Crazy, stupid, or both?

[Matt@BOS]

Sorry I missed some of you guys. I Would have liked to have had the opportunity to chat, and put faces to names, but I was wandering around quite a bit and only came by the car to check on it from time to time.

I was going to write a few words about how SEMA went, but I sort of got stuck telling short story. In retrospect I think its actually pretty funny.

Several weeks ago D!ck and Chris at BOS entered the car for the GM Design Awards on a whim. Fast forward to early Wednesday morning of SEMA week. A crew of GM designers came around to look at the car. Then, a little while later they came back and managed to catch D!ck for an interview. While there they notified him that they were going to pick a winner around 11am or so. Well, 11 came and went. Typically if you never get a call for an award it's because someone else has won. Go Figure.

Around 7pm **** receives a call on his cell phone from someone notifying him that he'd won. His response was one of pure shock. I think it went something along the lines of, "really? Are you sure? Can I ask why you picked us? This isn't some kind of cruel joke is it?"
To which the caller simply replied, "yes. You won best GM sports car because the car had a cohesive theme from bumper to bumper, and no, this isn't a joke. Be at room N223 around 7:15 tomorrow morning."

And this is where the story takes a strange but funny detour in the form of a sidenote worthy of explanation. When a group of guys like us happens towin an award like this, it's pretty unbelievable, and hard to believe. It seemed to good to be true. So, naturally the paranoia ensued. We started looking for any reason it couldn't be true. Out of all of us, D!ck's mind worked up the most highly irrational, but also most logical explanation as to how this could in fact be too good to be true.



Charlie Hutton. A few years ago Charlie had rented some space at the shop to work on a car. While there he pranked the BOS guys, and did so frequently. When he left to paint a car over at the Greenings' D!ck decided it was time to even the score. D!ck called the Greenings up, they agreed to participate, and a plan was hatched. I won't get into the specifics but Charlie got pranked, GOOD. He told D!ck that he would get him back. Maybe not that week, or that month, but Charlie vowed he wouldn't forget that day, and would one day even things up.

Back to SEMA. It's Wednesday night, and here we are throwing back some beers at the Lat-G party, celebrating the win. Yet that night, in the back of our minds we were working hard to shrug off our crazy idea as to how this whole thing was just elaborate prank. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be? I don't think any of us seriously believed that Charlie was capable of doing such a thing. At least I didn't. Of course my only real knowledge of Charlie Hutton comes by way of TLC television shows on which he seems to pop up from time to time.

It couldn't be a prank. We were given specifics on where to report and everything. Really, the only thing that seemed weird was having to meet at 7:15 am. In vegas time that is the equivalent of some ungodly early hour of the morning like 4:52, or something weird like that.

That night I don't think any of us slept well, which was pretty remarkable considering the fact that that stuff we drank, which happens to be called beer has been known to make a fellow tired if he drinks enough of it. Around 6am we woke up, got ready, headed over to the convention center, and tried to find meeting room N223. The anxiety was growing and I started to become increasingly worried that this was, in fact, some kind of elaborate ruse. I'm not sure why my brain started to think this way, but it did. Maybe it was lack of sleep, which beer and tequila had failed to remedy when I'd got gone to bed. Regardless, I went from being 99% positive we'd won to somewhere around 95% positive that we'd won. 4% might not seem like a big number, but that little bit of fear and anxiety is a real motherf---- as you wander around a not-yet -open convention center staffed with a bunch of idiots who should have known their way around, but didn't. I was shocked by their ineptitude. They were like a bunch Germans who couldn't find Poland. At 7:15 we were supposed to be at the awards breakfast. It was 7:10 and I was somewhere on the second floor of the south hall trying to find room N223 which was actually somewhere on the second floor of the north hall. D!ck meanwhile had decided to take the monorail over, which didn't even start running until 7:00. Oh yeah, we were in good shape.

Miraculously we were all in room N223 by 7:30, which was when the small awards ceremony started. And it was a small ceremony, but that was a good thing, because there were plenty of people from GM who were capable of telling us if we were actually going to collect an award that day.

Turns out we were:



Matt

[67 ls1 vert]

Congrats Matt!! You have built yourself a true show winner. One of the nicest for sure. Well deserved.
Did you and BOS get a trophy or just you?

[John Wright]

Well deserved, Matt. Congrats!

[chunger]

Wow, cool story!

[Motown 454]

Congratulation's Matt on the award its well deserved.

[Matt@BOS]

Congrats Matt!! You have built yourself a true show winner. One of the nicest for sure. Well deserved.
Did you and BOS get a trophy or just you?

We just got one trophy. As a somewhat serious joke I was thinking it would be really cool if we could get someone with a 3D printer to make a replica, or have one CNC'd so that we could treat the the trophy just like the Stanley Cup, where the real one is locked up, and the "other one" travels around during which time everyone gets a day with it. D!ck said that the trophy was ultimately mine, but I think it will spend a lot of time in their shop. After all, without them I'd just have a bunch of sketches on paper...well, that and a pile of cash.

Matt

[Gandalf]

after all, without them i'd just have a bunch of sketches on paper...well, that and a pile of cash.

lol!!!

[Ron.in.SoCal]

That's why you said it was 'just a rumor' on Wed night...!

[Steve1968LS2]

Sweet deal Matt.. it was great having you in our booth and it looks like the accident was a GOOD thing after all.. in a wierd way.

[L & H Kustoms]

Matt, Congrats on the award. It was nice to meet you and D i c k in person. Although Im still unsure if it was good or bad to meet and hang out with Jon aka. grumpy The car looks great. Now get out and drive it but watch out for women driving saturns.

[mc84_zz4]

Wow! it's so nice, it's worth posting twice:

Huge Congrats Matt, I am sure D!ck will probably get a few more beers in that fridge for the crew.
One helluva feather in the cap! And you get to drive it, lucky guy!
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