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June 2006 Newsletter
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Just a few of the comments about the 2006 Topless Sun Run
On behalf of Club Miata Vancouver Island I'd like to thank you all for making this event such a seamless success. It always amazes me that you can lead so many Miatas over such long distances without losing anyone. Our little club of 48 Miatas managed to show up in Kelowna with 17 cars and you can bet that most of us will return along with more new faces next year. I know I'm already looking forward to next year. Keep up the great work and thank you all for doing this!
Cornel
President, Club Miata Vancouver Island
I just wanted to say that you did another great event! Both Yvonne and I were very impressed again with the schedule and variety of drives and venues. Great job Matt and just wanted to say thanks! A lot of work I know and it was great to be a part of it all. Looking forward to next year already!
Dale :-)
Matt & Jim ... this was the start of the 'SUN RUN' for some of us Vancouver Island folk who took the Coquihalla route! Thanks so much again for a wonderful weekend. It was great to see you again.
Maggie & Joe
Club Miata Vancouver Island
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Thanks for the great weekend! We'll be back. We headed home by going west via Spence's Bridge. More great roads and not too may trucks. You have great scenery in BC. Thanks again.
Dee
Puget Sound Miata Club
To Matt and your team of hard working volunteers,
Congratulations on another incredible event !!!! What a great weekend of fun. We are very aware that an event like this does not happen without many, many hours of planning and hard work. We salute you all, counting the days until next year. Have an awesome driving summer and our very best wishes,
Gordon and Debbie
Wild Rose Miata Club
Just a note to let you know that you and your cohorts did a great job, most enjoyable.
Cheers,
John
Matt, thanks for the great weekend. Things were well organized and I had a blast.
Regards,
Tim
Canadian Rockies Miata Club
Thanks again for the great job. We had a wonderful time. Please let us know about early registration for next year. Your friends from Anacortes.
Bruce and Judy
We had a fabulous time at the Sun Run, and on our trips up and back. Please extend our thanks to your entire club, because we know when an event happens like clockwork -- as this one did -- it is an "all hands" effort. Zoom-zoom!
Duncan & Dee
Club Miata Northwest & Puget Sound Miata Club |
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Miata Sounder newsletter article - 2006 Topless Sun Run
This is the event writeup submitted to the "Miata Sounder", the newsletter of the Puget Sound Miata Club. Reported by Duncan Johnson & Dee Dahlke ('99 silver "Road Dancer")
Club Miata Northwest & Puget Sound Miata Club
This was one spectacular club event. In a nutshell, it stretched over three days (our own trip added three more,) there were 143 Miatas participating, dating from brand new back to the first-year Miata from 1990 (one '90 with its original owner.) The cars were accompanied by 258 people, ranging from age 23 to 78, from as far away as Ontario. Well, one entry was from Switzerland, but didn't bring their Miata.
The PSMC contingent included Maury Fugitt & Sandy McKnight (road tour commanders,) Fred & Sandi Holler, Dennis Thompson & Joanne Hughes, Fred & Bev Rudd, Jim Hightchew, Stanley & Gretchen Liebenberg, Fred Staatz, Bruce Donner & Judy Templeton, and your reporters Dee Dahlke & Duncan Johnson. Most of us started from Monroe on Thursday afternoon, where Maury & Sandy presented us with small soft-side coolers with water, fruit, candy, etc. to sustain us on the road. What a nice touch! We began with a shot over Stevens Pass on US 2, in and out of rain showers, which would be the weather for a while. There was plentiful roadside snow at the summit, with waterfalls of snowmelt on the east side. Approaching Leavenworth through Tumwater Canyon the Wentachee River was high, fast, and boiling with violent turbulence. No place for our canoe! We refueled at Starbucks' and pressed on through Wenatchee and up the east side of the Columbia River on US 97 with a rest stop at the beautiful Beebe Bridge Park (good picnic site on a future cruise) and a final run to Pateros where we stayed at the Lake Pateros Inn and dined at a tasty hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. The river was high here, too, and there was so much floating forest debris washing along that it looked like kelp beds.
First Friday morning activity was to investigate the Pateros local bakery, which made a tasty breakfast. Then Sandy presented us with goodie bags; little canvas sacks with the club emblem, and filled with necessities such as sun-block and bug repellent. We cruised up US 97 to Tonasket, thence east on SR 20 to Wauconda, where we took Toroda Creek Road (good one!) for the remainder of the border run. This is the high country, hardly developed since pioneer days, with a notable number of original log buildings still in use. The actual border crossing was leisurely, at the sleepy hamlet of Midway, B.C. Well, for one thing, in the middle of the road to the customs gate sat a local kitten, chowing down on a fresh-caught snake. "I went to all the trouble of catching this thing; you guys are just going to have to go around me." She was not to be the only wildlife sighting of the day. Later we encountered a coyote, a moose, and a bear. At least some folks in the front of the pack claimed to see them. Anyhow, the Canada Customs inspector was propped up on a chair, holding open the screen door to his little shack. He made the usual enquiries, but apparently did not suspect us of being a pack of terrorists, so into Canada we went.
