Thanks. Same here! We just have too much stuff piled together now and I've still got to get the truck in the shop for injectors before I head to Portland to pick up my new (to me) trailer, so I can tote my classic your way. I'm simply going to run out of time... It was a tough decision to bow out on the trip. As for the beer Don, I feel almost as bad not being able to bring it as you'll feel not drinking what I was going to bring. Hopefully we can crack one someday soon. Have a great time!
what am i, chopped liver? I love beer too... next time then, we'll see you next time (no doctor's note accepted)
I'm probably only going to go for the weekend. Just don't need that kind of expense right now... Counting food, gas, and a room the cost would be as much as going to the Dragon. I would rather use that money for the Dragon.
Sad for issues, I for one do not like to see club versus club thrash and trash. One thing, you have an opportunity to change the 5280 club, officers are changing this year, you can run! I did, it was fun and I enjoyed most of it but not all. I prefer not to discuss on FB, to much crap goes on FB so I keep to food, kitties and my grand kids. If folks don't like my posts or me, the unfriend button is a click away. Take care Dick, I for one would like to see you up at MITM and on a few rides. Of course, I have been holding back from the rides, I have my reasons. Don
I understand Don, and you haven't seen the last of me. I can just no longer support a club who's only focus is a 4 day event. That combined with trying to take over a long group ride that was set up over a month ago then forgotten about by the person who created it (with over 30 people signed up) and getting some nasty comments over it from a guy in his first year in the club, it was just time to go. If they don't change things soon, MINI-5280 is going to fall apart!
Yes, I have some doubts on the longevity of the club and MITM, but that is another discussion best over a beer or a glass of soda. Needs some change, but it gets that way after the folks in charge burn-out and go on with life and MINI becomes the day to day, not special. That is life! MITM is a fun 4 day event, it takes a lot of effort by about 30 people, if those people just happen to be the same ones organizing drives, working full time and spending their weekends visiting the MITM site so it is a great event for the folks who come. Well! I know I am burning a lot of time to make the track lapping day fun, safe and well attended, I am a bit disappointed in the turn-out counts, but it will be fun. At least I plan on having fun. Stuff gets lost and folks who don't give a crap about MITM get miffed. Again, that is life too.
The club has to realize that there is more than those 30 people organizing the show, and that's something that hasn't been happening. They lose track of that, and everybody but those 30 people get tired of being ignored and leave. If things turn around, and the club becomes functional again, I would go back. There are a lot of great people in the club, it's just that the heads get lost and can't separate running a functioning club from a 4 day national event. For the last few months, it's been like I payed my dues for a select few people to go out and have fun for me. Why not post up all the MITM-recon stuff on the FB pages so anybody in the club can join in, offer insight and advice, and be included. It is an event put on by a MINI "CLUB" not just an organizing committee within the club.
Dontcha just love car club politics... I don't know yours, but I'm sure it's no different than what always seems to happen in nearly every club. All the best!
i agree with a lot of what's been said, but i'll state one thing, not to cause an argument, but just to shed some extra light on it. the club has always been about including people. or trying to. the vast majority of planning gets done by the same people every year regardless of rank/office in the club. then those people get burned out doing what is for the most part a thankless job. when something goes good, we never hear anything, but when it's bad, it's like hell on earth. My family has sacrificed our personal time, space, and lives to organize for the past 6 years for the rest of the club, and more often than not the only response we get is "why didn't we do this instead!@" I was one of those people that felt like you do Dick that more needs to be done, more often, so I got involved and made some changes (hopefully I left the club better off than i found it, Don can answer that). I hit burn out months ago, but i refuse to quit and leave it in someone else's lap to figure out. this may well be my last MITM for some time, but like Don, I'm trying to at least make it fun for everyone else. I get to do ONE drive the entire time, and that only because i'm leading it. The rest of the time I may as well not even have a MINI as it's just going to sit in the parking lot. I for one miss seeing Chuck around, he hit burn out doing exactly what I'm doing now, and hasn't been seen since. He still renew's his membership, but we don't see him very often. I hope a break will solve things for me, but you're not alone in your feelings. My request is that you work with the club to fix them, not abandon it until a later time, and let someone else do the work. ps. I've asked at least a dozen times for input, insight, suggestions, help, etc in newsletters, forums, and on various FB portals for ideas to better MITM and gotten crickets in response. The organizers get ignored too. The greater majority of this MITM has been organized by 5 people, not 30. Maybe 10 others were consistent in their efforts, but like Don said, when those same people are doing MITM, and they are the ones who typically organize for the rest of the club, there is bound to be some whiplash.
See Jeremy, MITM isn't the problem... It has always been a great event, and a lot of fun, even if you are stuck walking around HQ the whole time because you blew your MINI up with the help of Bytetronik... The main issue I have, is with the rest of the club... When you were acting president, and even through Don's years as the head cheese, we were active... In the winter, we would have our monthly meetings at some pretty decent restaurants and sit there shooting the shift for a few hours, and it was fun, even when most people were snowed in and only a few could make it. In the summer our meetings wouldn't interfere with any of the other activities some of us like to get together and go to, and they would normally be topped of with a club drive of sorts, even if it was just a short jaunt up Coal Creek and down Golden Gate, and that was great. This year though there were no winter get togethers except the Christmas party, all of the meetings this summer have been scheduled during other things that are going on (like Cars&Coffee) and on the opposite side of town. Spring started off great with lots of rides, but the only one who seems to be able to create a ride people would attend wanted to have the meet up time at 7:00-7:30 way out on the outskirts of the Denver area, so some of us would have to leave our houses at 5:30 on a Saturday morning, just to be able to go. Then MITM planning came into full effect, the rides disappeared or were created then forgotten about, all the club activities seemed to stop, yet everybody who was invited to go out and find routes for MITM would fill FB with pictures showing what a great time they were having. Nobody outside of the planning committee even knows when these recon runs are happening, so we are all left out to just see the pictures of the ones deemed "Worthy" enough to go. That's a bunch of CARP! If MITM is a club run event, shouldn't the recon stuff be posted and anybody in the club can go on the recon stuff if they want to? It would kill two birds with one stone, because, the routes would be chosen, and EVERYBODY in the club would be able to be active and participate if they want to... Not to mention it would make MITM more enjoyable, because more than one person knows more than one way through the mountains... I know some twisted back roads out in the sticks a lot of people have never even heard of, and I bet quite a few others in the club do to...
i agree with you, i never thought to post all that stuff up. personally i got tired of sending stuff out and not getting anything in return so i just let it go. (rather than constantly try to to include people on the decisions, i just made them myself) I didn't want to bombard folks with the same requests over and over and over again, so when it came to keeping the updates going beyond the newsletter, it never crossed my mind. I was/am having enough problems just getting updates from committee chairs, so moving beyond that is my failing. Hopefully the next guy can learn from my mistake. But i do agree the club's social aspect has really dropped off, it's felt like a job for a long time, and not a passion.
Is the problem with Facebook? I didn't see much mention of Facebook being used as the most recent communications tool. Rides and other club events have been posted there. That implies joining/liking that page to get updates, but once there you'll receive all kinds of invites for events, rides, etc. that everyone is posting pictures of. If you're not on Facebook and/or if you don't like joining then you'll miss quite a lot. Example: Club Drives: https://www.facebook.com/groups/408173135952199/
MITM 2015 GroupMe Link 'Minis in the Mountains 2015' on GroupMe. https://app.groupme.com/join_group/15193607/Jfhuat