Finally, the first part of the Wekfest 2011 coverage…I know it’s taken longer than some other sites/blogs/forums/etc., but I’ve had so much to do since I got back that it’s been kind of hard to just site down and go through almost 400 photos. I’ve actually been trying to catch up on some sleep as well because sleeping however many nights in a hotel just ain’t regular sleep. I kept waking up randomly in the middle of the night and wondering what time it was. Before I officially begin the coverage, I just want to give thanks to everyone that took time to stop by the booth to say what’s up, even if they didn’t purchase anything. The Chronicles booth at Wekfest was a huge success and I have to also thank Ernesto, Ken, and Adam at Wek’Sos for giving me such a great spot. I was right up by the entrance and it was basically the second booth that anyone saw right when they walked in. That gave my booth an amazing amount of foot traffic and many people were able to pick up the new Chronicles merchandise. Man, what a great weekend it was. Everything went very smoothly and minus the drive up, which was a little bit of a test for the other guys rolling with me, things couldn’t have gone better. The coverage doesn’t consist of just cars as many of you who follow the site should expect by now. I cover the entire weekend, from the drive up, to the show, all the way to the drive home. I want to give you guys a good idea of how things came together for the event and what we did outside of the show. It’s more than just the cars and the show itself, it’s all about the people and the experiences that we shared. With that said, let’s begin…If you have a somewhat slow connection or have a smart phone, there’s a chance this will go very slowly because of the multitude of pictures. You’ve been warned, haha…

The morning started out for us Friday morning at about 5am. Of course I was late because I was busy trying to load up the car but we all met up at DPK David’s house to begin our caravan to Norcal…

We all stopped by to fill up so that we all had gas on the drive up. There was a chance we would hit a little bit of traffic in Downtown Los Angeles so we didn’t want to have to stop…

Once we got past the Calabasas area, we finally made a stop so that people could grab some coffee and use the restrooms. I ended up not bringing my Q45 up for the trip because there was a huge storm midway through the drive that we were anticipating and I felt like it was too risky for me to take my car up. I haven’t driven it too much lately so being engulfed in a storm in a car that I hadn’t been reacquainted with was dangerous. On top of that, I had so much luggage and merchandise to carry along with Rodrez’s NWP merchandise that we would have had to bring an extra car anyway. Since he was bringing the Honda Tuning CR-Z up, we would need another car to get around. Being that I wasn’t driving my car up, we decided that I would just drive his Honda Element up instead…

The Honda Tuning CR-Z…

Pie standing in line for some coffee behind some guy that was a bit “peculiar”…

Rodrez testing out his new camera…

Rywire CR-X…

A little bit of standing around and shooting the shit before our drive resumed…

The calm before the storm…

We would randomly switch positions just to keep it interesting, here’s a shot that May took with Sheepey and Rodrez in the back…

Of course I couldn’t tell who was in the back because I had so much shit in the Element that I couldn’t even see out of the back. It was almost like driving a U-Haul truck…

Another gas stop…Here Jared is filling up Sheepey’s S2K…

Honda Tuning CR-Z with some new Wilwood stoppers…

Rywire and DPK David…

DPK Henry…

Big Mike filling up gas that probably cost like $4.15 a gallon at whatever random area this was…

Ryan telling Big Mike a story…

The storm was on and off at that point but we took the 101 straight up to Norcal and hit random patches where the rain was a bit lighter. Here we are driving under a rainbow…

It didn’t last long though as the heavy rain came pouring down immediately after. Some of the guys no longer had defrost or heat since they were removed and had trouble seeing as it was getting just as wet inside the car as the outside…

Eventually we had to make a stop for some food so we stopped at this random ass town where people were staring at the cars like they were spaceships from the future or something…

After eating at a local El Pollo Loco, we stopped off at the gas station once again so that the guys could get some water out of their cars and to secure random things that had moved around during the drive…

Ryan making sure his AEM EMS was okay…

Henry fixing something…

Getting set to get back on the road…

More gas for the S2…

DPK David with his random mixture of blue tape brands…

May didn’t take too many more pictures after that but we did capture this photo of Big Mike using a car-lighter powered blow dryer to defrost his windows…haha…

