Gary's Euro adventure

Blog regulars will have read that I was driving around Europe in a fancy Audi. Turns out, with the extras, it was worth £110,000. I did 2200 miles in three days. Well, anyway, I've given it back now. I've written the story and I've caught up on the Sidbeurn mailing. This afternoon I'm going to put a drawing of a Gateshead multi-storey car park in a frame, take more Sideburn orders to the post office and get my stuff ready for the race on Sunday. I should invoice for all the fuel that V10 drank.

On the way out to Germany I remembered there was a hot rod show, SINS in Weize, Belgium. I met up with the Flying Dutchman - who has contributed to Sideburn 2 and 3. He is one of the coolest and nicest fellas ever. He works for the Dutch air force fixing F-16s, but he's also a great photographer. He builds and rides his 60s style Panhead all over, he travels to America and shoots stories. He loves loads of different things, so he's not one of the narrow-minded types you sometime come across at hot rod shows. That's him in the middle. He liked the Audi. The Flying Dutchman blog was one of the first I really got into and it's still one of my favourites.

I also met the Jenny the Trophy Queen lady. She makes neat handbags and stuff. She used to be involved with the Ventura Outlaw Short track races. She loves Sideburn.
I bumped into Matt from Dice and his wife. I have every issue of Dice, so it was good to chat to one of the men behind it. In fact, I was surprised how many people I knew since I don't really have any hot rod connections. Simon from The Paintbox. Laurent from Powerglide magazine. Ivan from Exotica, Paris. This is his blue van. How cool?

There were only a handful of bikes, but they were the 50s-60s style I like so there weren't any bad ones. I loved the Chinese Honda Monkey bike engine in the Schwinn-style hardtail work in progress. I could do with learning how to use the Canon I bought off Ben, rather than the Olympus I got free with my Macbook though.