Stop 4 - Victoria, beautiful British Columbia. Victoria provided a bit of a break as the tour spent two nights taking in the sights and sounds (and provided some of their own. Prior to the tour leaving Norhtern Cal., The Century Toppers Car Club offered to host a gathering/barbeque for the tour and reserved a gorgeous spot on the water. The offer was warmly received and the event was planned. We have reports from Al Clark, who escorted the group in and Larry Zilinsky of the Century Toppers:

"Well the tour hit Victoria big time. I have never seen a more beautiful collection of streetrods cruising our streets. I met them all at a place called Clover Point on the waterfront of Victoria. From there we travelled slowly along a scenic drive until we arrived a the location for the Bar BQ. With a few local rods in the group, there were about 60 awesome streetrods on the mini tour. With the local club (Century Toppers) hosting the night, there was probably 150 cars at the event. Everyone was fed and a lot of great people swapped stories.

Al Clark
Deuces Northwest

A lot of us from the Century Toppers Car Club were at the rod run in Puyallup, Wa.for the weekend, but met up with several of the tour on the ferry back to Victoria on Sunday afternoon. First impressions? What a great bunch of people! They spent Sunday night resting up and touring the gorgeous inner harbor in Victoria.

Monday, everyone kind of did their own thing around greater Victoria until about
5:30 p.m.when they were greeted by Al Clark and taken on a tour of the famous "Marine Scenic Drive", ending up at the Queen Alexander Solarium grounds for a social and BBQ hosted by the Century Toppers.

Man, what an impressive car show! Take about 50 hot rods from the California bunch, add another 50 or 60 of our own club cars and it was a rodders paradise! All in all the evening went perfect and everyone headed out about 9:30 (5:30 comes early when you have to catch the 7:00 ferry to the mainland!!)

Everyone hit it off really well during the evening, and I know I sure enjoyed talking to everyone. I thought they were all extremely friendly and really enjoyed the BBQ we put on for them! All in all a great hot rod evening and definitely a bigtime highlight in Victoria hot rodding! A really cool group of hot rodders, and it'd be great to see them back again sometime. I spent considerable time e-mailing back and forth with Pam Brocco, wanting to make sure their visit here was a good one, and when I finally met Pam and her husband Frank it felt like old home week! Man, what a cool, friendly, down to earth couple. It was a pleasure to say the least to meet them!
Larry Zilinsky
Treasurer, Century Toppers Car Club

Larry Zilinsky and Andy Brizio

A Jokers' '32

Andy & Sue in the Rodfather's well-travelled roadster

Oh yeah, there was food too! I bumped into some of the tour group in
Pleasanton during Hot Rod Week leading up to the Goodguys West
Coast Nationals and they had nothing but good things to say about the
hospitality and generosity of the Victoria-area rodders.