37 hours later, we finally made it to Northern California. We got settled down at our hotel and unloaded our luggage and got some rest. Later that night we were invited to a private Wek’Sos/Wekfest pre-party at a Japanese restaurant called Kaenyama. The Wek’Sos guys always take care of us and it was a pleasure to have dinner with them…

Jared getting twisted on some 4LOKO with Supertwinz John. We made Jared hold the ice bucket just in case he had to yack at the hotel…

May dressed-up and ready for dinner with Jared’s drunkass…

We stopped by Jared/Ryan/Alex/Gandolf/Fedor Emelianako’s room to hang out for a little bit. Here’s a group shot of the Seinfeld coalition minus Ryan Der…

Everyone was all smiles until they realized that there were 6 dudes and one bed…

May showing off the brand new Chronicles t-shirt, which is now available at The Chronicles Storefront.

Okay so it was finally time to head to the Wekfest private party…

It was a bit of a drive but we had been on the road for 42 days for our drive from Socal to San Francisco so the drive to the restaurant wasn’t bad at all. Plus there was free food and drinks and we weren’t about to turn that down. When we got there Jared and the rest of the homies were already eating in one of the rooms. It was one of those traditional Japanese spots where you have to take your shoes off and what not…

May, Rodrez, Tes, David, and Jackie…

DPK Henry aka Rick Fox and his lady…

Ryan having a conversation with Wek’Sos Adam’s sisters…

Jackie and Jared…

ATS Ray…

Taking a shot of Patron to celebrate the weekend…

Sheepey, ATS Ray, and Big Mike…

Black Pie and Black Phil…

Rodrez and Tes…

Black framed glasses are popular these days…

Adam from Wek’Sos and Sunny from Franklin Autobody…

Big Mike and Ernesto aka Junior, the man that started it all…

Wek’Sos Ken and Sunny…

Junior, Ken, and Big Mike…

WEKFESTxTHECHRONICLES…

DPK Henry and David…

Rodrez and Sunny…rare to see Sunny without a drink in his hand…

Jared and Ryan Der…

Adam and ATS AJ’s lady…

ATS Ferd and Phil…

Overall, it was a cool dinner. Nothing I expected being that we hadn’t really had anything planned that night. Turned out to be a great time hanging out with great people. And again, free food and drinks, come on…haha. Many many many thanks to Wek’Sos and all the guys from ATS Garage for always showing us hospitality… It was a pleasure to be in your company…

So after that, it was time to head back to the room to get some rest. On the way back, Rodrez, Tes, May, and I stopped by at a random ass supermarket called “Food Maxx” to get some fruits and water and shit for the room. It’s like one of those generic markets where everything is “Rota’d” out…They had this section that Rodrez and I spotted that had like, the worst movies ever made. It was just some shit that you had to be there to experience. Some of the movies were so bad, that I just had to buy them because people wouldn’t believe me if I had just simply mentioned it to them. I picked up two of movies that had the best titles….

I picked up “Random Victims of L.A.” and a 4-movie compilation called “Homebodys vs. Cholos”. Yes, you read that right….Homeboys…versus…Cholos. We immediately opened it up in the car and tried to watch it in the Element’s DVD player but the discs were so scratched up that it wouldn’t even play. I mean, the DVD’s didn’t even have labels so we couldn’t even tell which side was the right side. That and they were sealed and came out fucking scratched to all hell when I tore the packaging apart. It was ridiculous! Haha, eventually we got back to the hotel and tried to play it on a laptop with VLC player and it finally played. It was, umm…interesting, to say the least. The first fight scene lasted like 40 minutes where they were fighting with chains hand-to-hand and kitchen knives. It was fucking awful…According to the DVD though, Homeboys vs. Cholos won “Best Foreing” film of 2006. Yes, FOREING FILM. What a great way to end the night…

Alright, we’re gonna stop here for today and continue tomorrow with more stuff. Thanks for looking…