British Invasion 2013

The engine started ticking and popping as soon as he shut off the ignition.  He looked up to see the police car with its blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror.  The cop car’s door swung open.  A lawman emerged, a solid three hundred pounds of Vermont’s finest.  He straightened up carefully, then reached into the cruiser, and set a felt hat carefully on his head. When he turned this way his Ray-Ban sunglasses glittered dark under the overcast sky.

He approached the Jaguar.

“I been waitin’ for you,” he said, looking down at the out of state sticker.

“I know.  You see I was comin’ here as fast as I could.”

Back at the British Invasion the Master of Ceremonies had said, “Drive far, and drive fast,” but he wasn’t here now, to pay the ticket.  It was a good thing the guns and the liquor were safely out of sight, and the car was basically legal.  

Three hundred seventy two dollars.  The cop didn't want to take cash, either.  "You gotta pay it at the court."  Sometimes a few hundred more dollars changed their mind, and it was a good deal, to keep the record clean.  Other times they figured to arrest you for a bribe, and things got bad.  It's always dicey, figuring which way to go in a situation like that.  Andrew says it's easier in Russia or Mexico, where you always know where you stand.

“You coulda gone to jail,” he said, “but I gave you a break because you was coming to see me, after all.”

Five miles later, the speedometer was back on the far side of 100.  New Yorkers used to be able to speed right at home, but the cops down there got airplanes, and cameras.  Vermont is like the last frontier, for now.

British Invasion 23 happened the weekend of September 21 in Stowe, Vermont.  Six hundred fifty British motorcars and a thousand-plus owners converged on the Stoweflake Resort, two miles out of town on Route 108.  The public gates opened at nine, and they flooded in too, a tide of seething humanity, shouting and jostling as they waited for the Blood Sport to begin.  They didn't have to wait long.

Land Rover Polo is always popular, and they play the six-truck style up there.  Spikes and battering rams were outlawed years ago at Vermont state fair, but the Invasion still allows them.  It’s the British version of Demolition Derby.  Much more genteel, yet satisfyingly brutal.  Then there is the jousting, and the halberd competition.  I like that the best.

The only hard part is trying to sleep.  The revelry goes on late into the night, with the sounds of metal on metal ringing in the chill air as modern-day knights in armor fight with swords, axes, and spears.  The occasional siren breaks up the rhythm for the ones that go to the hospital, or jail.  Amazingly, the cars themselves are untouched the next morning.   Nothing but a little blood spatter, to wipe off with the dew.  Cars are sacred here.

And some of the best action of the show happens at night.  Bobby Stuart from the Jensen Club set up an impromptu drag race on a deserted stretch of Mountain Road, and they whupped the Aston Martin cretins hard.  There was no sign of the fun the next day - a flatbed hauled the wreckage to Canada before dawn - but two guys in a red Interceptor were boasting of their victory to anyone who would listen, next day on the show field.

The real high point of the night was when the MG club outlaws raced through Smuggler's Notch at 2AM.  They close the road up there this time of year but proper British car enthusiasts always have bolt cutters in their ever-present tool bags, and some have torches. Those little cars went through the hairpins faster than I'd have thought possible, and most of them made it out alive.

As all that unfolded, the Land Rover guys were replicating Gleason's famous night time crossing of Siberia up on the Mansfield ski slopes.  They'd tried to rent daytime access to the mountain, and been rebuffed, but a night raid was more fun anyway.  The mountain maintenance crews are probably still cleaning up the mess.  

It was two and a half days of gasoline-fueled debauchery.  There was something for everyone.  Solid Land Rover diesels.  Bangers and mash.  Elegant prewar Jaguars.  Drunkards with flagons of stout.  Rare Aston Martins.  Vicious Manchester United fans.  Whatever you wanted, as long as it was British, was there for the finding.

Whether you could do anything with it when you found it . . . now, that was another matter.  It was only seven o’clock, but already the bartender was out of ale.  “Ten casks,” he said, looking with wonder at the singing and carousing patrons. Two supine revelers blocked the road back to the hotel.  I stepped out of the car and dragged them out of the roadway.  Better that, than to leave them to be run over by the next sods, who might not be so considerate.

The next morning I heard one woke up, and the other was eaten by animals.  Bertrand says he heard him screaming, but I couldn't tell . . . the yelling all runs together after midnight.

