Day 20 - Shopping, Seeing and Starting (not)

It was another beautiful day in Vancouver, sunny and in the high 70’s. On the agenda today was a visit to Granville Island and its markets and shops very similar to Quincy Market in Boston or the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. There sure was plenty to see, from fish markets to jewelry stores and bakeries to breweries. I guess, just about something for everyone. We, the Lindens, Tallones and O’Briens, enjoyed the shops and its wonderful waterfront setting.








After lunch we headed to the Richmond Curling Center to view the Model A’s being judged. I mentioned yesterday that Dick O’Brien decided to enter his 1929 Station Wagon into the competition, so we wanted to see it with all the other show cars. I must admit that Dick did a super job cleaning it up, as it looked great, especially after the run in with all those nasty grass hoppers in South Dakota. It was interesting to watch the cars being inspected, but when the inspection was being done to Dick’s Station Wagon, we could see his anxiety level go up. We figured we better get Dick out of there before he started to hyper-ventilate.


This afternoon was also the “Gentlemen Start Your Engine” contest. We were in the first group to participate and when we managed to diagnose all the defects, except we couldn’t find the timing mark to time the engine. It was no where to be found. How could we not find the timing mark? Oh well, #@$% Happens. Now the fun began, as the team responsible for setting up the vehicles for the competition could not get the car running either. They tried everything and finally, after 40 minutes they got it running. Back into the competition the A went and again the team assigned to it ran out of time to get it running. Back came the “team” and again they could not get it running. After lots of head scratching, hand waving and cranking the old Ford sputtered to life, but fortunately a decision was made to retire it. The sponsors offered the two teams a chance to redo the test, but we felt since we knew all the problems keeping the engine from running it would be unfair for us to try again. A cold beer at the hotel was a good alternative.


With the grand tour the major event for tomorrow I had to do a little house cleaning after dinner tonight in the Model A to make room for our guest (the Tallones).