The People You Meet At The Hotel Bar....
 

I was at the Double Tree in Charlotte last night, having a beer at the bar when an older English gentleman walked in that was obviously well known by the staff. He was wearing a well worn Ford Racing jacket and carried a Ford Motor Company handbag. The bar tender asked if he had driven any of his cars, to which he replied that the weather wasn’t nice enough. I struck up a conversation for obvious reasons, what a cool dude. He was a fabricator for Shelby on the GT40 program, part of the team that built the car and supported their efforts at Le Mans and elsewhere. He did amateur rally racing in Europe in the 1960s, worked for Holoman-Moody, worked for Ford Racing, worked for Shelby, and did freelance work for a host of others. He knew all of the iconic racing drivers and had been to just about every famous track. He owns a Ferrari 330 rebodied as a 250 GTO cabriolet, a Bugeye Healy, a Ford Cortina, a Ford Falcon rally car that won its class in Monte Carlo, and a host of other cool stuff. He showed me pictures of the original 289 Cobra that he regretted selling. I spoke with him for at least an hour, just a friendly and unassuming gentleman who apparently splits time between Charlotte and England.

Excellent!
The people I usually meet at the hotel bars are all born under the sign "for rent". :D

Whenever I'm drinking alone at a bar, women tend to strike up a convo with me. Some are dressed quite provocatively. Other times, it is the bartender striking up a convo. That is how I met my gf. She was a bartender, not someone who was dressed provocatively. She did have some ample cleavage showing, though. ;)

I was over in FerrariChat perusing and saw this post:

“Ugly American at a Bar in Charlotte”: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/

:D

LOL. “He was loud and obnoxious, and was drinking Yuengling like they were water.”

Around 1991 I was in a pub near Weimar, Germany and got talking with an elderly man, who was smoking and nursing a .5 litre beer. He was a WWI vet, said he'd smoked a pack and drunk a litre of beer a day since he was a teenager. I figured, with what he'd lived through, cigarettes were the least of the threats to his health.

I've bumped into some interesting people at bars. Dave Chappell lives a couple of miles away and I see him at a local restaurant bar fairly often. I don't think he drinks alcohol though.

Ran into Spooner Oldham in Memphis (don't worry if you don't know who he is, I had to google it)
https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/spooner-oldham?gclid=CjwKCAiAjanRBRByEiwAKGyjZQK3yfmZJ7s3I AgGoHn71TBC6SfK8p18C6yS3ojklHvIOlndDWs4hxoCsbkQAvD _BwE

I helped Tom Austin write a book after meeting him. He and Bob Gaudio founded the Royal Teens in 1958. Tom is the drummer, Al Kooper is on keyboards, and Bob Guadio plays guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OOTr04YTwE

I wrote a book about George Montgomery, though I didn't meet him in a bar.
https://www.amazon.com/Ohio-George-Montgomery-Racings-Gasser/dp/0692680438

A couple of the coolest were a guy I met at a bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a freight pilot for some charter freight company. After talking for a few minutes we discovered that he just moved in to the house across the street from me.

Also, while in the Virgin Islands last February we ran into a couple at the bar that was treated like royalty because they had spent a month at the hotel every year for 20 years - in the room right next to ours. Got to talking to them and found out they live about 10 miles from us back in Ohio.

I've met him at a car show, his re bodied Ferrari is gorgeous.

It gets driven and I enjoy seeing it on the roads.

I was waiting to pay my property taxes at the county tax office and sat down next to an English chap who just moved down from Conn. where he worked for Sikorsky and did the electronics.

He made the comment of how backwards we are in how we manage government related payments. I said "You must be new here." To which he gave a very long and hard laugh.

His number was called so we didn't get to chat much but I bet he had some good stories....

i met George Carlin at a bar once. he is much less funny in person.

The most interesting story I ever ran into from a stranger was at the DMV. I was talking to a man that had been declared legally dead. The process of coming back from that was long and arduous.

He got his life back together, everything right with the government agencies through an extensive investment of time.

Two years went by, and a clerk in a government agency noted that some one that had been declared dead was in the system as alive, the clerk decided to correct this issue. :eek: :eek: :eek:

The clerk's work resulted in him being declared dead all over again, and needing to completely repeat an extended process all over again to prove he was alive.

I've found that to be true with most comedians. I've worked with Carlin, Pryor, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, all were quiet and reserved, almost introverted.

Especially now that he's dead:D

Most comedians have issues.

Long ago when I still had roommates, one of them walked in the door all excited, having just returned from a business trip. He took off his shirt and showed me the fingernail marks all over his back. He had met an older, married woman at the hotel bar and she had invited him up to her room for some extra-curricular activities. I don't recall ever seeing him so excited before or since.

I met an 80-ish year old retired marine sniper at the DMV.
Told me some stories about his time in korea.
Best one was that he kept getting in trouble for "shooting gooks".
He didn't care if north or south korean, they were all gooks!
My asian wife just kept quiet. :)

This made me think of a song (no disrespect to you or your gf)
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TjbfsKaG86g" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Dad, the kids and I were trying to find a place to sit and eat at the local bike shop that was having an open house with some stunt riders. We had our food and there was a table with one guy sitting there and said we could sit with him. After some talk he mentioned he was retired but used to help build airplanes. When I asked which kind he said the biggest was a bomber in the 60s that they ended up not building. I said the XB-70 and his eyes lit up and he said no one knows what that airplane is. He was so excited to talk about some of the projects he was on at North American and Lockheed (he worked at both).

I met a woman in a bar, must have been about 12 years ago. She still won't leave.

It wasn't at a bar but, I showed up early for a race at Laguna Seca and decided to go out and get some Breakfast at a nearby Jack in the Box. While I was eating this guy ask if he could join me. I said "Sure, have a seat". We talked about racing for about an hour. At which time I had to get back to the track. As I was leaving I told him it was get talking to you, and I introduced my self. He said"Pleased to meet you. I'm Dorsey Schroeder". My reply,"Ya, I know".