Tubac Car Show 2018 Photoblog

A couple of firsts this year: one, Donna came along (and on the motorcycle yet); two, my first-ever Twitter meetup.

My favorite thing about this car show, held every January on the golf course at Tubac, Arizona, is parking my motorcycle on the green next to the first row of show cars. Cagers (car drivers) have to walk in from remote parking lots, but the organizers want us front and center, and our bikes wind up being part of the show. I was surprised this year when Donna and I were the first bikers to arrive (the two Harleys you see next to our Goldwing came putting in five minutes later). When we left a couple of hours later, there were two rows of motorcycles, and dozens of car show visitors checking them out. As Donna and I were saddling up, two spectators came up to ask questions about our Goldwing, and I gave them a quick tour. One wanted to know about my engine covers, which made me think he was a fellow Goldwinger who has lost a few, and might have been thinking about “borrowing” mine when we walked up.

I mentioned the Twitter meetup in my previous post. We had exchanged cell phone numbers beforehand, and that’s how we found one another in the sea of visitors at the car show. Our new Canadian friends, Les and Mary Ellen, live in Peterborough, Ontario, and winter over in Green Valley, just a few miles north of Tubac. We went to lunch after the car show at a trattoria in Tubac, where the hostess kindly took a photo of the four of us together.

Sometime in March we’ll meet again at the air museum, along with a former RAAF fighter pilot friend of theirs, and I’ll give them a tour. Les tells me their Aussie friend flew two of the aircraft types at our museum, and I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about them.

The car show seemed awfully crowded this year, but that may be my nascent agoraphobia speaking. I skipped the annual Barrett-Jackson car auction in Scottsdale this year because the crowds have grown too immense. I don’t want to give up this show, which, like another favorite car show, the one at Tucson’s St. Gregory Academy in October, is held outdoors in a lovely setting. But damn, it gets harder every year to take unobstructed photos of cool cars, what with spectators obliviously stepping in front of my camera and then just standing there. But I keep trying. Here are a few of my favorites from yesterday.

The rest of yesterday’s photos are in my Tubac Car Show 2018 album on Flickr.