On the 18th August 2007 Cathy, Harry, Jack and myself took part in the first Street Commodores cruise for charity. Starting at Cheltenham Racecourse we travelled into the city, down to glenelg along to Semaphore out to the Holden factory at Elizabeth. A quick squirt to Virginia until we reached our final destination of City Dismantlers at Gepps Cross. The cruise including a short stop for lunch took almost 3 and a half hours but was awesome. It was packed full of hot commodores, just over 400!, which is pretty impressive for our first foray into the cruising scene. It was for a very good cause, the Starlight foundation for kids, and the commodore cruisers in Adelaide raised well over $17,000 an awesome effort if I do say so myself. The cruise was held throughout Australia over about 6 consecutive weekends in 6 states, with a total of 3427 commodores taking part, raising a staggering $116,904.30 for the Starlight foundation. It was a full day an we loved it, can't wait for next year let's hope it's bigger and better.
Cheltenham racecourse was great and thankfully there was a playground there for the boys because it took almost two hours for all the cars to arrive and spill into the grassed area, by the time they opened the gates to commence the cruise it was bursting at the seams. When they opened the gates the sounds and smells were wicked. Just imagine over 400 naturally aspirated, supercharged, or turbocharged v6s and V8s starting simultaneously, it made the earth rumble and the sleepy Sunday morning was well and truly woken out of it's slumber. The next hurdle was getting the same 400 commodores out of one gate which was wide enough for one car at a time, but no-one seemed worried, we all just sat there idling and rumbling admiring the scenery and slowly edging toward the gate, the cruise had begun.
I don't think you can appreciate until you have taken part in such a cruise just how much fun it is, cruising down Anzac Highway surrounded by hundreds of like minded Holden men and women enjoying a cruise. Thankfully everyone behaved themselves which was just as well considering we had the cooperation of the boys and girls in blue, who kindly helped with the traffic flow when leaving the racecourse, and very thoughtfully arrived in two brand new VE commodore police cars, which didn't look half bad.
The cruise took us all the way to Elizabeth for a photo opportunity at the Holden factory then on to City Dismantlers. The boys were so well behaved but by mid afternoon they were beginning to ask are we there yet, so we skipped the Virginia leg and went straight to the City Dismantlers for the show n shine and the sausage sizzle. It was actually fortunate that we got there early to gain access, as the organizers had not expected such a big turnout, and only two thirds of the cars could fit in the car park. So some poor mug had to stand at the gate and tell each driver that the car park was full and they would have to park across the main road and walk back. This made for some rather angry commodore drivers, which resulted in some great footage on my video cam, because every time someone was told this they would open it up big time which sounded goood.
A few trophy were awarded, a few sausages were sizzled and a few knuckle head tools decided to leave the venue in a cloud of smoke, and screach of tyres and cheers from some of the boys that had been passengers all day. In the spur of the moment all well and good a burn out is a wonderfull thing, but when you have registered with the organizers left your details with organizers and the police are down the road, well lets say they were plain stupid. Apart from that we had a fantastic day, bring on next year, let's hope fro 800 cars.
