2014 Volkswagen CC R-Line test drive review. Much better at delivering to a food pantry than a Camaro

My 10-year-old son has a December birthday, and we usually throw a party for him.  But instead of asking for presents, I am very proud to report that for the past five years, he has asked his friends to bring canned food items instead of gifts.  Last year, he collected a record 442 items.  This year, he shattered his own record with 674 items!  People are really getting behind his efforts, and he gets a good feeling from taking his donations to the St. Vincent DePaul food pantry each year. 

Nine-year-old surprises dad with coverage of the Mid-Summer Corvette Show at Zona Rosa

You know I love Corvettes.  And this weekend the Corvette Club of Kansas City hosted the Mid-Summer Corvette Show near my house at the Zona Rosa shopping center.  Any other weekend, I’d be there in a heartbeat.  But I went to the Leadsled Spectacular in Salina this weekend, so I missed the Corvette show.  Still, this story has a happy ending after all.  To my complete surprise, my wife and son went to this great event without me.  And as a bonus, my nine-year-old son BHo took more than 170 pictures of all the cars there.  He was excited to share them with me when I got home, and I am equally as excited to share them with you.  The kid did a great job!

BHo's greatest hits

It’s a special day for a special member of the Hover Motor Company blog. As regular readers may know, my son BHo regularly attends car events with me, and often contributes photos for the stories. We are celebrating his eighth birthday, and I wanted to brag on him for a minute.

BHo’s birthday is obviously close to Christmas, so the influx of presents can be pretty overwhelming. We had a birthday party for him two years ago, and my wife suggested that he ask his friends for canned goods and food instead of gifts. He then donated the food to the St. Vincent De Paul Food Pantry at our church, and we let him go to the store and pick out one present for himself. He collected 140 food items from his friends and family that year.

The North Kansas City Cruise Night is successful. Maybe too successful. A look at the July festivities

The summer car cruise in North Kansas City has been a second-Saturday tradition for years, and that tradition was kept alive this weekend in the parking lot across the street from the NKC Pro Bowl.

This is still a pretty nice cruise, with several cars from the area turning out to listen to well-known Kansas City disc jockey Phil Jay spinnin' the Mustang Sally.

Battle Force 5 - from the Requests and Dedication line!



The Director

 “Dad—I have an idea you can do for an article.”

I have to admit, I love it that BHo, my first grade son, even cares enough to come up with story ideas. He gets drug to car shows and races and things all summer. He waits around a lot while I wash the car. I couldn’t ask for a better kid when I’m doing what I want to do, so I can’t very well take his requests lightly.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Battle Force 5”

“Oh. OK. Well, um, what do you want me to write about?”

Unprofessional, regular, family-style coverage of the racing at Kansas Speedway

In case you didn't know, Greg Biffle won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway. But Biffle wasn't the only winner in Kansas City, Kan.

Beautiful weather meant that everyone who went to the races was a winner, too. And my family and I were among the hordes of fans that spent some time watching the sensible consumption of high-octane fuel this weekend.

Overall, we had an incredible busy weekend, so getting to Kansas Speedway wasn't really in the cards. But as luck would have it, BHo's school was closed on Friday, so we were able to take in a day of practice and qualifying at Kansas City's racing showplace.

The pose

When I was in high school, we had an assignment in our art class in which we had to draw a fashion clothing design in pen and ink. Most of the people in the class went with the typical woman in a fancy dress or debonair dude in a tuxedo.

I drew the guy to the left in the racing suit and helmet. You can date him at about 1990, because of the open-faced helmet, Heartbeat of America sponsorship, and the pair of Nike Air Cross Trainers that had an uncanny resemblance to those worn by the artist.

Is it a good picture? No, it is not. I don't even think someone's legs could bend in exactly that manner. But it is the way his legs are crossed that bring us to the point (however pointless) of this article.

It has been mentioned to me recently that most of the pictures in which I've "posed" with a car feature a very similar crossed ankle position. And sure enough, as I went through some old pictures, that has proven to be a fairly consistent truth, as you will see below.

Father uses parade car pictures to disguise doting on his son during the Parkville Days Riverfest

Warning: there will be some personal, non-car-related information snuck into certain portions of this article. Reader discretion is advised.

Good little Parkville residents that we are, we dutifully attended the 42nd-Annual Parkville Days Riverfest in English Landing Park over the weekend. Parkville must be doing something right with this event, because there are so many people that ascend on the little historic downtown area that it almost makes you want to be someplace else.

For the last couple of years, our family has participated in most of the parades in town, a tradition we continued Saturday. The reason is that our son, the legendary BHo, earned his place among the entries by winning the Little Mr. Parkville pageant.