Yo Peeps, just back from the A-bombers ‘Old Style Weekender’ in Sweden. (2015 update, this was 9 yeasr ago now…) Fuck, is that ever a good gig. I’d seen it in mags and a bit on hotrod DVD’s an it looked just too fuckin good to miss. So around January (always a good month to plan a future adventure) I cheered meself up by just hangin the expense of the rip-off ferry and booking a ticket then. Come end of July an I’m going – Yay! Stuck the Omster in back of truck and sets off, an grabs ferry from Newcastle. 

Ferry is a bit of a bind – 26 fuckin hours out on the water. An let’s face it, there’s only so much goozin at fit Swedish birds from behind your shades or pretending you’re in the film The Village Of The Damned (where all those identical little white-blonde haired kids have that laser eye thing going on) before it gets a bit tedious. You get a big pile of chips in the café tho (wasn’t goin to eat any smorsborg type stuff) an bread rolls to make chip butties, so with that an a coupla packets of Morrisons French Fancies I survived okay. 

But eventually you hit Gothenburg (in the pissing rain and thunderstorm and tea-time traffic as it happens). I made me usual mistake of knowing I wanted the E6 motorway, but when I gets off ferry there’s an E6 going in two directions (no fuckin North or South signs to give you a clue), an I can’t see much anyway cos me 55 year old wipers are really crap, so of course I gets on the wrong one. I sussed it out when I can work out I can see the sea on me right rather than me left, so  grabbed next exit and had a quick trundle around Gothenburg city centre before getting onto right road. Never saw Batman tho.

Pulled off motorway at an exit about 20 miles north of city cos it looked nearest to sea. I was just gonna just bed down somewhere but came straight to a nice little campsite. As usual I was on a tight budget, but I went to check it out. Should have been 170 Krona for me and truck, but I whinged at nice old lady that I was English and poor and in the end she let me in for bicycle rate rather than car rate, so that was only 120 Kr (about 9 quid) an I went for it. Stuck tent up, had a quick swim in sea, scoffed somesupper an crashed out. 

Pulled off motorway at an exit about 20 miles north of city cos it looked nearest to sea. I was just gonna just bed down somewhere but came straight to a nice little campsite. As usual I was on a tight budget, but I went to check it out. Should have been 170 Krona for me and truck, but I whinged at nice old lady that I was English and poor and in the end she let me in for bicycle rate rather than car rate, so that was only 120 Kr (about 9 quid) an I went for it. Stuck tent up, had a quick swim in sea, scoffed somesupper an crashed out. 

Next day it was sunny so pulled bike out of back and had a blat into nearest town to grab some fresh bread an have a gooze at all Swedish bike and rod mags in supermarket. Then we had another fuckin downpour, so I sat in me tent and pretended it was a Himalayan cave and chanted Om a lot (I took a book with me to read called ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ and I was getting all cosmicified by this time). Then I fixed a camper which wasn’t runnin right for an Australian couple (easy really, just water in dizzy cap due to all rain), figurin I’d build up me good karma cos me truck wasn’t too healthy in the injector pump department. 

It had been acting up at Nostalgia Drags, wouldn’t tickover an stuff, so I twiddled various screws and shit on it (know absolute fug about injector pumps) and removed the bit of wood that had been jamming one of the levers open for the last five years, so that got us home, but on the way to Sweden it had developed a habit of not stopping for about four or five seconds after you turn it off – defo a sign of a pump on the way out (I know that pump ain’t been touched in at least 10 years cos that’s how long I bin runnin the motor – it was in me Trannie before the truck – an that’s a lotta miles in my world). So with no travel insurance or breakdown cover or fug (not even any European road insurance if truth be known), I was cackin it a bit. 

So around tea-time in break between thunderstorms I break camp and head for A-Bombers. Actually I’d forgotten to print off directions to site, so all I had was a small print out of Swedish coast off Mapquest, so I didn’t exactly know where I was going really. But I kinda knew it was north another 30 miles or so an I figured I’d find somewhere or something eventually – all part of the adventure, yeh?. Fuckin rainin again tho – I must get me windscreen rubbers fixed, everytime it rains water pisses in an then runs down onto me right leg and into me boot – bloody hotrods – and you can’t move your foot out the way cos it’s pressed hard to floor cos in a diesel truck there’s only two speeds, off the gas or hard on it. 

Anyway, I gets a bit lost so pulls off motorway and tries to flag someone down on motorway exit, but no-one seems to want to stop for a tattooed nutter with a scrappy bit of paper in his hand leaping about next to a battered truck on a deserted countryside slip road. A bit odd these Swedish types. Eventually I’m more or less in middle of road which makes it difficult to get past anyway so this young dude stops. Turns out it kinda looks like I’ve driven right off the top of me little map (good job I stopped really or I could have ended up in Russia or wherever north of Sweden goes to) so he reckons I should go back a bit, so I pull a U-turn across grass onto other slip road and head back south. Sure enough next junction there’s a Bombers sign – Yay! So Wednesday evening I’m on site and set up – just me and a Norwegian family, cos gig doesn’t start till Friday really. So Thursday’s a bit borin and it’s grey and damp and rainy as well, an I’m goin a bit stir crazy after four days on me own and have kinda forgotten how to talk, but I go for a walk in spooky woods and find the swimming lake so that’s groovy. An me huge box of Morrissons grub is holdin out okay (if you buy proper storage boxes they’re £5.99 but if you buy a kids toy-box they’re only £2.99 and you still get a snap-on lid and they’re in groovy primary colours rather than insipid pale bland). And some nice Nowegian people feel sorry for me and talk to me. Hurrah!

Then of course Friday it all starts to kick off – more and more and more and more hot hotrods and cool sleds just keep rollin in… The site is an old military cavalry camp from WW1, lotsa old wooden buildings around a central grassy area, so all the cars congregate there, and camping is down the hillside. Quite rightly the A-Bombers are pretty strict on how it gets set up. No cars on the camping field, and nothing later than 1956 or not period style on the main site (there’s parking just off site for 

later stuff). So no fins, no billet and certainly no big-inch Boyd shite, just proper rods an customs jam-crammed together in a great humungous mass. Cool as fuck. No seriously, COOL AS FUCK! So I maxed out both cards in both digi cameras, check out the results on the galleries by going to the ‘Links’ page.  (And be warned, there’s some 200 odd photos there just from A-Bombers… it ain’t a two-minute job…). And then go to the gig yourself next year. Yeh, it’s expensive, yeh it’s tedious on the ferry an all. But then you get there. And the A-Bombers is not only unique, it’s almost certainly the bestest hotrod gig in the whole entire world. So you gotta ask yourself – are you a hotrodder or are you just playing at it? (an I can be that provocative cos I just been there an got the stickers and the T-shirt an everythin – Tee Hee!). So that’s it – cheers A-Bombers, helluva party… 

Note: All the hotrod photos are on one of me web albums – find them here: https://picasaweb.google.com/118434043104377708565/ABombersStuff

PS: Oh yeh, there’s a hillclimb on the Saturday an all, you cruise about 20 miles off site and gather at the bottom of this dirt track snaking up the hillside. There’s only a limited number of entries – 8 rods, 8 saloons, 8 customs and 8 bikes – and you get two runs up the hill each, blastin the dust and dirt while hundreds of folk line each side right next to track cheerin and waving you on, just like those old black and white pre-war car racing clips. Anyway, it’s cool. An some tattooed old twat on an old fugged-up BSA bobber won the bike class – bloody hippies get everywhere… Tee Fuckin Hee…!