A couple weeks ago we shot an event called, Back to the Beach, in Kenner, LA (which is basically New Orleans) on the shores of Lake Pontchatrain. It’s a weekend-long music festival culminating in a car show on Sunday; all to raise money for the restoration and preservation of the lake. It sounded like a good event, a worthy cause, and an excellent excuse to go down and tank up on some of that great Gulf Coast food, as can be seen in the pic of me going one-on-one with a killer soft shell crab Po’ Boy. Tasty!

We went down a day early so we could also take in a few of the sights in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter.

The temperature was 102 degrees that day, and I found myself strangely drawn to the signs heralding “Huge Ass Beers”. I can also say with certitude that was not false advertising!

We were looking at the potential of another 100+ degree day on Sunday, which can make shooting pretty brutal, but fortunately a light rain blew thru, dropping the temperature into the low 90’s. Not exactly chilly, but certainly more bearable.

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Last week we shot the last episode for the 2011 season (finally!), and it’s going to be a good one. We were in New Hope, PA at Jim Grundy’s place. Of course Jim is the Grundy of Grundy Worldwide Collector Car Insurance, but he is also a serious car guy. Jim’s into all sorts of cars, but he has a soft spot in his heart for brass era vehicles, and he let me pick a couple of my favs from his collection to focus on.

Not surprisingly, I went for a couple roadsters; a 1912 National Indy race car and a 1914 Mercer. I guess technically the National wasn’t even considered a roadster. Purpose-built racers were referred to as “speed cars”. This car was part of a five-car team fielded by National in the 1912 Indianapolis 500, and one of those cars actually won the race that year. Unfortunately, this particular car rolled, killing the driver. Still, that didn’t stop me from getting on it when we were out driving. It also seemed appropriate that the road leading out of Jim’s place was gravel. I felt like I had been transported back to the early part of the 20th century… and I was already sporting the perfect mustache!

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