Well, actually I don’t love hot rods. But apparently many people do.

This weekend is the Lonestar Rod & Kustom Roundup. Daytime activities are happening several miles east of Austin at the Travis County Expo Center. Thank goodness. Downtown traffic is already a mess due to street closures for Art City Austin.

But in the evenings, the Lonestar Roundup action moves to South Congress, a stretch of trendy stores, restaurants, and bars just south of downtown. Bill and I walked to SoCo to eat lunch today. Custom cars were already on display in many of the on-street parking spots. Others were just cruisin’ up and down the street so we could admire their wheels.

We wondered about the cars with rusted bodies…it turns out that these are called Rat Rods. I think the idea is to take an old clunker and make it road-worthy again. I fondly recalled the old International from my summers spent as a camp counselor in the ’70s. That camp truck was rusty even back then. It looked a lot like this one, but with green paint under the rust.

Car owners were sitting on their lawn chairs all along the street, keeping an eye on their vehicles. Today was a very windy day and, as we admired a pink convertible in mint condition, the owner’s cowboy hat blow off. The woman chased after her hat, yelling out to her husband, “Oh no! It’s going to touch the car!” She seemed quite relieved when her hat missed the car and kept blowing down the street.