happy birthday brooke!

Last November, one of our good cruiser friends lost his daughter Brooke. She was only 17. Yesterday would have been her 18th birthday so her parents threw a big birthday bash at Boondocks in Kaysville. It was a great way to remember Brooke and celebrate her life! And Boondocks was a blast. We went go-carting, played in the batting cages, played roller ball (mini-bowling), and spent what was probably the best 25 cents ever on a game where we threw balls (like the kind from a ball pit) at a big touchscreen trying to hit different objects for points. I'm sure the game is fun for a little kid, but having 5 adults play it at once was a blast!

I would hang out a lot with Brooke at car shows, probably because I was one of the few people there close to her age (ie: not old enough to be her parent or grandparent!) Some of the things I remember most about Brooke are helping set-up our Autorama display with her in 2009 and competing in a frozen T-shirt contest with her at a car show in Evanston. At Autorama, we have to park the cars on tarps to protect the floor, and then we have to tape the tarps in place. We parked 8 or 10 cars, so we needed a lot of tarps. Brooke and I had the task of going over the duct tape and patting or rubbing it so it would stick to the tarp and the floor. I think we spent over an hour on our knees trying to get that tape to stick and get it straight.

Every year at the Evanston car show, they have a frozen T-shirt contest. They take 10 T-shirts, soak them down and freeze them solid. Then we have to try and be the first person to open the shirt and get it on. Brooke and I tried banging ours against a trailer hitch and then ended up in the bathroom trying to thaw them out with water and we ended up soaking wet. Neither of us won, but we had a great time trying!