A. My wife, Pat, and I went to Celina to see them because we'd heard about these weird cars, but I thought a floating car was just an urban legend. I bought a fixer-upper afterward, worked on it and gave it to Pat that following Valentine's Day.
Q. Amphicars were made between 1961-68. How did you learn to maintain yours?
A. Maintenance is a challenge, and I'd never even restored a car. I work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and another guy there had one that he'd restored; he helped me get ours going. It leaked a lot at first, but was floatable and ran. There's really a big support group of owners in the Miami Valley.
Q. How often and where do you ride it?
A. The club has a newsletter and advertises monthly swim-ins. We go on some, but also take it out often on area lakes. Amphicars only go about 7 mph in water, so we prefer lakes to rivers.
Our car’s very recognizable because my college mascot was a pirate, so I always wear a captain’s hat and have a pirate flag on the car.
Q. How did you get involved and become coordinator of the Celina meet?
A. My son and I took our car up before the 2005 festival, the day people were just coming into town with their amphicars. Ours hadn't been in the water yet, but as others were taking theirs in, we followed them. Halfway across the lake I had water around my ankles and called out to another driver. He asked if I'd put in the bilge plug; I'd been so excited that I'd forgotten, so I jumped overboard and plugged it in.
We participated in all the events that year and every year since, and I was asked to be the coordinator three years ago.
Q. What are this year's event plans?
A. This year, we've added a poker run tournament.
We’re expecting 30-40 amphicars from all over – we usually have cars from nine states and Canada.
Cars will start arriving two days before the July 26-28 festival. Friday night, we line up and drive through town to the splash-in. On Saturday, we’ll take residents of a senior complex on rides, be in the parade, and will head home Sunday.
Most of our time is spent meeting people, sharing stories, riding around town and in the lake, and helping each other with our cars. It’s a wonderful experience.
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