Westiva X

It's that time of year again!

Artwork courtesy of Ben G. Rogers

Westiva is very casual, informal event originally geared towards owners, fans and fanatics of both the Ford Festiva or Ford Aspire with invitations extended to owners of other econoboxes from the late eighties and early nineties such as the Dodge Colt, Chevrolet Sprint, Geo Metro, Suzuki Swift and Nissan Micra.

"Remember not to be a fool"

As I write this post it is less than a week until spring "officially" starts. To look out my office window to see a foot of snow on the garage roof you wouldn't think so. However it does bring to mind a couple of things. First, when should I take of the noisy studded winter tires and  put on the summers? Second, where will road trips take us this year?

All decked out for winter!

Lots can be found on the technical aspects of the correct timing for the summer/winter tire switchover.

More on the Shogun...

I first wrote about Jay Leno's Shogun in this April, 2016 post. Grassroots Motorsports just posted this article about Chuck Beck's Shogun. Chuck is the co-creator, along with his friend Rick Titus, and I believe he still owns this car. Follow this link to read the article.

Photo from the article

.

Full credit goes to Alan Caesar and Grassroots Motorsports for this great read...

Westiva 2017

What a great day!!!

Our drive out was in surprisingly heavy traffic on the Trans Canada Highway west of Calgary but once we turned onto Highway 40 it got a lot lighter.

Heavy traffic westbound on the Trans-Canada Highway

We were travelling with Jimmy Hawkins who had driven to Calgary from Macon GA. We were joined by Ryan and family just as we turned onto Highway 40 so the last 30km or so ended up being a three car convoy to the Wedge Pond Day Use Area.

Westiva 2017.... today's the day!

Weather has held... the forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 32ºF/90ºF. Our car is ready to go and long distance attendees are getting closer!

All cleaned up and ready for Westiva 2017

Watch this space over the next couple of days for lots of photos and a full report. Also look for #westiva and #westiva2017 on Instagram.

Westiva 2017... hard to believe that it's only seven days away!

Westiva 2017 is shaping up to be an awesome event. The weather forecast calls for temperatures of 35ºC/95ºF, or as Accuweather puts it... "hot with sizzling sunshine"! Bring your sunscreen, bring your camera, wear a hat!

All of these will be at Westiva 2017 except for the red one.

Wondering what you can expect to see when you come to Westiva 2017? Glad you asked! Here's a small sampling:

Westiva 2017: only 14 days to wait now

The print edition of the on-line article I posted last week was published yesterday in the driving section of the Calgary Herald... apparently we "Festiva aficionados are having a love-in"! The text of the article hasn't changed but we all got a chuckle out of the headline

The weather forecast is looking great with a high of 26ºC (79ºF) and only a slight chance of late day showers; that being said the event is a go rain or shine.