A buddy of mine, Lincoln Doring who was featured on the cover of our Oct. 2006 issue recently shared a story of this year's ECC (East Coast Cruise) which is an Australian truck show that I wanted to share with you guys. This is just too good not to share:
Hay bro, I thought I would give you a blow by blow account of the weekend that was….me and the ST boys from QLD flew down to newcastle last Thursday night. We were greeted at the airport by Greeny who was rolling what was to become our new home for the next four days, the ST van. Paul a petitioning member hooked us up with around $500 in vinyl ST stickers, that still doesn’t quite explain how extreme we had this bad boy stickered up.
We met Matt Baker (from Grant Kustoms) on the Friday morning at the Chop Shop, made arrangements for beer and pointed the bus south. The trip from Gosford to where the show is held is generally a 4 hour trip. Somehow we turned it into a 7.5 hour trip. Im sure it had nothing to do with 3 cartons of beer and toilet stops every 30klms. Needless to say it was a shite load of fun!
Friday night was the usual meet and greet with everybody. Was a really good to meet guys I had not met at the other two shows this year. I turned in at around 2am, Matt followed around 5am. He is a machine…as you know!
Saturday morning was breakfast at 8.30am. the choice was a brown paper bag containing an egg and bacon roll or a brown paper bag containing an egg and bacon roll. Looking at our choices myself and Matt proceeded to the bar for Bloody Marys. I am now considering this as a breakfast option everyday!
Back on the Bus and off to show. We all arrived, set up our EZ-UPS and sat back to relax. The show itself was awesome. The quality of rides was excellent. At least five stand out show rides!
The weather was a little miserable, but the beer compensated for that! LOL
That night we attended the presentation, which in my opinion was the toast of the weekend…so sick. The guys running it really put their heads together to come up with what I would call the best night of the year. All night, raffles were run with giveaways, lucky door prizes and one punter won himself a full bag kit….then Matt knocked him out in front of everybody on stage when he presented the kit to him.You can ask Matt about that! Wasn’t as serious as it sounds.
This was the first ECC I have been to, but I can say it is now the premier event on my calendar! Well worth the flights and bus travel to get there!