Shoreline was a good show. I too was amazed at the number of Buses at the event (mine was only in the parking lot). I got a couple of items from the swap meet and a sun burn on my neck. All in all a pretty nice show this year.
We planned on making a weekend out of our Seattle trip so we headed West to Bremerton for their show the next morning. Not wanting to hassle with the freeway traffic we took the ferry across the Puget Sound, found our motel and got ourselves prepared for what was soon to be big waste of money.
Got up bright and early and headed over to the the location of the event (not gonna treat them to any free advertising). No problems locating it as I have raced there just about every year for the past dozen or so. We waited in line for about 30 minutes and didn't really notice many VW's and only saw one swapper ahead of us. We were one car from the booth when a "regular" walked up with some angry story and took 10 minutes getting his issue resolved (looked like he bought more tickets or something). Never did he thank the visually aggitated man standing behind him or give a courtesy nod to the nice folks in the old Bus. Like I said, probably a regular.
We finally got up to the booth and made our payment of $24. The nice lady there warned us that our dogs would have to remain on a leash. This was not a problem since that is how we roll. So we turned the corner where the entire VW event came into view: 5 show cars and about 8 swappers. HOLY COW!
Well, maybe more would be showing up shortly. I mean, the gates had only been open for an hour or so. We figured to waste a few minutes by walking with the dogs to the pits and catching up with some old friends that were drag racing so we headed that way. As we neared the tower I saw that the street VW's were starting to head down the track so we walked toward the stands to watch. All of a sudden a grumpy voice hollered out from the small store at the base of the tower telling us that dogs had to be in the pits while racing was going on. Oh, okay. We were headed that way anyhow so we continued on our way. We made it to the first pit when another of the "regulars" (not the same as the first) hollered that dogs had to be in a kennel or vehicle during racing. I think he may have been hollering due to the noise from the track but we were sorta getting tired of being yelled at and only given peices of information each time.
My friends would have to wait. We headed back to the area where we parked. By the time we arrived back to the Bus one more swapper had arrived and one show car. We stood by the Bus with our dogs and discussed what we were going to do when over the loudspeaker came the voice of the same grumpy lady from the tower store explaining the whole pet policy in a not-so-friendly put-off tone. Done! We loaded up the dogs and left. I did tell the booth worker that we had had an unpleasant time at this venue. I did not ask for my money back as two of my freinds are sponsors of this event and obviously they could use the sales.
I think what makes me most disappointed is the fact that VW shows are generally dog friendly and this one is far from that.
As we drove to the freeway we saw two more VW's heading toward the venue.
