I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We had a very busy fourth quarter for the Club and 2017 is looking like it will be even busier than 2016. We have some new events in store for the coming year along with some interesting tech sessions. Ron Nicasio will be taking over as President for the next two years. He is extremely capable and Mart Jaama will assist as the new Vice President. Fred Watson is stepping in as the Newsletter Editor and Ron Rachow is the new Secretary. Art Ona accepted the Community Involvement role.
As I look back at the last four years, I see that the Sierra Chapter has grown considerably and we have some new members who are participating in the yearly events as well as coming to the meetings. We have gone digital on our quarterly newsletter as well as meeting notifications and invitation to monthly events. We have some new restaurants to go to after the monthly meetings. We try to keep the meetings as interesting as possible and limit the time to 60 minutes or less so we can enjoy the dinners. It’s been a wonderful four years as President of the Club.
On October 8th, we had the BMW Foundation Street Survival at a new venue, the Regional Public Safety Training Center in Reno. This facility is used by the Sherriff’s Dept. to train their people. We had a total of 33 students signed up and 28 students participated in the program. Steve Polimeni and Jeff Warner did an amazing job this year. Steve has volunteered to take over the event from Jeff starting this year. I would like to thank all the volunteers from the club for making this a successful event. We also had help from the Sherriff’s Dept., the Porsche Club and the Zero Teen Fatalities folks. A big thanks to Steve Reimer for providing bagels and coffee again this year from Einstein Bagels. This facility is first class and the students really enjoyed the experience. We hope to be returning to this center for many years to come!
We had our second annual Fun Rally on October 29th. Steve and Anne Marie Polimeni created a rally this year using grocery stores as the venue. The intent was to find food at four grocery stores as fast as possible while obeying the speed limits (ha ha). Each car would spend about $15 for the entire journey. The first three cars that returned to the final meeting place won prizes. First place went to Zachary Harding and his partner, second to Ron Nicasio and third place to Ron and Sharon Rachow. The groceries were donated to the Evelyn Mount Outreach Program. Thanks again to Steve and Anne Marie for sponsoring this event. Next year, Fred Watson and Mart Jaama have volunteered and will again have a new format so stay tuned.
Our Holiday Party was held at Brick’s Restaurant this year on December 8th. Members were invited to De and Joyce Sharp’s house for cocktails and appetizers prior to heading over to the restaurant. A total of 46 members attended this year. Bill Pearce again donated several raffle gifts. De Sharp provided some fun raffle gifts and I had some nice wines to donate. A big thanks for De and Joyce for opening up their house again for the cocktail party.
I would like to thank the members and Board for letting me have fun running meetings and going to as many events as possible. I still intend to stay active in the Chapter and help out as much as possible. The Wine Tour and Street Survival will stay on my volunteer list. I hope to see more of our members this coming 2017.
Happy Motoring,
Pat McGoff
