West Chapter Report

Report for meeting held February 7, 2017 at Cooper’s Ale House at 415 S. Swing Road in Greensboro, N. C. Hopefully the confusion that kicked this meeting off won’t become the norm and since no one could actually point a finger at where the whole kerfuffle started it might just go on the annals of…

The West Chapter of the North Carolina Region of the Sports Car Club of America held their November monthly meeting on the Evening of November 1, 2016 at Coopers Ale House at 514 S. Swing Road in Greensboro, NC. The meeting was our third one held in the “Jamestown Room”. It is our hope to…

On October 4, 2016 the West Chapter of the North Carolina Region of SCCA met for their October Meeting. This was the first meeting of the Chapter at a new and hopefully permanent meeting site. This site is at Coopers Ale House, which should sound familiar to anyone in the NCR, but the street address…

West Chapter Report for meeting held at Porterhouse Bar and Grill 4608 West Market St. Greensboro, North Carolina on 9-7-2016. For the first time of our being at this meeting place, we finally are getting to use the meeting room that we had at least halfway been expecting to have for the August 2016 meeting.…

After having had our West Chapter meeting at Coopers Ale House for over five years it seems strange to pull into a new parking lot for the first time. With a little luck, we will be holding meetings at Porter House Bar and Grill for at least 5 more years. Having to make changes in things like when and where your meetings will be held and properly notifying your members of the changes is always a chore and not something you want to do any more often than absolutely necessary. The positive here is that we should be able to get some increase in attendance as the space in the meeting room should give us more space for additional attendees. I do realize that this growth doesn’t come from just acquiring a larger room and will take some effort on the part of the members to get out and find new people to come to the meetings. To be honest about this new room I knew going in that there may be at least one possibly small problem right off the bat. There was the chance that the primary meeting room might be being used, but I was told that often the other group did not need the room and that there would be an almost never used room adjacent to the meeting room that could be used if the other group was there and there was also a nice outdoor patio that could be used. Well, as things would be, the other group did show up, the always vacant other room was busy and the weather didn’t make the use of the patio a viable option. This leads me to this announcement: The regular meeting schedule of the West Chapter is now changed to the First Wednesday of each month. Tuesday is no longer meeting day. Please make a note to attend our Chapter meeting on Wednesday. The first Wednesday meeting will be September 7, 2016. Please help getting the word out to everyone living in the area known to be the West Chapter. I consider anyone in SCCA who has a 336 area code to be in our Chapter. I have a mailing list that uses that area code exclusively.

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This report finds us back at Jerry Pell’s building at 307 S Swing Road in Greensboro. As this building has no food service, Jerry gave me some money and said, ”let’s have a cookout”. I sent out 134 emails to the members of NCR who should be attending the monthly meetings of the West Chapter to advise them of the new meeting site and the picnic and new meeting time.

The weather didn’t get an invitation and we had a small turnout for both the eats and the meeting. The cookout was held behind the building, which put us on the basement floor, which was on level with back parking lot, so no one had any particular problems getting into the building except James Buckberry, who was getting about on crutches due to a broken leg he had suffered only a short time before that most of us knew nothing about. When the time came to end the cookout and go to the conference room on the floor above everyone got up and went upstairs. Unfortunately, James found getting up the stairs on his crutches more than he could handle and went back home rather than to the meeting. Just imagine, the remorse we all felt the next day when the sad news circulated that James had passed away at home on Wednesday. In retrospect I can think of the ways I wish I had handled the situation Tuesday night differently, but then you know what they say about hindsight. A great number of James’s friends and family spent last Tuesday in Liberty, NC trying to get over losing our dear friend. Our racing program and our West Chapter meetings will not be the same in the future. I am sure that the memory of James will be a part of all the NCR does for a long time to come and I hope I can keep his memory alive for you.

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Please be aware that I am trying to get this report written and filed in record time. This is my way of trying to get the June 7, 2016 Chapter meeting and all of the irregularities that came with it handled completely, finished and tucked away in Region archives where they can’t cause any more problems.

What seemed to be a rather mundane first Tuesday in June went haywire, at least for the West Chapter of the North Carolina Region of the Sports Car Club of America. Just after 4:00 PM, my phone rang and I found John Lindquist telling me I was the man of the hour. Then he informed me that he had just received a call from Steve Martin, informing him of information that he had received via the internet, that the place the West Chapter had been using for monthly meetings for well over 5 years was no longer open. It appeared that the closing had been over the previous weekend and, from what we had to go on, was to be considered final. A later investigation of the event shows that the State Revenue Department had chosen to close the establishment on what they referred to as a permanent basis for unspecified reasons. This started a very frantic effort to secure an alternate site for the night’s meeting and the notification of all of the regular attendees. As has become quite normal this was quickly remedied with a call to Jerry Pell who graciously offered the use of the conference room at his building on Swing Road which is about a mile from the normal meeting place. Many in the NCR are already familiar with this building as the Region’s Boards (Board of Directors and Competition Board) both were invited to use the venue a few months earlier this year when the site of their regular meetings was not available. Thanks again Jerry.

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The West Chapter of the North Carolina Region of SCCA held their May meeting on May 3, 2016 at Cooper’s Ale House in Greensboro, NC. Most of the attendees had arrived about 45 minutes early to have a nice dinner and a drink prior to the start of the meeting. At 7:30, Chapter Coordinator Buddy Matthews called the meeting to order.

Those in attendance were 14 of the regulars. It really amazes me that the mild increase in attendance that we got only 2 months ago has vanished so quickly. The great speakers that we had for the last two months and, I guess to some degree, the e-mails that I sent to some of our members who had never attended a Chapter Meeting, had all worked a bit but certainly didn’t bring them back tonight. I will try to remind all of you that we enjoyed your joining us and wish you would come back. If you failed to get an invite in March, let me know so I can get you on my list.

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This meeting was held at Cooper’s Ale House at 5340 W. Market Street in Greensboro, NC. Most members arrived at about 6:45 for dinner and the meeting was called to order at 7:30. The business of the Region that was transacted at the most recent Board of Directors meeting held in Greensboro January 19th was reported to the attendees at the February 2nd West Chapter Meeting. The Region is appreciative of Jerry Pell allowing us to use the Conference Room at 307 S. Swing Road on both January 19, 2016 for the BOD Meeting and January 15, 2016 for the Comp Board Meeting.

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Most of the West Chapter  meetings were very unimpressive, had one attended them to be impressed. For the most, I would call them more friendly get-togethers where a dozen or so kindred spirits with a common bond came together at a place called Cooper’s Ale House to see how the others were doing and share a meal, a drink, and about an hour of catching up with each other.