Our very first Thing show ~ 123 Things showed up! We hung out at the Holiday Inn and activities included a scavenger hunt around Asheville and a drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was very cool to see so many Things in one place.
That’s our Thing at the bottom right of the above picture. It was army green then just as we had purchased it. We were still in the midst of making it mechanically sound while using it as our only car. We’ve mounted three car seats in the back but have to tell our kids they are dune buggy seats with five point harnesses for racing safety… (we can barely do 60 and Greg’s head tags the roll bar hard on speed bumps).
And there’s the kids in front of it. They were being interviewed by some guy making a documentary about the show – what happened to it? We finally found out in 2004 at the Things n the Sun show in Vista, CA where we ran into Frank Pinto with FoamyDog.com. He gave us a copy of the video and it came out really great.
Lots of people seemed to be interested in our Thing because of the Washington state plates in North Carolina. Had we actually driven it from Washington we would’ve won some farthest driven contest. We towed it to this show from Seattle, through Texas, to North Carolina. There should’ve been a farthest towed contest, but oh well. We’re still waiting on an award for something.
Below is what our Thing looks like now after paint, wheels, seats, and much more that can’t be seen…. This picture was taken from when we watched the Columbia Shuttle Launch in January 2003.
Back to Kubel Treffen East 2001 —
Like a bag of M&M’s parked neatly on the lawn.
This was Greg’s personal favorite. Whitey owned this one and ran the local VW shop in Asheville. We spent a lot of time at his shop but only bought a door pin when ours broke. Actually, I think he gave us the door pin.
This unique two door was owned by the coordinators of the event – Mike and Mary Crisp.
This one was scary. The roof attached to the top of the front window was a Thing hood with the wide end connected to the windshield. Notice the nose was cut to angle back. We were told by one of his friends that it’s driven as hard as it looks and his friend wouldn’t even get in it! The owner just grinned and nodded at this comment. We ran.
This Thing was a well done Military dress. Notice the front door opens backwards as in suicide doors?!?
Okay, just deleted about twelve pictures of other Things, so it may seem like a lot of pictures, but there was more.
On Sunday several of the Things went for a drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains. This was easily the highlight of the show for us.
Car shows are much funner to attend than they are to look at pictures. So go to a car show, take a bunch of pictures, develop ’em or look at ’em on your computer, then you’ll understand why Greg takes so many pictures ~ it’s exciting (in real life).