The size of this initial page is about 200K, and the full size images average approximately 40-70K each.
1999 Toronto DML Meet #2 - Friday and Saturday January 29-30, 1999
Here's how this works... I'll show you a small thumbnail of each picture, probably along with
some blabbing about it. There are two versions of each picture; one is a plain ol' picture, but
with the other I've added some labels. In the "labeled" version, yellow text identifies
the owner of each truck, and red text identifies people. If a label isn't clear as to
what person it goes to, I've drawn a (red) line from the label to the person.
Clicking on a thumbnail will bring up the labeled picture. If you'd like to see the version
without all the text and labels, click on the "*" to the right of
the picture.
Eddie originally proposed the Speedorama meet. Thursday the 28th was Jason's birthday,
so Norah arranged a little surprise for him... :-) He didn't know about the meet
(or he forgot; one of the two), so Norah worked it out such that I would show up on
Thursday evening out of the blue, and Jason would find out about the DML meet happening
the next couple of days. Sort've a DML birthday present of sorts. :-)
We don't have pictures of everything, but here's basically how the weekend went:
I drove up to Scarborough with a friend of mine (Ed) who was interested in checking out
Speedorama. I arrived at Jason & Norah's place at about 10-10:30pm or so. Norah took
this picture as Jason opened the door. He suspected something was awry, but he didn't
know what until now... (Check out the "Dodge Parking Only"
sign in the background.) :-)
On Friday morning, I was planning to go to the Playdium with Ed before hitting the
Speedorama, but since Jason had the day off, everyone decided to go. Jason,
Norah, Ed, and myself stopped off at a donut shop for a quick bite to eat, then headed
over to the Playdium to meet Bob. Sorry we were a bit late Bob, but we didn't get
to sleep until about 4am. There was this late night movie about this creature
named
Reptilicus that spat burning green slime you see... Oh, and Jason & Norah
have a venus fly trap disguised as a couch. Once you sit down, you're there for
good! :-)
(I took these pics as we were leaving the Playdium.)
After we left the Playdium, we decided to pop over to Jack Astor's for some
lunch. Eddie wasn't there to draw his Dak on the tablecloth, so despite my lack
of talent, I did my best to draw mine. Everyone signed it and Norah decided to take
it home. The last time I saw it, it was hanging on their computer desk
in the living room. (last pic) Unfortunately, I messed it up a bit...
When I wrote my 1/4 mile ET on it, I forgot the speed. I wrote
93.97, but its actually only 93.55. Doh. :-P
After leaving Jack Astors, we headed over to Exhibition Place, with Bob in the
lead. On the way there, we were passed by an S-10 with racing stickers all
over the back window and huge "cherry bomb" type mufflers
sticking out the back. It took some doing, but I managed to keep my
Dak behind Bob, instead of darting out to call the Chevy's bluff. :-)
Actually, what helped the most was the fact that my engine was pinging
pretty badly after filling up with some "bronze" grade gas.
(There wasn't any octane listed on the pumps, just "bronze",
"silver", and "gold", or something like that...) I
had the stock PCM in at the time, but it still pinged under load; must
have been some oxygenated winter gas or something. I left it in 4th
the whole way, both to lower the chances of pinging, and to slurp
through this tank of bad gas as quickly as possible.
You can see the CN tower in the last couple of pics, and the last pic
shows the building Speedorama was held in; this was just as we were about
to pull into the parking lot.
At the show...
The very first thing we did when we got to the show was to try and find Eddie and
Lisa. You wouldn't think that'd be too hard "Just look for a bright blue
Dak; how many can there be?", but we wandered through just about the
entire show before we found them. Well, we found Lisa and the truck,
anyway; Eddie was busy working on his new rims. :-)
The first 12 pics are mostly Eddie's truck, then a few pics
of some other vehicles at the show; some 'vettes, a couple of Rams
(one was customized to the hilt, but the other wasn't anything to
sneeze at either), and a really nice bike.
The couple of pics with us sitting around a table was in the food area
of the show, where I had the privilege of paying through the nose for
a warm Coke. (Bleagh!!!) This was right next to the audio part of the show, so
we got blasted pretty good from that. Nothing like a few thousand
watts to massage your internal organs... :-) There was this one
Dak that made the beer bottles inside one of the refrigerators dance around
in a most peculiar way.
Anyway, it was at this location that Eddie demonstrated
the proper way to get your spouse's attention in a crowded room. Essentially,
what you do is to yell "HEY!!!" at the top of your lungs. This actually gets
everyone's
attention, but at least one of those folks is bound to be the person you want.
Thus enlightened, we all employed this technique for the remainder of the day. :-)
The last pic is the plaque Eddie got for winning first place in his
class. Nice work, Eddie!!
