> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thompsonscolorado.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # At Longmont Cruise Night, Two Women Challenge the Classic-Car Stereotype - URL: https://www.thompsonscolorado.com/at-longmont-cruise-night-two-women-challenge-the-classic-car-stereotype/ - Published: 2026-08-30T00:03:33.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-30T00:03:33.000Z - Description: A hobby typically reserved for older men is how one Colorado woman found love, and how another connects with her family. - Author: Nicholas Thompson - Tags: Longmont, cruise night, classic car, 303 outlaws, main st Janet Morande connects to her late daughter and father through a hobby typically reserved for older men. The Denver-area owner of a 1968 Camaro is bucking the stereotype of the conventional classic-car owner. Morande grew up in her father’s body shop, where she would go after school to watch him paint cars and do body work. Even then, she knew she wanted a car of her own. “I knew when I was a little kid, I was gonna own this car,” Morande said. Her father had some advice: “You gotta start saving now.” Decades later, the bright yellow Camaro she brought to Longmont Cruise Night is more than a show car. It’s a street car, a drag racer and a connection to her late daughter, Crystal. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1e/97/1e975f01-5ab6-430e-819e-8f0ec8a3bb3a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_3019.jpeg) Morande’s car remembers her late daughter Crystal. Morande had eventually hoped to gift the Camaro to Crystal. Morande had intended for the Camaro to eventually become Crystal’s car. Today, the rear window bears the words “In Loving Memory of Crystal.” Morande bought the Camaro in 2001 from a pawn shop. It looked nothing like it does today. She and her husband, an engine builder, have done most of the work themselves, transforming it into a car Morande races, shows and drives on the street. And she really does race it. The Camaro has a 421 stroker and runs the quarter-mile in about 10.5 seconds at Julesburg. Morande said it launches hard enough to pull both front tires off the ground. Morande competes in bracket racing, where drivers predict how quickly their cars will run the quarter-mile. If one car is faster than another, the slower car gets a head start. The goal is to catch the other driver while running as close as possible to the time written on the window. “You literally want to run, like, right on what you believe that you can run,” Morande said. “And that’s how you win a race in bracket racing.” It is a far cry from the image of a classic car sitting untouched in a garage. Morande said the expense of the hobby helps explain why classic cars are so often associated with older men. Her family’s ability to do much of its own mechanical and body work has made her path into the hobby more attainable. Her Camaro now serves as a race car, show car and daily-enough driver to make the trip from the Denver area to Longmont. “I’ll get in it and drive it from Denver to here,” Morande said. “I love driving my car.” She heard about Longmont Cruise Night through friends with the [303 Outlaws](https://www.facebook.com/share/1cfbjY9ujZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr) and came to the previous event before returning with her Camaro. “I’m going to come to all of them now,” Morande said. “They’re so fun.” This summer marks an official, if limited, return for a Longmont tradition that had been prohibited for two decades. A 2006 city ordinance banned cruising on Main Street, defining cruising as driving past the same point on Main Street in the same direction more than three times within a three-hour period. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1e/97/1e975f01-5ab6-430e-819e-8f0ec8a3bb3a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_3024.jpeg) Longmont resident Ron Grider sent this photo of his car before a Longmont cruise in 1986\. [On July 19, the Longmont City Council passed a resolution](https://www.timescall.com/2026/07/19/nearly-20-years-after-banning-cruising-on-main-street-longmont-puts-it-back-in-drive/?ref=thompsonscolorado.com) allowing two designated Cruise Nights this year. The experiment could expand next summer, with four Cruise Nights proposed for 2027. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1e/97/1e975f01-5ab6-430e-819e-8f0ec8a3bb3a/content/images/2026/08/IMG_3023.jpeg) Sherri Garczynski poses outside her Morris Minor 1000 before cruise night Aug. 29, 2026 in Longmont, Colorado. For longtime cruisers like Longmont resident Sheri Garczynski, the revived nights are less about discovering something new than revisiting something they once did every weekend. Garczynski remembers cruising Main Street while she was in high school in the mid-1980s. “Every Friday night there was cars going up and down,” Garczynski said. “Then we’d park at different places and then we’d just sit and hang out and talk and then get back in and, you know, drive some more.” Garczynski said people came from communities across the region to cruise Longmont. The tradition continued through the 1990s and early 2000s, she said, until the city adopted its cruising ordinance in 2006\. She also met the man who would become her husband during a Cruise Night after friends told her to meet them at McDonald’s. She went there, they crossed paths, and the relationship started from there. Years later, their son joined them in a car seat in the back of a 1964 Nova. “Just hanging out with your friends — that’s what you did on Friday night,” Garczynski said. “You weren’t old enough to drink, so everybody came out here and cruised.” Garczynski said she hopes Longmont eventually brings the tradition back every Friday night.