Working through the photos in chronological order, we are now up to the day after Sunday School, which was the last one with Josè before he started his drive home to California.
As I look back through the images and reflect on what we did I find it hard to believe that Josè was only here for 5 days – technically 4 if you count from his arrival time on the Thursday to his depature time on the Monday. We carried out a ton of work on the cars, saw a lot of sights, played video games, met up with a lot of people, and somehow fit in a car show during all of that. Brian and I even went out with José super late one evening for some night-time shots of Rossy (and I sat in the passenger seat hitting up all of the Pokéstops that I could while we drove through downtown) and just to have another opportunity to hang out.
Monday August 15th was the day that José had to head back but he didn’t have to go until later in the afternoon, so we fit in some more sight-seeing and hanging out.
Our day started off just relaxing at the house, and I grabbed my camera for a few final shots of Rossy in the driveway.
Along with other goodies, José would be bringing home various decals on his car as souvenirs if you want to call them that. We were all very happy with how his banner turned out, featuring Race Red lettering over a white base which was chosen to match the Works. Of course he also had the commemorative decal from Sunday School, and even a spare of it as a backup.
I also gave him a couple MacKenCo Garage decals to throw on – that’s the name we use to refer to my garage, where a lot of the work on our cars has been carried out over the years. I cut some of these decals just for fun for the cars that have been worked on here, and since we had worked on José’s, it now wears a set as well.
I also broke out the fisheye briefly since I don’t get to use it much – it was cool to see a few decals that I had sent José a while ago were still on the car.
Again, the Fords got the driveway and the GMs were kicked out and parked across the street. Incidentally, I found the next part I want for my Grand Prix – a new windshield. Because mine has a crack in it now. Yay.
Following our lounging in the sun we took José to the Calgary Tower so that he could see more of the city (and so we could stock him up with more souvenirs and candies to take home with him) prior to Brandon, Mario, and Brenda coming over for a little cruise. Brenda was the only passenger so she was awarded rolling shot duties – Josè passed his camera to her and when we found some open road Mario took turns pulling up alongside all of the cars so she could capture some photos.
There’s me enjoying the newly-boosted car, following our win the day prior.
The reason for the first leg of the cruise was to head to MacKay’s Ice Cream in Cochrane. It’s a long-standing shop in the small town and a place we really wanted to take José to while he was here. He also went to their map and stuck a pin in for Willows, California.
It’s always cool to see how many people have come from different spots around the world…
…including the one person from Campbell Island. Haha
Once we had all of our ice cream we had to get the group photo before starting!
I had opted for bubblegum, and a dish so that it wouldn’t go everywhere as it melted. I didn’t want sticky fingers when I had a camera to handle. Haha
It was perfect weather for ice cream as well!
When we had first arrived and we did a quick lap looking for parking a number of people were turning their heads to look at our little group of loud cars rolling through. We ultimately found parking just down the block from MacKay’s with the cars pretty close together.
In my defense, I didn’t want to hit the Cup Spoiler on the curb. I was also just being courteous and leaving enough space in case another car wanted to park in between me and the sidewalk apparently.
Brandon was the odd one out, parked across the street.
Following our stop at MacKays we headed back up the road a little bit to a viewpoint for what would be the last group photo session with all of the cars together.
Be it with phones or cameras, lots of pictures were being taken to capture the sights and cars.
In this full shot of Le Yeti you can kind of see how we did the banner a bit differently for Brandon; I’ll have to show it in more detail in a future post. We’re quite pleased with it!
By far the biggest change was seen by José’s car. The new wheels, tires, height, and graphics really transformed the sedan! Never underestimate how effective a few carefully-selected modifications can be.
Speaking of height, Mario has since raised Sriracha up just a little bit as once the suspension fully settled, it was just a touch too low (yes, you read that right).
In this photo you can just make out the intercooler sitting behind the lower grille. Boost is fun!
Hatch, sedan, hatch, sedan, hatch. Also, every car here has at least one piece from Ketchup, and Josè’s car even gained a piece of Mustard as well.
Not perfectly lined up but still a cool angle I think.
And the final shot from the viewpoint – the three ST back ends together.
From here we headed back down the hill and cruised through Cochrane towards the main highway where we split. Jose, Brandon, Mario, and Brenda all carried on further west to Lake Minnewanka for more photos, and their final goodbyes.
As we were leaving Cochrane and were just about to part ways, José and I happened to pull up next to each other at a red light. “I used to drag here back in high school” he started with…I meanwhile had See You Again cued up on my CD player so I then hit play and blasted that from my car, to which he laughed.
It was a truly epic week and we’re all super happy with how everything worked out. While we had originally hoped to get him up here for Driven back in May, Sunday School worked out to be the better event to center his trip around with how much more went on.
If we could have changed anything about his trip here it would of course have been the duration, but we’ll get him up here again in the future. We’ll even kidnap him if we have to, and we won’t be sorry ‘boot it.
Eh.
-Bill