I recently attended my first MVPA national convention. What an eye-opener! For every bad thing I saw, there were 50 good things. Im just going to talk about one bad thing. Paint jobs. I served in the military all of my adult life. I have seen paint jobs on brand new delivered from the factory trucks. I have seen paint jobs on trucks just back from depot level refurbishment. I have seen paint jobs by Private Pyle in the back of the Motor Pool who has obviously sniffed too much Xylene. I have seen every kind of paint job in between.
I have never seen paint jobs like those at the convention. The vast majority of the vehicles looked better than any military paint job in existence. Then there was the Humvee. Ah The Humvee. It was so stupendous that the guy restoring it must work for Orange County choppers or something like that. It was truly magnificent. What it was not however, was a military vehicle. Nothing like one. Not even close. No surprise, it won at least one major award. For what? It belonged in a custom car show, not an MV event. Do I sound jealous? Not at all. If I won the lottery, I would love to own it. I would drive it around the Ranch like a maniac, (as I do with all of my MVs) scratch the heck out of it, and laugh the whole time. Wait a second. Thats exactly how I behaved in the military.
Well I guess that there are different awards for different classes of MVs at these events. I would never allow one of my MVs to be judged. Unless I was assured that all of the judges were retired military who were vehicle mechanics. Since that will never happen, the only person that my MVs have to please is myself.