| DMC Email
Contacts: Graeme Kinsey, President |
|
Note from the Prez Board Meeting Highlights Membership Report East Bay Hilltop and Valley Run on April 27, 2003 Western Railway Museum & Delta Run |
This spring has had some
wonderful weather and our Delta Miata Club has been out enjoying it!
Gaylon & Connie earned their door plaques on a fun Oakland Hills Run with a
great lunch afterwards. Then, as the Delta warmed under sunny skies we had
a bunch of Miatas exploring its levees and waterways on the Delta RR Museum run,
ending up at the Western Railway Museum after a superb lunch in Rio Vista.
Seems like good company, good food, fun events, and great members are come
together as we tool around in our Miatas!
Meanwhile, we’ve launched our new meeting format – you wanted to have fun dinners here and there, to explore new restaurants and simply have a fun evening. So, in response to the ideas voiced at the Brentwood Roundtable meetings recently, we’re now planning on having a regular Club meeting every other month, where we’ll do the usual announcements and discussions. On alternate months, however, we’ll have a dinner at some other place, and it will be a Delta Social! No agenda -- just get together and have a good time, good food, hang out in the parking lot and admire our cars. Barbara and Larry Mensch have volunteered to take the first social, at Chevy’s restaurant in Livermore on June 3rd. The July meeting will be at our usual spot in the Brentwood Round Table. For August, where do you want it to be? Please find a restaurant you’d like to try!
Ken Christensen has stepped forward to maintain our website; working with Connie Kellner as newsletter editor, they’ll be able to get the word out to you each month and will be updating our events calendar often, so please check it out. Also, you’ll see we have some empty spots in our calendar of events, so jump in and organize an event! It’s a satisfying and fun thing to do – and I’ll help anyone who steps up to it. Let’s consider events with walks, or tours, or dinners – fun things to include along with the drive there and back. It’s your club and it’s fun to plan an event and see all of the smiles and thanks of those who come along. In the meantime, keep the rubber side down!
Graeme
The board met on May 3rd at Graeme’s house and discussed the following items. (Present: Linda Derby, Ken Christensen and Graeme Kinsey)
We hope to have more pictures of members and their cars on our website (just those that want to have them published, of course) to help us all get to know each other.
Ken has been looking through the website and intends to set it up so that it may be easily maintained by others with minimum training.
The current logo’s key shortcoming is that there is no Miata in it. We must remember that we have door plaques and decals with the original logo, so we probably don’t want to move much from that design, just add a car. An addition that includes an outlined Miata, with minimum colors (better for use on clothing items) seems like a good idea.
As always, we want to promote new members – perhaps highlight the membership info area on the website as that is one way folk find out about us. Members should be reminded to “tag” cars they find in the parking lots.
Bylaws are the main backbone of the Club’s organization and require member approval of any changes. To help new members and new officers run the club, procedures and guidelines will be written down but will not necessarily be included in the bylaws. Graeme will assemble a draft update of the bylaws that will include a means where members can vote without having to attend the holiday party.
Everyone felt that an email summarizing upcoming events was a helpful thing; not everyone checks the event schedule routinely and might miss an event.
The June board meeting was set for June 28th (but later ran into a conflict; when the date is set I will publish it)
Graeme
Membership for the month of May did not change. We have 45 memberships and 70 people. Lets get out there and spread the word about our great club. Each time you see a Miata parked in a parking lot lets put a flyer on the windshield. The more the merrier.
East Bay Hilltop and Valley Run on April 27, 2003
Gaylon and Connie Kellner led
the run. It was their first time at leading a run, so Graeme presented
them with the club’s car plaques at the beginning of the run.
There were five cars and eight people on the run. It was noted that
every car was a different color – not one duplicate. We met in San Ramon
and after a brief orientation, the group set off for a run through the hills.
Connie was the driver and Gaylon the navigator. We set a new record for
number of “U” turns on a run!! Gaylon was such a nervous passenger th
at
he was too busy digging his fingernails into the dashboard and forgot to watch
the map.
We proceeded up through the canyon and then onto Skyline Blvd. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking. We stopped for a break at Redwood Regional Park to stretch our legs. We then continued through more back roads and ended the run in Lafayette. We had a nice meal at Chows restaurant and then broke from there. The weather held for us the entire day even though the clouds here moving in.
Gaylon and Connie
Western Railway Museum & Delta Run
Led by Graeme Kinsey May 18, 2003
Miatas and trains came together
on the Western Railway Museum Delta Run on May 18th. Meeting in
Rio Vista on a sunny but windy morning, our 100% Delta Miata Club group (Dale
Carstensen & Ted Rosario, Gwen Cotter, Gaylon & Connie Kellner, Ed & Karen Yee
and me, Graeme) set off to wander around the Delta, circling Brannan Island,
Tyler Island, and Grand Island (where we checked out the Mansion targeted for
our holiday party). We must’ve crossed a dozen bridges on this 75 mile
run!
Coffee and donuts at Mel’s in
Walnut Grove after cruisin’ the downtown Isleton scene left all of us feeling
lucky that we live in such a great beautiful state! Dale Carstensen said
he’d lived here all his life and never even knew there were places like this so
nearby. Then back through Rio Vista for a great lunch at the Vista
Grill, where Gwen announced she’d just bought a house in that same development –
congratulations, Gwen!
With appetites taken care of, we
set off for the railway museum, just down Highway 12. This outdoor park
has dozens and dozens of inter-urban and intra-urban electric trains lovingly
restored by volunteers and taken out for exercise along a dedicated section of
track. We discovered that this track used to support traffic from
Oakland to Chico, with high-speed electric trains in the early half of the 20th
Century, and that it is the longest piece of original electric track in use in
the United States. We w
ent
out about five miles in a beautiful old Key System trolley, with a conductor
telling us about the area and the history of the railway equipment. I,
being half-Aussie, HAD to have my picture taken next to a Melbourne, Australia
trolley, while Dale searched for – and found! – the rattan mesh seats he’d
remembered seeing as a kid.
The day wound down and we headed home but not without exploring a couple of
roads I’d discovered during my dry run, avoiding much of Highway 12 and its
monotonous straight line design. As we headed home, we thought about our
plans to launch another combined Miata-Railway trip, this one possibly taking a
trip on the Felton-Santa Cruz trains, through the forested hills of the coast.
Life i
good, but it’s even better
in cruisin’ in a Miata on a fun Delta
Miata Club Run like this!