At the judges' tent, we were given nice yellow VCBC T-shirts, our assignments and a coaching session from Art Banks. I was paired with Jim McIndoe, another Washingtonian I'd met before, and we were to judge the modified Amazon class. I knew two of the cars well and am friends with their owners, so I worried that might influence my judging one way or the other. In fact, I don't believe it did -- judging is done strictly by checklist and there's not much discretion involved once the standards are understood. Jim and I differed slightly in the actual points scored, but the cars would have finished in the same order from either of our checklists.

Modified class is easier to judge than stock class because you don't need an encyclopedic knowledge of every possible option or production vagary. If some guy's got hubcaps that might or might not have been available when his car was produced, or if the body color doesn't match the paint code on the plate under the hood, it doesn't matter. On the other side of that, you do need to rate the cars on both the concept and engineering of their modifications. We judged two cars that were barely modified at all, just not particularly original, and could not score them well in the concept area. They were nice cars, too. They might have been better off in the stock class, but that's the owners' decision.

Jim and I spent over four hours looking at seven cars. In the end, we both knew which cars were the top three of the seven, but not in which order. That would be calculated by others based on the scores we turned in, and a second team of judges would take a look if there was much disparity between Jim's results and mine (not necessary in our case). We'd find out the results at the awards banquet, just like everyone else.

Several times during the day, I'd encountered the gent with the squealing alternator belt. He was becoming increasingly worried about it, but I had to put him off again until we'd finished judging. Finally I was able to get to the next knoll over where cars not entered in the concours were displayed. Sure enough, the alternator was wobbling on its mount. Trouble was, we had no metric tools handy, and the few people hanging around nearby didn't either.

Dave McAree saved the day. One concours requirement is that cars have the original toolkit (even modifieds). Dave had such wrenches in his immaculate 740, still sealed in the original Volvo plastic bags. He had no problem with the idea of breaking the seals and letting me use whatever was needed. I found this remarkably generous of him.

The alternator was soon patched up and I now had several grease smears on my brand-new yellow VCBC judge T-shirt, much to my chagrin. It's really not something I'd usually wear in public, but I sort of valued it as a memento. Oh well, Marsha was able to get most of the stains out and I guess it matches my personality better with a few smudges on it.

The awards banquet food was every bit up to the standards set at the reception, now with free beer and wine. In one corner, a large screen showed several in-car videos of the recent Volvo racing at Watkins Glen (oh, so that's what it looks like -- I'd failed to take the track tour) and of amateur rallying in Sweden, demonstrating many really creative ways of turning cars upside down. These were turned off as the concours awards were presented and a PowerPoint slide show was substituted. As each winner was announced, his or her car was shown on the screen -- very neat.

Our table did pretty well. In modified Amazon, Cameron took first place, which almost shocked him, I think. The car's perfect in many areas and there's not much wrong with the rest of it, but mostly Jim and I had both liked the consistency of the mods. Braking and handling mods match the increased power, and it's mostly done with Volvo or vintage aftermarket parts. It's subtle and it all fits together.

Second went to Trevor Sterry from the Seattle area. His '66 122S has the nicest custom interior I've ever seen in an Amazon: upholstery redone in ivory leather, nice wood burl trim, full console with remote shifter, clever dash mods that make the many round modern gauges look like Volvo built the car that way -- or should have. This car also had a cleanly done D-jet injection conversion, but it wasn't echoed by suspension or braking improvements or even wider tires and wheels.

Third was Shayne and Sarah Green's Radio Flyer, one of my all-time favorite Amazons. The bright red paint is gorgeous, the mechanical mods are mild but consistent and there are numerous detail improvements that add up well -- it's just not as fully developed as Cameron's (yet).

I'd felt pretty silly throughout the day for having to deduct points for imperfections in parts I'd be perfectly happy to put on our own cars, but Jim and I had done our best to follow the rules and standards we'd been instructed to follow, so that's how the points came out.

Bob Moreno and Carolyn's Amazon took first place in the stock Amazon class, which was obvious from the start. The night before, following the reception, many people took tours through the Tsawwassen Inn's garage just to check out what and who had showed up. Erik Sandlund (long time concours judge and very knowlegable) came up to me and asked if the blue-gray Amazon down there was the one he'd seen under restoration in VClassics. "That's first place," said Erik, without even having looked under the hood or having seen the interior in good light. It's that nice.

Peter Eulau took second in class with his stock '72 1800E. After looking at seven cars for four hours and fixing a squealing alternator, I hadn't had the energy to look closely at much else, so I don't remember what Peter's competition was that day. Someone must have done a truly great job with their 1800E, though, because I can't really picture what would make a car even nicer than Peter's.

Having nothing insightful to add to this story, I'll wrap it up now. We were given an excellent breakfast Sunday morning, there was the usual winners' photo shoot, and the meet was essentially over. Marsha and I stayed for several more days playing tourist. Vancouver is a very interesting and appealing city full of parks, museums, good shopping and many other attractions -- if you get a chance to visit, do so. We had no incidents whatsoever on the drive home.

Towards the end of the meet, I chatted a bit with our old friend Karl Grimm, who's been going to meets for many years and often wins Master's class with his own 1800E. "Isn't this the best meet you've ever been to, Karl?" He just made a gesture with both arms that could only mean "Hands Down!"