drivetofive

Trip Distance:  400 Miles

Well, well, well!  A video that I filmed with Honda about a year and a half ago has debuted.

Get your Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn in the microwave because I have quite a few videos to link you to in this post.

‘Kokoro’ in Japanese means “heart.”  There’s a series of “Honda Kokoro” videos hosted by my friend Charles, Honda Brand Culture Champion, who has just recently retired.  I was the main character in the 6th video, which just came out yesterday.  I think the legal and post-production hurdles that set this back dilute its timeliness (3 of the cars featured there are gone, and 4 more are added) but it’s still a super fun memory.

My friend Chuck has a collection of very obscure vehicles.  If it weren’t crazy enough that he owns a custom 1988 Acura Legend convertible (the Legend wasn’t even offered from the factory in a convertible bodystyle), he also has a Dodge Dakota pickup convertible (yes, that one was a thing!), and a 1998 Acura SLX with only 54,000 miles on it.

How he managed to assemble a grouping so eclectic I’m not quite sure, but I decided to make a 6-hour round-trip from Phoenix to Sierra Vista, Arizona visit to pay him a visit this past weekend.

The vehicle called into action for the occasion was my 1996 SLX, since aside from the RADwood show last December, this would be the first time I would meet up with a fellow SLX owner.  Luckily, even though the summer heatwave was intense, I made the trip to & fro without incident.  My air conditioning even kept things cool the whole way.

It was nice to reconnect with Chuck and Patty, and we dined at one of Sierra Vista’s great Mexican restaurants.  The city is located only about 20 miles from the Mexican border, so authenticity is accounted for.  Chuck and I also took the convertible Legend out for a cruise.  I shot a few video clips that I pieced together.  Here’s the outcome.

(Special preview – this isn’t even public on my channel yet!)

Thanks, Chuck & Patty for hosting!  Please pardon our masklessness for the photo, and in other instances of the videos in this blog.  Rest assured I do have a mask in every single car and I wear them regularly.

Here are a few other updates in recent travels and current events.

With the automotive event calendar being wiped almost entirely clean this year thanks to COVID-19, some venues have reinvented themselves in digital format. One of them is the Future Collector Car Show (FCCS) which hosted a virtual car show on YouTube.  I was among 18 finalists who made it to the final round for Best of Show with my 1999 Integra.  Here’s a video that was published on the YouTube channel of the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles.

(My car shows up 15 minutes in)

I took a trip to Utah a couple of weeks ago to see some family members.

My mom and stepdad and I dined from Cliffside Restaurant overlooking St. George, Utah.

The trusty old 2013 ILX rolled 225,000 miles, and I filmed a few minutes of video.

I also shot video of mom’s 2016 RLX.

And finally, several weeks ago I had company from a couple of Integra-owning local friends, Eric and Chris.  It was nice of them to stop by, and I got some video clips then too.

I especially like Chris’ T-shirt.  “Hoard Hondas, Not Toilet Paper.”

My T-shirt was pretty special too.  It was a one-day-only design made available on Blipshift.

Lastly, my friend Andy stopped by to show me his 2005 Lotus.

I guess that’s it for now.  Just catching you up on the latest.

This entry was posted on August 20, 2020 at 4:28 pm and is filed under ILX, Integra, RLX, SLX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.