Our Jaguars didn’t win any prizes this year, but they didn’t sustain any damage either, and sometimes that is prize enough.  But you never know.  I have no idea where the six thousand dollars in my glove box came from.  All I can say for sure is, it’s not there now.  Any car show where you return home a few grand richer is a good one, I say!

We made it home on Sunday.  Here are a few pictures of the spectacle . . . .

The British Invasion returns

Once again it's time to head for Vermont, for the British Invasion

Here's a preview of a few of the cars we are bringing:

Please join me on the show field, and meet the crew from Robison Service.  We will have cars in Land Rover, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Bentley and Triumph classes.

Two days at the British Invasion, 2009

This article also appears in print, in the Rover News
Words and pictures (c) 2009 John Elder Robison



It’s that time of year again. Last weekend, I left my Massachusetts home for a trip to the wilds of Northern Vermont, all in the name of British Motoring. I’m a diehard Land Rover lover, but the 2.5 diesel Defender is too slow for a five-hundred-mile road trip and the Range Rover was out of town. And this year I wanted plush. So I climbed into the Big Red Bentley and headed north. I moved out onto I-91 and muscled my way past pugnacious thugs in Escalades and granola-powered Prius drivers. My speed climbed as I approached the border. I tried to hold it back, but there's only so much one can do.

The car had a nasty shake at 85, but it smoothed out nicely over 110. Most cars struggle to attain those speeds but this brute takes them in stride. At the century mark the engine is just above fast idle, at 1,900 rpm. You’ve got six inches of travel remaining in the gas pedal, and 2,500 rpm to go on the tach. There’s a certain magic to five hundred horsepower. I wish Land Rover had a product like this. Perhaps one day I will stuff a Turbo R engine into a 110 County to create one.

We ate up the road all the way to White River, where I took a left onto 89 North. My Beast coasted down as the exit approached, rolling past the Exit 30MPH sign at a smooth 75. I hit the bend and slewed my way around, exiting onto 89 with a subtle trail of smoke. A tip of the throttle and I was back to speed for the final run in to Stowe.

I reached my hotel only to find it was Under New Management, a euphemism for, "I'm sorry sir, your room reservation has vanished." Grabbing the hapless clerk by the throat, he regurgitated the key to 124, the room I have occupied for years, which to his great good fortune was as yet empty. I wandered down the hall, where a wedding dinner was in progress. I shared some fine wine and cheese before being found out and evicted. Afterward, suitably fortified, I cruised down the hill into Stowe.

By the time I arrived the block party was in full swing. I made sure my car was well hidden out behind the hotel before walking over the covered bridge to town. A Beatles tribute band was playing, and an intoxicated female dragged me into a dance as I passed. I tried to extricate myself as two drunken revelers snapped pictures. I was saved by the arrival of a freak in a Chicken Costume, singing at the top of his lungs while swinging a golf club to clear a path to the bar.

A short while later I was joined by my friend Dave Rifken with his 1997 Defender 90



Dave and I headed to the Blue Moon Grille, where we were seated and fed immediately, thanks to the economic collapse. In better days they’d have taken a reservation for next weekend, if they fed specimens like us at all. I ate grilled scallops as Dave texted his kid, who was lost somewhere on the highways of rural Vermont.

I remember being lost like that myself, years ago. In my case, it was a result of eating mushrooms. I don’t know what Dave’s kid’s excuse was. Thirty some years ago I found myself hungry and deranged in Rock Island, Quebec, where the border crossing had apparently closed for the night. When I chose the self-service option and took the old 88 through I was rounded up and detained by bad tempered Customs Agents for almost eight hours. By the time I got loose, the mushrooms had worn off and my money was gone. All in all, that was one bad trip.

Our reverie was interrupted by flashing lights and sirens. We saw Police outside the restaurant, and we slouched low in our seats. We didn’t think we’d done anything arrestable in Stowe but you never know . . . Sometimes the Natives get greedy, and invent laws to extract revenue from sweet innocents like us. My mind went back to the Shamokins of rural Pennsylvania, who rolled boulders into the highway so they could stop motorists and rob them. At times like that I regret leaving my preacher outfit home.

Fortunately, the cops were merely clearing the riffraff from around the stage. No one was after us. When we emerged from the Blue Moon, we refrained from song, and our refined and upright appearance made us seem the farthest thing from rabble. We passed unmolested. As the shouting subsided to the snick of handcuffs we slipped back up the hill. Our rigs were safe, surrounded by British cars in all the important colors: red, white, black and most of all, green.

