Our 1953-2003 Commemorative Edition Corvette Story

    Chaz & Gael Cone, Atlanta, GA

Ruby's Cruise-In, Redondo Beach, CA

Friday, May 14th, 2004

Well, our Route 66 adventure is over and we find ourselves in Southern California.

During the planning phase of the trip I received an email from fellow 53CE owner Tom Kampas. Tom lives in Redondo Beach (a few miles south of LA) and owns CE#49. He invited the four of us down to a weekly cruise-in at Ruby's Diner in Redondo Beach. He said he thought he could arrange things so that his CE, our two and a fourth (Mark and Candy Drucker's #29) could park together. We readily agreed. And our LA host Jack Revel said he'd lead us down in his '59 beauty. Road TRIP!

Friday, May 14th

Jack came by the hotel and picked us up about 4pm:


He calls this ride "Rolling Prozac"

We headed south (our little three Corvette caravan) and got to Ruby's in about an hour and a half. The traffic in the LA area is -- well, you can see.

Tom had succeeded in blocking space for us (though I think he nearly came to blows over it) and there we were with two white CEs and two black ones:


That's Jack's 1959 on the left, then Buzz and Jackie's #12, our #11,
Mark & Candy Drucker's triple-black #29 and Tom Kampas' #49

It's rare to see two CEs in the same place; but FOUR!?!?

See how much lower mine looks?  This is an indication of a problem I finally got fixed when I got back to Atlanta.

Here are Mark and Tom with their fine rides:


They may have conservatively colored cars but they
more than make up for it in shirt choices!
The black CEs DO look awesome:

Mark, Candy and their CE:

I told Gael (here with Jack Revel) that her purse clashed with the red interior of the car. She paid close attention to the criticism. Right:

I guess we coulda lined 'em up better:

Tom agreed to watch the cars and the rest of us went inside for a Ruby's burger:

This was the coolest thing I saw at the cruise-in. A company out here in SoCal makes scissor-type door conversions for a number of different cars. This chap had just had his done today:

Allegedly it requires no modification to the door or the car, just replacement hinges. Kewl!

Once more, Jack's '59 and the four CEs at dusk:

Click HERE for the next chapter..