Well everybody, the 2005 MG season is in motion already. We just had the Swap Meet, the Spring Tune-up party is planned, and we had a driving events planning meeting. All this and it's not even March yet, at least right now as I write this. At the driving events meeting we had a dozen or so people come. There were a few faces I missed that I would have liked to see, but it was really great to see some old friends and newer faces come and offer their input and help in getting the 2005 season off to a good start. We have the 2005 driving calendar set, though not in stone, and it looks good. Perhaps more importantly, everything you see in the club calendar is there because we decided on dates to hold the events and people volunteered to organize the events. There should be no cancellations or any other such silliness this year.

There will be 6 or 7 autocrosses, all at the end each month on a Sunday, and not all for club points. The bad part is that we did in fact lose the Joliet Jr. College location due to them reconfiguring their lots, so we are at back at the theater lot for all the autocrosses. Oh well, better to autocross there than not at all, I think. We are investigating other locations, so the dates may change IF we need to in order to get a better location.

We have not two, but three tours this year. The Spring Tour, which I hope to see everybody on. I found some roads that made me even more glad that I drive an MG, and think everyone else will like the drive as well. We'll be headed towards Starved Rock and lunching at Duffy's, beyond that you'll have to come to find out more. A new tour will be one to Blackhawk Farms (near Rockton) on Father's Day. There's some lovely roads going up there and we'll barbecue and socialize once we get to the track. Besides picnicking and enjoying each other's company, there are also the vintage races. Another new tour will be John's Wine, Beer, and Cheese Fall Tour through Southwestern Wisconsin. It's a beautiful area with great roads, and there are people there that can do wonderful things with grapes, barley, and milk. Probably not all at once, though.

And finally, we will be having 5 rallies this year. 2005 marks the return of the Land's End Rally in June, ending with another picnic at Curt Bork's and Pam Hansen's. We'll also have the Spring Chicken and Halloween rallies again, both of which will be written by some "newbies" with assistance from veterans. Good to see some fresh faces getting involved. Larry Czachor will be responsible for the Larry's Revenge Rally in August; thrilled to have a real good rallyist writing a rally for us. Finally, the Healey Club Rally the weekend before the BCU festival will be for CMGC points. We'll just rank CMGC members according to how they finish in relation to each other within the rally. It should be a good way to have another rally without any of us doing any work, and socialize with some other car clubs. Plus it fits well in our schedule.

Now if you want to set up some other tour, rally, drive, what have you, then why not? There are some car clubs that meet at some member's place on Saturday mornings and then decide where they want to drive to. Maybe they go to a certain place 2 hrs away for lunch, or a certain state park. It might be too late to set up a club points event, but it's never too late to get together with friends and go out for a spin.