We awakened to a crisp, cool Vermont morning. The fires from the previous night’s bacchanalian debauchery had burnt themselves out, but the smoky smell lingered in the air. It was a pleasant odor for anyone whose house or car had escaped destruction, and I was pleased to be part of that group. We cranked up the Rover and the Bentley, and headed for the Invasion.




We arrived at the show field early, but the scene was already mobbed. Hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands swarmed through the gates on Weeks Hill Road in Stowe. We parked our machines among others of their own kind, and set out to wander the field.



Within minutes, three Guardsmen showed up in a Series III Air Portable, parked near Dave, and emplaced a heavy machine gun to survey the field. I ducked and passed as they shot off a test burst or two. Everyone was well behaved after they arrived. I was lucky to pass when I did, because I heard they began collecting tolls from passerby but I didn’t pay a cent.



Their actions reminded me of some City Parking Lot Attendants who worked a lot down the street from me when I worked at Pink Floyd's sound company in Long Island City back in the nineteen-seventies. After watching them all one summer, I was surprised to arrive at work one day to find them gone, and the lot chained up. It turned out they had not been City Employees at all. Instead, they were Enterprising Lowlifes with Bolt Cutters who had seen an opportunity and seized it. I wondered if the same thing might be occurring today, but I declined to mount a challenge.

Land Rover was well represented at the show. In fact, one 1959 Series truck actually won the concours, something I have never seen accomplished with a Land Rover. I don’t know if the judges were drunk, bribed, or what, but there was some heavy competition out there and they putted away with a trophy. What a sight – an old Series truck sandwiched between a massive Rolls Royce limousine and a dainty Morgan roadster in the winner’s parade.

The Guardsmen also won an award for the tailgate picnic, but it’s not clear if they earned it or merely menaced the show’s managers with their weapons. Either way, though, they exited as winners. And I don’t want to give a false impression – they were not thugs. Far from it; they were clean and very well behaved and their heavy machine gun certainly had a calming influence on every rowdy who exited the beer tent. Robert Heinlein said it very well: An armed society is a polite society.

There was a good field of Land Rover entries, starting with some Series trucks from the late fifties all the way to the current Range Rover Sports. Series trucks made up the biggest contingent but the P38’s made a good showing this year too.

You find many kinds of car enthusiasts at the Invasion, but the ones I love the best are the Rover owners. One of them lounged behind her rig,



while another handed me a beer



after opening it on his back bumper. Two Canadian females at the next Rover fed me kiwi fruit while extolling the virtues of cross breeding strawberries.



All the while, the sound system played vintage tunes from the Kinks, Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Buffet.

Who wouldn’t identify with that?

With 650 British vehicles on the show field, there were some noteworthy non-Rover entries. For example, some deviant with a welder had shoehorned a blown Hemi into a yellow MINI Cooper. The idea seems shocking at first, but upon reflection, you realize that’s exactly what every MINI dreams of turning into, when it grows up.



I saw a genuine Elva, yellow with a red stripe, parked near a fine red TVR. Out behind the cars, revelers sat, drank, and told stories, and I stumbled and bobbed my way through their midst. At one point, I encountered a six-hundred-horsepower supercharged Aston Martin, an authentic Morris Moke, and two Norton Commando motorcycles.

I left as the bikers were fighting over tent poles for the Motorbike Joust. I did not get to see how it turned out, but I’m sure the details appeared in the town Police Log.

We dined at the Olde English Pub, where I had Bangers and Mash followed by a Spotted Dick washed down with tea. All in all, a respectable British feed. Alex had a problem with the concept of Spotted Dick, but I introduced him to Patrick O’Brien’s excellent writing, including his cook book which includes the Dick, and he calmed.

The next morning dawned colder and clearer than the one before. Tops on the day’s agenda was the backseat driving contest. In that competition the driver is blindfolded, and the navigator guides him over a complex route from the backseat. When someone told me the course started on the show field and ended at the Lake Champlain Ferry I decided to get out while I still could.

Until next time . . .

Some scenes from the British Invasion, 2007

Come see us this year!

I'll be appearing at the Burlington Book Festival on the second Saturday in September, and I'll be at the British Invasion the following weekend.

www.burlingtonbookfestival.com
www.britishinvasion.com