Saturday morning, a little after Oh Dark Thirty, low clouds were threatening, Larry Clemenson and I met at the Starbuck’s parking lot on SW Roy Rogers Rd.  We met there so we could drive into the Sherwood Cruisin together.  We had both pre-registered so that we could use the preferred fast lane into downtown Sherwood and get preferential parking in a good spot plus stay together.  Once we were parked we buttoned up the tonneaus in case it decided to rain and walked around a little to check out the other cars.  There were quite a few other early birds and as the morning wore on the streets filled with lots of cool machines, mostly heavily modified hot rods.  However, there were very few British cars but ours were the only Healeys.  There was one MG T-sumthin’ and one MGB but it had a monster 8 cylinder engine and lake pipes hung below the doors. The main gates to the Cruisin opened at 09:00 AM and soon the streets were filled with hundreds of spectators.  It was fun talking to the people passing by our Healeys, answering questions about our cars and hearing the usual, “I had one of these in college.  I shoulda never sold it.  Man, that car was fun to drive.”   The oddest story I heard was about a guy who had a Healey as a young student and used the car on his Oregonian paper route to deliver papers.  I’ll bet that was a little hard on the clutch.  About 11:00 AM the air in downtown Sherwood became filled with the smell of volumes of gray tire smoke and the sounds of labored V-8 engines revved to the point of destruction.  One of the featured parts of the Cruisin is a “Burn out” competition.  This consists of parking a vehicle on the designated concrete pad, locking the front brakes, and spinning the tires until they nearly catch fire and burn off a couple hundred dollars of tread.  Larry and I just didn’t get that one but the guy from Les Schwab just at by his vendors’ trailer and smiled.

Another competition at the event is a lot like the ABFM or Rendezvous    popular car shows.  Spectators walk around with ballots in hand, look at the cars, and vote on the one they like according to designated categories.  I pre-registered my Healey in the “1969 and Older Import (Stock/Classic/Period Correct)” category.  After lunch I was sitting by the cars answering questions when an official looking guy with a very expensive camera showed up and asked if he could take pictures of my car.  Of course I agreed.  It turns out the winning car in each 40+ categories is photographed for later publication on the Cruisin web site.  Guess what?!?!?  The Schneider BJ8 won first place in its category!  Larry seemed to take exception to the people’s choice of my car but it turns out he had pre-registered his car in a much tougher category.  I think Larry said his Healey was entered in the “1607 and Older Human Powered Military (Urban Assault Vehicle) category.  Although there were not many other entries in that group the competition was reportedly daunting.