Florida : Lake Mirror Classic - Welcome to The Amphicar Lovers Digest / Forum

**Florida : Lake Mirror Classic -** 10-28-2007, 09:07 AM

On Saturday, October 20th, the 8th annual Lake Mirror Classichad beenplanned to be a great event. However, the weather reports were ALL very negative - meaning wet OR WETTER weather. OK if you are a duck, I guess, but even if you own an Amphicar, it was less than ideal to have a rainsoakedday for the event.

At 5 AM, I pulled up the Lakeland, Florida weatherForecast and that coupled with the TV weather forecast showed essentially solid precipitation and not in small amounts. Knowing, that a weather report has been known to turn out otherwise, I loaded up and took the "Split Personality" 90 miles west to Lakeland. To my surprise, I encountered no rain at all until I was 25 miles from the proposed show, at which time the bottom fell out of the sky. I thought what a shame it was and wondered if anyone at all would come as I expected to be making a 180 and heading home as soon as I arrived and found that the show had unavoidably been cancelled. Two miles from Lakeland, the rain stopped and when I arrived, I was greeted by Ford Heacock, the show's organizer who was running around on his motor scooter. Hetold me that the rain has been heavy until 8AM - which was about 15 minutes prior to my arrivaland then it had stopped. From that moment on, things only got better and better until by the time of our scheduled 1 PM splash in and swim, which was a featured highlight of the event, the sun was actually shining part time. The Lake Mirror Classic went off in great style and everyone had a good time with norain and temperatures in the 80's withoutrealhotsun.

We had 5 Amphicars in attendance -Our "Split Personality,"the Fredsalls from South Daytona, a newcomer from the Atlanta area - John Dunn, Steve Sell with his sharp red and white Pirate Motif Amphi and Sharon and Arnold Hite all the way from South Carolina with their pretty light blue Amphicar. 2 others who were planning to come gave it a pass in view of the apparent weather situation.

Anyone who stayed home missed out on a great day with hundreds of cars and some very special touches which added pizzazz to the event such as a looooonnng line of waiters bearing lunch on trays for the participants around the lake, the whole line ofwhich was lead by a Bagpipe playing Lassie in appropriate attire who heralded the procession as they came. This and other special touches, aside from the beautiful setting are what lend the special ambiance to the show which the participants and the show goers all look forward to.Vic "Captain Splash" Nelson

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