The Young and The Restles | Slow ride to see fast ones

It was one of those unprecedented times where while I knew the car festival we were headed for might have a bit of congestion in a line-up to the car park, but didn’t count on it taking three and a half hours to move just three and a half kilometres along the Calder Fwy towards Calder Park Raceway.

Tuff Streeters Festival was the event and it sure was a tough “street” to travel to get there in searing temperatures when 45 minutes into that three-and-a-half-hour traffic jam my car’s air-conditioner gave up the ghost.

The temperature gauge read 36°C.

Our seats were wet with sweat, and gradually the urge we’d both had to go the loo dissipated as hydration deserted our bodies.

Present Bree thanked past Bree for loading an esky with more than one bottle of water and more than one can of Pepsi Max for each of us before leaving home.

And almost like some hidden sixth sense had our backs, I’d even chucked a couple of Monster energy drinks in.

Those, I’m confident, are the only thing that stopped me from needing to pull over in a truck stop for a powernap on our drive back to Shepp well after midnight later on.

While my son and I sat there cooking in the centre lane of three unofficial lanes, impatient drivers sped up median strips, footpaths, shoulders and the emergency lane trying to cut in front of people who’d been waiting in line since before they had joined.

We saw (and heard on the UHF radio) stuff we, or at least he, had not witnessed before.

One driver attempted to nudge his car in front of the car ahead of us and in some stubborn and frustration-induced game of chicken, neither driver would give way and the pair collided.

People were hanging out windows as they sat on their doors, riding in ute trays, standing with their entire torsos out of sunroofs.

Children took toilet breaks for number twos on the side of the freeway in full view of traffic.

Men told racist jokes and made derogatory comments on their radios judging the appearances of women who’d abandoned their own cars and walked past theirs down the side of the freeway.

I interjected to tell them I assumed they were all cover models themselves.

As a car nut, my son has already seen his fair share of uncivilised behaviour at shows and meets, but this was something else.

And while it wasn’t the experience we signed up for, it was an eye-opener of a different sort.

When we finally walked into the Thunderdome to the sound of a Will Sparks belting out his high-energy DJ set, we didn’t need the sunscreen we’d lathered on our shoulders or the hats we’d packed to protect us from the sun.

I didn’t even need sunglasses, it was so late.

It was four hours after the event began and two hours before it finished.

It was a huge show.

While there were many gaps by the time we got there, throughout the day there had been 1700 cars on display, including some familiar ones from Shepparton.

Organisers reported 15,000 people went through the gates during the six hours.

Posts on social media afterwards suggested many didn’t even make it through the traffic in time and others turned back or didn’t even leave their house when they heard what the freeway was like, so it had the potential to be even busier had the roads and venue been able to cope.

It’s telling of the thirst Victorians have for car events; how alive and well the scene is.

While there were many disadvantages to getting in late, such as completely missing freestyle motocross stunts, decent food from the trucks and time enough to sit for a flash tattoo, there were also advantages.

A lot of the cars were leaving, so we got to see them moving and hear them running, which was more thrilling than seeing them stationary.

We avoided sunburn.

We only had to wait in a line behind two groups to meet Spotto, a content-creating car enthusiast and rapper from Western Australia.

I also unexpectedly met the madly inspirational Insta-famous paraplegic Christina Vithoulkas and her smiley boyfriend, Jesse, when my son boarded Jay ‘lowstandardsjay’ Duca’s lowered Mazda Parkway bus to ask him for an autograph and the couple was sitting inside chatting to him.

Christina broke her back jumping her dirt bike in 2018, but never once let her disability hold her back. She is Australia’s first female paraplegic drift car racer.

So while we missed a lot of what we paid for, we had some pretty cool moments.

A non-variable perspective in a situation like this only leads to misery.

You’ve gotta roll with whatever gets thrown at you.

Even if it is at a pace of 1km/h on the Calder Fwy, I guess.