The event turned out great. Look on down below for pictures posted by our site creator (and hopefully others soon).

Here's a summary of the night from my perspective.

I showed up at the nearby meeting place just in before 6:30, which made me the last one to arrive. This was my first gathering. (Not to mention, I'd only had the car for a week.) Let me tell you: rolling up to a parking lot full of Kappas for the first time is quite a rush!

That's where I committed the first faux pas of the evening: I showed up with my top up! At a Kappa gathering! Can you believe it?

So we all rolled out in a big line and headed to the drive-in. We had to wait outside the gates, as I guess the swap meet inside had not yet finished up. This is not unusual for a drive-in from my experience. This gave us a chance to meet some more, take some pictures, check out the "saddle" in one member's center console (sorry, I never got your username), check out the just-blingy-enough flames on AeroSol, check out a new iPhone while the fad is still alive (sorry, had to take a little jab there), and otherwise stand-out in the rest of the crowd of movie-goers.

We finally get into the drive in, and drive over all the humps in the asphalt. That was exciting! Eventually, we figured out to drive along the edge (which is flat asphalt) until arriving at our row, then pulling in, driving along the humps. So far, the drive-in is like any other I've been to.

We all got settled into a long row, and quickly attracted the attention of a very friendly Chevy-truck fan behind us. We had an enjoyable discussion about how he would one-up Mallett when putting an LS7 engine in the Solstice, though he didn't end up convincing any of us that we needed his proposed upgrade.

Niecey handled out a trivia quiz on Transformers, but it turned out none of us had the requisite Transformers experience to be any good at it. I'll post the questions here (within the next couple days) and maybe we can try to answer them via comments on the site. Perhaps having the Internet as our open-book will help get some of them answered. Thanks for the challenge, Niecey!

We got the food on the grill and shared a number of side dishes. All the food was great. This grilling-out-at-the-drive-in was new to me, and certainly set this drive-in apart. That's a great concept.

By this time, I had my top down. That means it was time for the rain to come. It only came down slightly, enough to cause everyone to put their tops up, but not enough to end dinner.

It was especially great to talk with southernSKYs. It's a small world. We had both our SKY Redlines delivered to the same retailer on the same day. I just moved to Georgia from the same town they were from many years before. My old house back there is in the same subdivision as the current residence of one of their children, and another one lives within a couple miles of me way out in Athens. (Sorry if I remember the details incorrectly. I don't recall if you said these were children or other relatives.)

Another thing that set this drive-in apart, was that it was packed solid. There must have been hundreds of cars watching this movie! Afterward, I tried to count the number of parking spaces from the satellite images in Google Earth, but then I decided that was way too geeky. Let's just say it was hundreds of cars!

Jr's husband provided the 1.21 Jigawatts of audio for the movie and a number of folding chairs. Thanks - that was a life saver.

The movie was great. I'm not going to give away any spoilers (aside from saying that Chevy guy behind us took some pride in his choice of automotive brand). The movie really had the audience going - there was applause and cheers many times. (Aside from Ratatouille a couple weeks ago, I've not been to a movie that brought the audience to applause.)

We hung around after the movie, and eventually all headed out. I ended up needing to go straight for the gas station, but I think everyone else rolled onto the freeway together. I'm sorry I missed that sight.

That was well worth the trip from Athens to meet everyone. We certainly need to schedule another one!

- markwell


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