the car owners don't make a special effort to detail the bottom of the car.  We had three cars that were spotless top and bottom, and one that was pretty close to that standard.
Despite judging I also had time to visit with many other club members and visitors and spent a pleasant afternoon.  Among the people I talked to were VV members Jerry McGuire, Mike Harrison, and Dick and Eileen Shank.
continued

Norm Witte