Harlan Township 2nd Annual Old School Cruise-In
When I have a random free Saturday I normally find myself cruising local car show/meet pages on Facebook. Today was one of those days. I laid in bed around 9am thinking that I was a little late, as typically car enthusiasts are up much earlier pulling into their favorite meetup spot. I happened upon a cruise in Harlan Township, Ohio a place I had never heard of, let alone been to. It’s near Goshen, which I was familiar with being an implant here on the East Side of Cincinnati. This was the second year of their cruise-in benefitting 9Lincoln, an auxiliary support group of the Harlan Township Fire Department. All funds raised by the cruise-in went to help families and businesses in need after a fire. It sounded like a great cause with great cars so I was in.
I packed my camera gear, which was pretty fast since I tend to have been running lighter and lighter setups the longer I’ve been shooting. Gone are the days of lugging a 40lb camera bag filled with 5 lenses I wouldn’t be using and lighting accessories. I grabbed my small bag with my newly purchased Nikon Z8 with a 50mm lens and a wide angle. As I stepped out of the house I was hit by a wall of heat and humidity. When it was that hot and soupy that early in the morning you know the day is going to be an uncomfortable one. The drive out there was about 30min from my house through small towns and farmlands. There’s just something about long country roads through these places. It’s the most relaxing drive you will ever have.
As I approached the school the cruise-in was at it looked like a nice little meet up. Probably about 30 cars or so were there, mostly classics with some fun variety scattered throughout. A nice change of pace from the import meets I have been going to in the early summer. They had a couple of food trucks and vendors set up in the grass for people to sip and shop.
As I walked around the show you could tell a lot of the people there were friends. Not groups of friends, literally everyone knew everyone. I always love seeing a community to come out and enjoy what they love. Me, knowing no one, just kind of dipped in and out to take photos as I listened to people chatting about what they’ve been doing with their cars, how old friends were doing and what else they planned for the weekend. Every so often someone would look over to me taking photos and spring up a quick conversation with me. I’ll admit, even though I love cars and bikes I am not well versed in a lot of the older stuff. I just enjoy looking at the lines and craftsmanship of them.
I probably only spent an hour or so shooting since there weren’t a huge amount of cars. I did another few laps waiting to see if any other cars were going to pull in, but when no more arrived I decided to head back to the truck. I stopped by the organizer tent to learn more about 9Lincoln and their cause. I grabbed a shirt from them to support the cause. Man. I hadn’t bought a car show shirt in YEARS. I used to have a Camaro back in the day and I feel like every show I went to I’d have to get a shirt. My entire wardrobe was car event shirts from probably 2010-2012.
I browsed Facebook when I was cooling down in the truck to see if anything else was going on on the way home, but a lot of the car events were cancelled due to the threat of rain. I had a blast at the event even though I was there for only a short while. I want to make it a habit to get out to more of these small town meets. There’s just something about them that make it more special. Until the next time, enjoy the photos!