Now our route went west, then north on highway 33 to a lunch stop in Beaverdell. This is a semi-ghost town, but it has the ancient Beaverdell Hotel, a little wooden structure still stuck in the late 1800s days of logging and mining and railroads, and wonderfully so. The main floor is a tavern/inn and the lone barmaid rose to the occasion, serving up a lot of excellent lunches in short order, and with good spirit. Here we also met more Miatas, rolling in from Alberta after a side trip to the Grand Canyon. Yes, THAT Grand Canyon, the one in Arizona. Not exactly in between Alberta and British Columbia last time we checked, but another fine example that "there are no wrong turns in a Miata." Following lunch we motored north and west to Kelowna past the Big White ski area, and through some seriously forested and mountainous countryside. Lovely in the springtime all the way into Kelowna, a moderate size full-service city on Okanagan Lake (which is long and narrow and looks like a river,) all with a backdrop of more mountains.
OK, gang this is it. Pull into the Best Western and drive right to the registration tent, where we picked up credentials and information packet, and had our arrival pictures taken. The host club had set up a four-stall car washing area, complete with hose, buckets, car wash soap, mitts, sponges, towels, the whole nine yards. Nice feature and of course everyone took advantage of it, having been in and out of Mother Nature's Touchless Car Wash for two days. This led into the "Miata Mingle" as sports cars and humans all got acquainted right there in the reserved parking lot, our version of the rod-n-kustom folks' cruise-in car shows, just minus the judging and trophies. Since all three generations of Miatas were present, and in both US-spec and Canadian-spec versions, all their perceived merits and demerits were debated at length by everybody. Reminded this reporter of debates about other sports cars which had evolved while keeping the same "soul," such as the MG TC, TD, and TF, the Jaguar XK-120, 140, and 150, and the Porsche 356A, 356B, and 356C. The later models are always technically "better," but somehow the original is always "purer." At least no fights broke out! What goes around... Soon the first road event started up, locally known as the Knox Mountain Hillclimb, in which we zoomed to the top of that local landmark, while seeing much of the Kelowna area coming and going, and reaching the conclusion that the beautiful homes in some neighborhoods bespeak significant accumulated wealth. As we cruised through olde towne Kelowna centre some street corner vagrant shouted, "Girlie cars!" Dee yelled back in reply, her golden curls tossing in the wind, "And your point WAS?!?" Back at the hotel, we enjoyed the rest of the evening making new friends in a free wine and cheese reception at the hotel atrium.
Saturday morning we consumed our free breakfast buffet at the hotel, then all mustered under drippy skies for the day-long tour, which involved all 140-plus Miatas. OVMC had devised a route through the two unavoidable city traffic lights (one involving a left turn) and they had us all snaking through the adjacent shopping center parking lot, and feeding into traffic in batches, while the lead cars just crept along the highway a couple of miles ahead. It worked better than we thought it ever could, and soon the whole Miata train was zooming out of town on the aforementioned highway 33. Well, there were a few OTM (Other Than Miata) interlopers, who just couldn't wait for us to pass. One was a putrid diesel truck, and if he was running bio-diesel fuel, we are glad we didn't eat the fish-n-chips that were previously fried in his oil. Retch. After 113 km there was a rest stop at a roadside park (ahhhhhhhhh!) and the sun came out fully and the rest of the tops came down. We zoomed back through Beaverdell to Rock Creek, then west to Osoyoos (an Indian word meaning "land of foul smelling diesels") thence north through Oliver, the wine capital of British Columbia. Hmmm, maybe we should make a future wine run here. How do you get Canadian wine through U.S. customs? Curiously, the tour leader waved us off from a planned side trip on some back roads and we went straight to lunch at Okanagan Falls.
Lunch. Oh, wow. The Miatas filled the field behind the Royal Canadian Legion hall and all the on-street parking around the village green. What a photo opp. The Legion ladies were serving up roast beef sandwiches with all the trimmings, potato salad, strawberry shortcake, et al. Then we each had a ticket for a two-scooper ice cream cone at Tickleberry's ice cream shoppe and junque emporium across the street. Like lunch, it was free to participants. Is this tough to take or what? After lunch we had a choice of three road events: a direct run back to the hotel, a short back road cruise, or a long back road run. Naturally we took the long event; we came to drive. We reversed part of the morning route and took the turnoff which had been denied us before lunch. Then we went into the back country, and even passed a huge radio observatory with banks of dish antennas pointed skyward in search of radio signals from extra-terrestrial life forms. Impressive to this old rocket scientist. As we zoomed deeper into the tooleydinks, the tour separated itself into the fast canyon runners in the front and the more mellow cruisers in the back, which left us leading the second group, deep in some other country and clueless as to where we were going! Ah, but once radio contact with the leader faded, every time we came to an intersection we simply chose the road that looked like the most fun for a Miata, and from time to time we'd catch up to the first group. Amazing how that old sixth sense works! The roads to mark on your map are Green Mountain Road and Apex Road, between about Olalla and Penticton. We suggest not stopping where the sign says, "Beware of bears in this dump."
