President’s Column, August 2006

As we prepare to depart for Oktoberfest, we have not had an event since my last column.  However, we have several upcoming events. 

On August 20^th check out the Fun Rally.  We haven’t done one of these in a while and hope that we can get a good turnout.  September will be busy.  Of course, we have the Vintage Fall Festival at Lime Rock Park over the Labor Day weekend.  Not an official Chapter event, but always popular with many Chapter members, especially since BMW became much more involved in recent years.  Then on September 10^th we head back to Lime Rock for our Regional ’02 Fest East.  The 17^th of September will be the return our casual Bike Ride in Simsbury, CT followed five days later (9/22) by the last Driver’s School of the season, followed only two days after that by the annual Humpa Picnic on September 24^th.  National Club historian Joseph Chamberlain pointed out that this event may be the oldest, continuously run annual Chapter event in the entire BMW Car Club.  I told you September was busy.  If you can’t find an event to attend in September, then I’m really going to have to wonder if we will ever get you to come out to anything.

Speaking of getting you out to events, people always say, “Well, I would have come, but my DZ came too late!”  I’m not even going to get into the fact that we always promote our events at least two months in advance and we have a Chapter website I hope you are using to keep abreast of our Chapter calendar, so that’s not really a great excuse.  I’m here to tell you that we are in the planning stages of further taking away your excuses.  Dave Rich (I told you this new blood on the board would pay off) is working to start a system whereby we will be sending out e-mail reminders/notices about events, or last minute changes of same, to all Chapter members who provided an e-mail address when they became a member or renewed.  I have already seen a sample and I am quite excited about this method of communicating with our members.  I believe Dave is going to write something separately, so I don’t want to steal too much of his thunder, but look for our first posting in your e-mail box soon, if you haven’t already received it!

Speaking of e-mail, you can of course reach any individual member of the board by e-mail at any time.  Our e-mail addresses are available in the DZ and on the website.  However, now we have a new feature that allows you to communicate with the entire board at once.  If, say you have an opinion on something we are doing or an event you attended, and you wanted all of us to hear your thoughts, instead of typing in all the addresses into the send to box, you can simply type in boardmembers@ctvalley.org and all 14 of us will receive your e-mail in one shot. 

In this issue, you should notice that we have signed up a couple of new advertisers, GarageTek of Connecticut and Ultimate Pedals.  These recent additions remind me that I haven’t mentioned it recently, but if you are ever in need of a product or service provided by one of our advertisers, I hope you consider them and please, mention that you have seen their ad in the DZ and that you appreciate their support of the Chapter.  It is always difficult to assess the effectiveness of ads like those that appear in the DZ and we want to retain all our advertisers.  We need your help if that is going to happen.

My monthly F1 update this month, sadly tries to remain positive while the progress seems to be waning for the BMW Sauber boys.  I’ll tell you, if the Championship was based on practice, we’re king baby!  But unfortunately, it never seems to translate into qualifying and more importantly into the race results.  At the U.S. Grand Prix, the change of teams did nothing to improve on the dismal performance that BMW traditionally has at Indy.  Nick Heidfeld did a nice barrel roll out of the race in the first turn and Jacques Villeneuve failed to finish when his engine expired while in 7^th place and being held up by the cars ahead of him.  The Heidfeld accident was precipitated by Juan Pablo Montoya as he tagged his teammate from behind in an apparent warm-up for his new NASCAR career, where he will have plenty of opportunities to bump and spin his teammates and others.  In France, BMW led every practice after fitting the cars with bizarre new vertical wings and experts were predicting that all the teams were going to be scrambling to add these by the next race.  Then, after managing only 8^th and 11^th in the race (Heidfeld again besting his more experienced teammate) the experts thought, well, maybe not.

In News From National, membership is creeping upward and now stands at 75,702, up .66% over last year.  The National office is seeking a web editor for the BMW CCA website.  If you would like more information, please e-mail wynne_smith@bmwcca.org.  By the time you read this, the membership contest will have concluded and top winners will have been announced at Oktoberfest.  Don’t forget to mark down March 22 – 24, 2007 for Techfest 2007.  The Connecticut Valley Chapter remains the 11^th largest Chapter in the BMW CCA.  Number 12 Rocky Mountain is gaining on us however.

Well, it’s off to O’fest for us.  Hope to see you there.

                                                                                    Bob Morin