ALDERGROVE LAKE PICNIC

WOW, you could not have asked for a more fantastic day. The summer had been hot and dry and the only thing I kept praying for was another dry and sunny weekend. Woke up to a full blue sky, it was seven am as the truck moaned out of the driveway. Filled to capacity with lawn chairs, tables, registration forms, tickets, door prizes, toy's and games. The blue sky was endless. The truck sounded like it had indigestion as she moaned her way down the hill to the parking lot. By eight everyone had arrived, after a few sips of coffee, good mornings, everyone got busy.. I Must say we were well organized.

Dick was assembling his tent, then realized he left the tarp at home, oh well. Not to worry couple of tents were on hand. As the girls were setting up the trophy and door prize station, the guys had set up the registration none to soon as the first car arrived before nine, then a second, third. the rumble of the cars made your head turn . Red, blue, cherry black, lime green, orange, jet black, flat black. Raised, chopped, modified, semi modified, Barbie even came along for the ride. By 10 am the Lions Club had set up for breakfast and the day had begun!

By 1pm the club had registered 160 cars, enough door prizes were handed out, tummies were full, puppies had enough water and no one got hurt or burnt. The Club would like to thank all the members who came out to help make this one of the best runs ever. The guys who manned the gate, the girls who worked great at the ticket sales, handing out door prizes, counting ballots and all round chit chat. The parking guy's, ya did a great job, and the Hooper trailer. A big "THANK YOU" to ALL, we could not have done it without YOU!!

Aldergrove Lake 2006

The dictionary defines ALDER as a species of tree which also includes
the Birch, having fine, close-grained, dense wood useable for hardwood
Veneers.

Grove - a stand or group of trees.

So, an Aldergrove is a group of dense wooden growths - and no, I'll
stop here and refrain from pointing out any similarities to groups of
politicians.

In our case, ALDERGROVE is the name of a GVRD (there's those
politicians again!) Park situated very close to the US/Canada border.

Aldergrove Lake Regional Park has been the site of 27 out of 28 annual
events held by the Fifty-5-6-7 Club of the Lower Mainland.   Every year
has seen an outstanding collection of cars of all types, all makes, all
models, having one thing in common - they are owned and driven by folks
who care about them, who lavish attention and love on them, and who are
proud to show up with their specialty vehicle for a day of relaxing, and
looking at the ones brought out by others.

The field which has been used by the Club for these events is nearly
perfect for this type of event.  Access is easily controlled, there is a
large field conducive to parking a large number of cars, and it is a
grassy field, which allows for strolling, for relaxing and for family-oriented outings.

The event is so popular that if no adverting was done, if it were not
listed in events sheets/run sheets/cruise calendars, there would likely
still be upwards of a hundred cars coming out for it.

This year was no different - we had 160 cars come out on a beautiful
sunny day, temperatures in the low 20's (70's to any Fahrenheit fans out
there!) with dry and firm ground conditions.

One thing that was different was our charity partner - the organization
that benefits most from the event was new for this year.  In past years
we worked with, and for the benefit of, two organizations every year.
The Lions Club had been the charitable organization who supplied
breakfasts and lunches in return for donations to their causes, while
the "walk-in folks" were asked to donate to a different charity as
they entered the grounds to see all the cars.  For many years, the
Arthritis Society had been the group to man the walk-in gate, to accept
donations and to take responsibility for selection of the Spectator's
Choice category of vehicles.  This involved passing out ballots to folks
making a donation, as well as counting up the returned ballots,
selecting the winner and presenting a trophy sponsored by the group. A
couple of years, the Arthritis Society closed its local office, and was
no longer able to do their fund-raising at our event.  For the past two
years, the United Way of the Lower Mainland was the organization which
was the beneficiary of the opportunity to do some fundraising at
Aldergrove Lake, but for this year, in recognition of the excellent
works done by the Lions Club, a club decision was made to provide the
Lions Club to benefit from both the food service and the spectator
gate.

In the period leading up to the 2006 event, our club had done the
required works - organizing trophies (and trophy sponsors), securing
door prizes, obtaining licenses and permissions to use the park (Would
that be those politicians again?), obtaining liability insurance,
securing the services of a DJ who has a phenomenal collection of
"Cruising music", ensuring that we had a generator to power the
music system (and gas for it!), getting a series of raffle prizes lined
up, making up and printing off the ballots for the categories chosen by
show entrants, making up entry forms, getting dash plaques and trophies
and the thousand and one other things that largely fell on the shoulders
of one very special, very dedicated and very hardworking member (No,
Judy, I will not embarrass you by  naming you, Judy!  Wild horses and
threats of torture could not make me reveal Judy's name ), and
ensuring that the word was spread.

On the day before the event a club work party arrived at the park and
spent a large amount of time, incurred a bunch of blisters and generally
groomed the field, trimming back branches, raking, picking up and
otherwise ensuring that the field would be ready for the special
vehicles soon to arrive.

And so, on the Sunday of Labour (Labour to our US friends) Day weekend,
the club members were all ready to ensure that their labours were going
to result in a great show.

Every year, for 28 years, this has been THE DAY!  Labour Day Sunday,
Aldergrove Lake Regional Park, the All Club Picnic (That's the
Official name, by the way!) Has been held, and every year the Fifty
5-6-7 Club has done an outstanding job of putting on a great show.

As 2006 marked the 50th Anniversary of the '56 Chev, the fifty six
was the feature car this year, appearing on all our trophies and on all
our flyers and run sheets.  There were excellent examples of the feature
car on display, ranging from the Convertibles of Roman and Alex, to the
eye-dazzling yellow Sedan Delivery that Ron has just 'finished",
with hardtops, wagons, nomads and pick-ups all making it out to the
event.  (Is any car actually ever really finished?)

There were some streetrods there that we had never seen before, some
wild paintjobs, some restored originals and many daily cruisers all
sparkling and gleaming in the sun.  Mustangs, Camaros, Oldsmobile's,
Mopars, musclecars, imports (did everyone see that crazy little Nash Met
with the plate that read "NOT ROD"?), entries by pro builders,
entries by weekend hobbyists and a whole bunch of really great people who had one thing in common - fun!

The Lions club raised money, we recovered our costs, door prizes were
awarded, trophies were awarded and it seemed that EVERYONE had a great
day!  A special award of merit was presented to Mark G on his many, many
years of dedicated membership. This was especially noteworthy, as no-one
has ever seen him speechless before!

If you weren't there, you missed a relaxing day in the park, a wonderful show and a day of just kickin' back with like-minded folks enjoying a fun cruise.