Returning to the hotel for the evening, we partook of no-host happy hour and then proceeded into a full-featured buffet style roast turkey dinner sponsored by Mazda Canada. There were door prizes (or "draw prizes" in the local vernacular) galore and this usually luckless reporter scored a T-shirt. Ask a certain Fred about winning his world class collection of floor mats. One couple attending was celebrating their 11th wedding anniversary and Mazda Canada presented them with gift watches. In "one of those" quirks of fate, they also won the 50-50 raffle, and took home over $600. The other half of the 50-50 went to OVMC's charity, The British Columbia Transplant Society. Note well: Matt, the Sun Run event chair, is alive because of an organ transplant; that kind of thing does get your attention.
Sunday morning after yet another hotel breakfast, we zoomed up the road a couple of miles to where there was a Miata-only autocross race in a strip mall parking lot. Ah, the advantages of small sports cars; the site was only a couple of hundred meters in length and width, but it could hold a course where drivers cut 2.5 laps in about 45 seconds. The local autocross folks race here every Thursday night, to boot. The cost to race was $10 CDN for as many runs as you could turn; that fee bought you a 1-day membership in the sanctioning club, which got you on their insurance policy. Nice simple way to cover that concern. Duncan at least walked the course with the racers and memories of racing days when he had sharper vision and faster reflexes came flooding back. Zoom-zoom, indeed. Even better, this venue had a microbrew-pub on site, and Miata spectators could wander in for a free brunch while the racers spun donuts and bonked cones outside. After about 3 hours of racing and eating were complete we climbed back in our Miatas for (guess what!?!) another road tour, this time about an hour and a half twisting through the scenic hills and farms of East Kelowna. That marked the official end of the event, and participants went their separate ways, some going home Sunday night, others (including us) postponing departure to Monday. Our personal route home took us northwest up B.C. highways 97C (mountainous) and 8 (a deserted winding road through a canyon) to Spences Bridge, where we picked up the Trans Canada Highway down into the awesome scenery of the Fraser River Valley. We stayed overnight in Abbotsford, where we sipped at a Starbucks that is a biker joint, of all things. Crossed the border at Sumas, then parked and got our shiny new passports stamped by both the Canadian and US Authorities. We came all the rest of the way home on the two-laners, which is certainly a nicer drive than I-5 through the Seattle sprawl, wrapping up with 1150 more miles on Road Dancer's clock.
Looking back over decades of sports car meets of all kinds, races and rallies, tours and car shows, picnics and parties, the 2006 Okanagan Valley Topless Sun Run has to be marked as one of the very best in that long tenure in this unique hobby. It had everything, and on a large scale, it all was fun, and everything came together flawlessly from the participant's viewpoint. We shall indeed zoom-zoom there again in the future. |
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Monthly Club Meeting
This month's meeting is in Vernon at the home of Jim Dennison.
Date: Wednesday, June 28
Time: 7:00 pm
Place: ---------------- Vernon
Directions: Drive through Vernon on highway 97.
Turn right at the last traffic light through town (Holiday Inn Express on the corner).
You are now on 48th Avenue, becomes Silver Star Road.
Continue on 48th Avenue (Silver Star Road) through all the lights and up the hill.
Drive 0.6 kilometres after the last traffic light at Pleasant Valley Road (Butcher Boys grocery is on this corner).
----- is on your left. Watch for the Black and white sign "Mission Hill Printers".
Miata parking is the gravel lot to the left of the house. |
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Golden BC - Kicking Horse Mountain & Resort
The Wild Rose Miata Club from Edmonton is running their annual "David Thompson Highway Cruise".
They will be staying overnight, Saturday, July 15th, in Golden at the kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Sunday Morning there will be a Gondola/Lunch package on the mountain (this usually includes a tour of the Grizzly bear refuge, but it is temporarily closed due to the bear escaping!). He may be back from holidays by July.
Our club has been invited to join them in Golden for Saturday evening and Sunday morning. My daughter and I will be leaving for Golden from Vernon Saturday morning. If anyone would like to join us please e-mail me and we can make arrangements to meet. We are staying at the Mountaineer Lodge for one night and returning to the Okanagan Sunday afternoon. Distance: Vernon to Golden - 288 kilometres.
Below is the invitation from W.R.M.C.
Thanks, Jim
mhprint@vernonbc.ca
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Tent Trailer For Sale
For Sale; Motorcycle Tent Trailer, suitable for Miata or small car as well as M/C. Freedom Trailer built in Penticton. Nomad model queen size sleeping area,also has extras such as propane bottle. Large cooler and canopy. Hitch for early model Miata or MX6 included for the right buyer. Asking $4,790.00.
Call Stan at ------------
Val and Stan |
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New Members
The Okanagan Valley Miata Club would like to welcome our newest members: Brian & Carlene Stickney of Kelowna, and Roy & Lori Uzelman also of Kelowna. |
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