Volume 4 Issue 4 April
2004
All about the people . . . and the car
that brings us together
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DMC Email Contacts: Mary Diamond, Membership |
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Click here to access an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file of
this newsletter that you can save to your PC for viewing off-line
Click here to go to our Delta Miata Club web homepage
Notes from the Prez
We had wonderfully warm weather for the Niles Canyon Run. Thank you to Gaylon and Connie for putting the run together and leading us along some great trails.
In April Delta Miata Club is putting on the Berkeley Hills/Tilden Park run on Sunday April 18th. We hope other club members will attend since this weekend was planned by DELTA and BAMA(Bay Area Miata Association). On April 17th BAMA has planned a run through San Francisco and you can check their website for more details about this self tour type run.
The Board is meeting at Connie and Gaylon’s
on April 10th. These
meeting are open to anyone. We are
looking at logo’s and to put on jackets and shirts etc. Larry Meek is putting in a lot work on this
one.
Our General Meeting will be on April 13th at Mia’s in Brentwood at 7:30 p.m. Please RSVP to Larry Mensch at endlssmr@sbcglobal.net if you are planning to attend so I can tell them how many are attending.
Membership
Report
Mary
reports that we have 29 Memberships & 44 Members. If you don’t get your membership card yet, contact her! Remember, you get discounts at local dealers
and parts vendors.
Event Highlights:
Recent Events
10th Annual Clovis Poker Run
March 20th,
2004
Several of us intrepid Delta Miata Club wanderers
got together to go straight down to the Clovis Poker Run – straight, as defined
by Miata drives, that is! -- John &
Mary Diamond, Ken & Shirley Christensen and me in our Blue, Red and Red
cars. We wandered along Hwy 33 and had
a great lunch in Los Banos, where we found – to our horror! – a CHP driving a
beautiful Chrysler with no hint of antenna, lights, anything! John asked if this is what we had to watch
for now on the highway, and said it wasn’t fair! The officer was pretty nice and explained it was his boss’ car,
not a cruiser. (Phew!) During lunch Michael Wright of RCMC caught
up with us and now we were four.
Promising to avoid Fresno Friday afternoon
traffic, Graeme led the group on an absolutely beautiful loop around to the
north of Fresno, which took us through wildflowers and lush green hills. It also took us into a private residential
area but the guard was every bit as friendly as the CHP and showed us the route
to Hwy 41. (Which was good, for that
would’ve broken Graeme’s account for U-turns, with which we had a lot of fun!)
Party
time in the usual 3rd floor hostess suite, arriving just in time for
margaritas, wine, water . . . and more snacks than we could handle, as folk
kept bringing beverages and nibbles to the party. We stood out on the balcony and welcomed cars into the parking
lot below, then finally broke for another one of our favorite Miata Club
activities – dinner – on our own.
Ten
o’clock the next morning found a record number of Miatae – somewhere around 47
but don’t quote me on that – rarin’ to go.
Everyone wandered around in a daze, looking for the familiar rain that
often greets this annual springtime event, but it was clear skies and even
warm! Off we went in ones and twos
wandering through the beautiful foothills and meeting for lunch at a restaurant
with great food but kinda clumsy hands (which dropped the stack of food orders
so the delivery became random).
Fortunately, everyone was in a good mood, even sharing food for the
starving folk whose names had slipped down in the stack. Then back to the hotel over more beautiful
twisties (sigh! Tough job but we had to
do it!) in time to rest, clean up and
get ready for --- of course, dinner!
SJVMC outdid themselves this year with an
amazing number of high-quality raffle gifts which found happy homes amongst the
guests after dinner, then off to wander around the streets (great ice cream
shop discovery!) and finally hitting the sack after a fun day.
Sunday morning it was off on the road again, heading
home in the usual straight line and joined by our BAMA friends Al & Peggy
Fung in their silver M2. Through a
marvelous combination of advance research using a computer mapping program and
a really skillfully executed turn to the right when we should’ve turned left,
we found ourselves wandering through some wonderfully isolated countryside with
lots of cousins. . . finally ending up by Bass Lake and on into Yosemite. Graeme decided to meet everyone at the bottom
of the long twisty, FUN road as his passenger never complained about the speed
(well, after all, the passenger was actually Shirley’s framed picture she’d
bought in Clovis).
Yosemite
was Yosemite. What more can I say? It is such a beautiful place that I get
emotional about it, and we were greeted by perfect weather. That prompted us to – of course – think of a
meal so we had lunch at Yosemite village and finally headed back home across
the Valley. A wonderful weekend and one
that – if you missed it – I’d recommend highly for you to try next year!
Check
here for more pictures of the Clovis run. . .
Berkeley/Oakland Hills Run
April 18, 2004
Miatas from both Delta Miata Club and BAMA,
totaling 12 in all, brightened an
otherwise overcast day on April 18 on the Berkeley/Oakland Hills Run. Larry and Barbara Mensch led the 12 cars
from Danville through Moraga and along the redwood lined, dense foliage of
Canyon and Pinehurst Roads. The sweep,
Cathy Spooner and Dave Mallow, kept all the cars together through some heavy
traffic.
Ken and Michele Freeze showed us the details
of Michele’s new 2004-178 horsepower, supercharged red Miata at the Sibley
Volcanic Regional Preserve.
Raindrops greeted us as we cruised Grizzly
Peak and Skyline Roads. The fabulous
views were somewhat occluded by the low clouds. After a while photo stops shifted to a “tops up” stop.
The run meandered through the U. C. Berkeley campus
with Graeme and Larry reminiscing about years gone by.
The run ended at the Berkeley Marina where we
enjoyed lunch surrounded by panoramic views of the Bay and our Miata friends.
Event Highlights:
Events Coming Up
Don’t forget these neat events coming in the
near future:
Coastal Hills, Forest and Mountain Run Sunday
May 2nd, 2004
Our DMC member Graeme Kinsey will be leading an
event for our sister club BAMA on Sunday May 2nd. This will be a run over to the coastal hills
including lunch on the Coast itself and a cruise through the forests of Big
Basin. Be prepared for twisties but the
pace will be easy.
This is not a Delta Miata Club run but Graeme
assures us that all Delta folk are welcome!
The run will begin in Redwood City but a caravan
from 580/680 Chevron will be held if there is interest.
Click here for more info
on this run
2nd Annual KC Stewart’s Point Run May
22nd, 2004
Our DMC member Graeme Kinsey will be leading an
event for our sister club SAMOA on
Saturday May 22nd.
This event is a FULL DAY of driving awesome roads through scenic vistas
in the wine country, coastal hills and Hwy One itself! It starts in Davis with pickups in Napa area
and finishes in Vallejo area on I-80 for a straight trip home ( with drop-offs
in the North Bay area).
This is not a Delta Miata Club run but Graeme
assures us that all Delta folk are welcome!
Click here for more info on
this run
Website Notes
I’m getting good feedback about the Events Pictures – I’d like to hear from someone who is using a modem (not high speed) – are they loading quickly enough? Please let me know – call or email me. Thanks!
Graeme
Hey everyone –
just to let you know, we will publish certain articles at a members request
even if it is not related to club events or news. These articles can be either items for sale (generally Miata
related) or they can be for other important events. If you, as a Club member, wish something published, please send it
to the newsletter editor.