Its been silent for a while on the BerlinBonez Blog…Reason is we were hanging out in the US, spending a couple of weeks in Florida. Now you might think Florida is famous for gated communities full of conservative old age pensioners and in fact it IS. On the other hand I didn´t see any gated communities and the reason for the high numbers of  older people hanging out there is that the weather is Sun Sun Sun all year round and well, I can certainly relate to that.

In fact taking two weeks vacation and just cruising around with no particular place to go turned up some cool things to see and yes, great beaches (even without hitting the Keys).

One of my favourite places we got to see just by seeing a voucher in an advert at a diner was “Muscle Car City” at Punta Gorda.  Now, I´m a big fan of alternative energy and anything else that helps preserve our environment, but show me a big fat chrome clad American muscle car and certain logic circuits in my brain just get bypassed and I go into a trance like state of wonder and desire…..

“Muscle Car City” was then a bit like a mechanized high-octane acid trip for me, and it was difficult to get me out of the place. When I did come out I had that look in my eyes that said “I want one, I want one I, want one – and I want it NOW!” In fact if had had to choose one of these big OTT gas-guzzlers to take home I probably wouldn´t have been able to reach a decision in under a week or so. If pressed, however, I might well have gone for a black 1963 Corvette (yes they have most cars in different colours too…)

Muscle Car City is a private collection, put together by a guy called Rick Treworgy, who obviously has dedicated a large part of his life to collecting and restoring these relics of a time when men were men and women were , well, women I guess and more importantly gasoline was a throw away commodity powering the US economy into the stratosphere – thanks Rick. I wonder if, one day there will be an electric muscle car – who knows?

To make the trip extra cool, I was wearing a BerlinBonez “Manik Mechanix” T-Shirt (coincidence – I swear..) and the guy at the cash desk said “nice shirt-that looks cool”. Moments like that are very special.

Check out the Muscle Car City website here.