At the show, we were trying to figure out where we wanted to eat before
Lisa starved and keeled over. We
finally managed to decide on the Hard Rock Cafe. Norah was checking out
Eddie's Dak when Eddie gave yet another demonstration. This time,
he taught us that when you sit in the passenger seat and blast the
horn repeatedly, it is the person in the driver's seat who gets
blamed. :-)
As you can see from the first pic, everyone had their coats on and
we were ready to leave, so we did. We decided to meet up outside.
Bob had to leave, so I followed Jason around as we tried to find
the grey, rusting, imported econobox that Eddie and Lisa had
described to us. At one point, Jason pulled up onto a
snow covered "sidewalk" to wait while I went by,
still in search of Eddie and Lisa. As I came back, I decided to wait
where Jason was before, so I pulled up onto this "sidewalk"
only to discover that it was nice and mushy under there. Since when
do they build sidewalks out of grass and mud? It was also a
ditch of sorts... And so, like a complete idiot, I got stuck. I found out later
that Jason had to use 4-low to get out of there himself, so I
didn't have a prayer. My Dak will go
at the strip, but it wouldn't go anywhere here. Fortunately,
I had my tow strap with me, and Jason's V6 pulled those 4800lbs
outta there as if my Dak were a helium balloon. (Remind me not to
poke fun at the 6'ers anymore...) ;-)
Ed, who took
these pictures, and who would never consider buying a truck without
4 wheel drive, found this entire incident quite amusing. (But then
again, he drives a Ranger, so his mind is suspect...) ;-) So
did a group of Chebby owners who walked by and made some comments
about "a couple of dead Mopars". Jason fired something
back at them, and I made sure to blip my throttle a couple of times
as I drove by. (Roughly translated, this meant, "I may have been stuck,
but you drive a Chebby. I can get un-stuck...") ;-)
After driving around a little more, we finally decided to head to the
Hard Rock Cafe, since that must be what Eddie and Lisa did. As we
headed out the driveway, we passed them as they were sitting out
in front waiting for us. :-)
We had a great meal at the Hard Rock Cafe, then parted ways.
A couple of pics taken Saturday morning in Jason & Norah's driveway.
For those who may be wondering, no I didn't buy a new Dak. There's some black paint
under there somewhere... Really!! I was going to wash some of the dirt and
dust off prior to driving up, but I'm glad I didn't! The drive up on the QEW and the
expressway driving in Toronto itself did an excellent job of coating my Dak with a nasty
layer of road salt. French fries, anyone?
On Saturday, we were planning to go to the Science Center,
and then have a homecooked meal courtesy of Norah, but
everyone slept in a little bit. Eddie and Lisa hadn't slept much throughout
the entire show, so they had to pass. (Plus, Eddie was convinced that Scarborough is
a war zone from which he would never escape...) ;-) We almost hooked up with
Randy, but he got called in to work at the last moment. So Jason, Norah, Ed and myself
went out to a late breakfast, then spent
a few hours at Jason & Norah's, watching a couple of offroading
tapes. Jason and I made a run to the store for some supplies as
Norah whipped up a batch of awesome spaghetti. :-) After having
dinner and some of Jason's home made birthday cake (just as
tasty as the spaghetti!), I checked out their computer setup and
got a bad case of cable modem envy. (Nice!!) :-)
After another round of goodbyes, Ed and I were back off to the
USA. I managed to stay awake the entire trip home, which is a good
thing, since I was driving. I found myself using more and
more cold air as we got closer to home though. :-) We managed
to make it all the way home without hearing a single commercial
on the radio. (I'd like to say this was because of my incredible skill, speed,
and cat-like reflexes, but in reality, 99.9FM was playing 99 in a row; they
must broadcast from the CN tower or something, because we heard it loud and
clear all the way from Scarborough to my driveway.
This is the 2nd DML meet I've been to, and once again, it was a heck of
a lot of fun! If you're interested in getting together with your fellow
DML'ers, keep an eye on the
DML Event Profiles.
page for an upcoming event, or create an event of your own!!
- The people that attended this meet were:
- Eddie (and Lisa) Estoppey (DakGts@MoparEd.com)
- Jason Bleazard (jbleazard@home.com)
- Norah Bleazard (nbleazard@home.com)
- Jon Steiger (jon@dakota-truck.net) & his friend Ed
- Bob Tom (tigers@bserv.com)
The photos of this meet were taken by Ed, Eddie, Jason, Norah, and myself.
If you find any errors, please let me know.
Jon Steiger jon@dakota-truck.net
March 4, 1999
Back to the DML Home Page
Jon N. Steiger / stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu / SUNY College at Fredonia
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
