Day 9 – An Exuberant, Eventful and ResilientFinish

1/11/19 -- Our Drive Home IV team started the day at the phenomenal Gilmore Museum in Hickory Oaks, MI. The Gilmore complex is actually nearly a half-dozen separate car museums under the same umbrella on a sprawling property that includes 90 acres and a dozen buildings. We toured the Gilmore Museum itself, which includes some of the most interesting and pristine cars I’ve seen in all my Drive Home trips.

Two State Farm agents helped make the morning even more special by showing

up to our cars and coffee event. The first was John Chmeil of Battle Creek, a 30-year agent who is a car collector himself.

The second was Lee Lancaster of Plainwell, MI. Lee has been a State Farm agent for almost 40 years and has several 50s and 60s cars in his collection.  Lee also brought along a friend who is a collector and a longtime State Farm policyholder.

As we drove away from the Gilmore, there was an air of exuberance among our team because this was the last sizable drive and we were only 120 miles or so from our final destination of the day – the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, MI.

However, there’s an old saying that “Life comes at you fired point blank;,” and the same is sometimes true with classic cars as we found out when the F-100 wouldn’t start at our final fueling stop. Dave, Bill, and Tabetha went right to work diagnosing and testing but the starter seemed to have seized up.

What now, you ask? Well, crisis is where the Drive Home team shines, and within 30 minutes we had the truck pushed up on the trailer and Vonda and Bill were on their way to the Lincoln of Troy Dealership to get it fixed. (By the way, when they arrived, the Lincoln of Troy team rallied just like we had, began the repair work immediately and had it running by 7 p.m.)

Vonda and Bill gone and down to two trucks (the Ranchero and International), David, Dave, Tabetha and I resumed our final trek to the hotel. When we arrived, Tabetha and I were parking the trucks in underground valet parking when she lost reverse in the International. Once again, the team rallied when Tabetha, Dave, and Bill put their heads together and determined that while there was no way to fix the transmission it was still drivable (just not backwards…).

Crises averted by the ever-resilient Drive Home team, the final highlight of my day was dinner with a local Detroit State Farm colleague, Eva Ambrose who met me for some great seafood pasta at Churchill’s. 

 On to the finale few miles down Woodward Drive tomorrow!