The season has wrapped up for us with a
final road trip to Road Atlanta. Once again we repeated last year’s wonderful
weather and only had a few showers on Saturday afternoon. In fact, Friday
reached highs of 80 degrees. A welcome change from the suddenly cold, wet
weather being experienced in the northeast right before our trip.
The trip began for us with a stop in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania to continue to satisfy Susana Weber’s thirst for Civil War
battlefields. In preparation for our trip, Doug and I read Killer Angels
and rented the movie “Gettysburg” based on this book. The time invested
was well worth it and in fact Killer Angels was one of the best books I
have ever read. We arrived late afternoon, went through the Visitor’s Center
and had enough light left in the day to visit the “High Water Mark”, the
spot where Pickett’s Charge ended. The late fall afternoon lighting really
added a poignancy to the scene. Knowing how many men were killed or wounded
in the short three days of battle was really sobering. The next day we
took a three hour auto tour of the battlefield, leaving the trailers in
the hotel parking lot. Again, a worthwhile side trip marked by fabulous
weather.
We then continued pushing south so that
we could make our rendezvous with the other half of the Road Atlanta caravan
at the Joe Gibbs Race shop north of Charlotte, North Carolina on Friday
morning. This was a vastly disappointing stop compared with the Hendricks
Motorsports shop we visited last year. Visitors were only able to look
down through plate glass windows into the assembly shop. There was no contact
whatsoever with any of the team. A video played in the viewing area and
of course the store was accessible selling the requisite team wear and
bed “ensembles” (pretty cheesy, don’t ask). Compared to the open access
Hendrick’s Motorsports allows their visitors, Joe Gibbs was a disappointment.
Not to let this inhospitable scene stop us, we hustled further down Route
81 (?) and made a stop at the BMW plant. We were only able to view their
museum of cars before needing to continue on our way to make the opening
of Registration at the Track. Once again the Peachstate Region welcomed
us with open arms and made us feel quite at home.
This month marks my last column in the
Nor’Easter – at least on a regular basis! Having served for seven years
in some capacity on the NER Board, I have opted to move aside to give others
a chance to participate. So this does not mean that I will drop from sight
as I’m sure I will want to contribute in some way. I want to give special
thanks to the Committee Chairs who make the Vice President of Activities’
job go smoothly. These include Russ Merriam - Spring Ramble, Eric Kessel
and Bill Seymour – Autocross, Rob Stoesser – Driver’s Education, Drew Ley
– Rallies, Steve Centorino – Concours and Bob Cohen – Fall Tour. Also special
thanks to Carol and Drew Ley and Barbara Collazzo-Noonan for their work
on the Annual Dinner event, Murray Mathews, next year’s Ramble Chair, Bruce
Hauben for organizing new Tours and Steve Boris and Susana Weber for their
work on event trophies. I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone for which I apologize.
The last thank you goes to all the corner worker’s who worked at our last
NHIS event in what seemed like sub zero weather! Without their perseverance,
the event would have come to a standstill, so thank you very much!
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