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Cruise
West Cumbria 9 was held in memory of our forum member Richard Williamson, better
known to us all as wannabe racer. He was a well recognised and respected member
on our forum board, who was tragically taken
from us on the morning of Thursday 7th October in a road traffic accident
involving his scooter. He was taken to Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary where he
passed away just after 9am.
This tragic event is still a shock to us all and our thoughts
go out to his family and friends.
wannabe racer lived in Aspatria and was the proud owner of a
Derbi Predator scooter. With his 17th birthday coming up in April he was looking
forward to being able to drive a car of his own and had arranged to view an R5
the following day. He will be remembered by us, as a very pleasant, friendly
young lad who was a joy to get on with and was keen to help out other forum
board members. He was always happy to share his thoughts and ideas with others
and it was a pleasure to have him as part of Cruise West Cumbria, he is missed
by us all.
Flowers were placed at the road side in Carlisle as a mark of
respect; these were from everyone at Cruise West Cumbria. His girlfriend would
like to thank everyone for the flowers, their kind messages and the support she
has received during this sad time.
Anyone wishing to pay their respects to wannabe racer and his
family and friends can do so in a post titled wannabe racer tribute which is on
our website.
wannabe
racer you are a great loss to us and are sadly missed, rest in peace.
CWC9
began slowly, as the earlier start time didn't seem to suit everyone. It took a
couple of hours before the car park really filled up, but it did give the
professional cruise photographer that attended the event, a chance to spend a
bit more time on individual cars than he is usually able to. High quality copies
of his pictures will be available for sale on his website
streetexposure.com which will be
launched in a few weeks time and we will soon be getting a few low resolution
copies for this website. He is also passing the pics on to a few magazines, so
with any luck we may get them interested in attending a future cruise.
We also had an aerial photographer at the event, who took pictures with a camera
mounted on top of a 50 foot telescopic pole. Apparently the pole saw service in
Iraq where it was used as a portable communications mast. Anyone who is
interested in buying high quality copies of his photos should contact him through his website
mastimagery.co.uk. He took some impressive shots on
the night, some low resolution copies of which are displayed on the bottom of
this page.
Both photographers expressed an interest in coming back to future events, keep
an eye on the forum for more information.
For a winter cruise we had a good turnout, with 250 cars parked up by about 8pm,
and about 300 cars in total when the cars that came and went earlier on are
counted. Quite a few convoys came in from all over Cumbria and further a field.
It was good to see a few familiar faces from the likes of Dumfries, Lancaster
and Barrow mixing with 'first timers' like the guys from rude2cruz who convoyed
up from Rochdale.
The cold night did not deter people from wandering about and appreciating the
quality of the cars and the impressive array of boot installs on display. Hot
drinks and the usual array of hot food from the burger van helped to keep out
the cold.
We had an interesting sound off between a 1 litre metro engine and the Chevy V8
in a Cobra replica kit car. No
prizes for guessing who won! I don't think the metro had the smallest engine on
the night though, that honour must to belong to the mini moto that was buzzing
about.
Everything drew to a close at about 11pm, with just the cruise wombles left to
clean up. Thanks to everyone that helped out on the night and we hope to see you
all again at CWC10.
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