As your Driving Events Coordinator for this year I intend the keep you updated on a monthly basis in a new column called Directions. Editor Bill Reece has promised to reserve a little bit of space every month. It may not really become a whole column all the time but it should be enough to communicate what is going on. In this issue you will find our preliminary Driving Events Calendar.
And when you come to the February club meeting I will bring color copies in a larger format so that you can hang one on the refrigerator, in the garage, and in your office. There is of course a good reason that we publish the Driving Event Calendar so early in the year, when most of the driving machines, your MG's may still enjoying be a well deserved winter break or undergoing some off-season maintenance. That reason is that you can start planning to enjoy the great driving events that the Chicagoland MG Club offers.
Take a look what we've planned already on the calendar: tune-up and tune-down, many familiar names and organizers, a couple of tours, a picnic, the British Car Fest, and some new things. Hopefully you'll find something that you liked in the past or something new that you would like to try out. Speaking of something new, this year we have a couple of new things on the list. There is the "One Tank Tour", a more official name that Jim chose for the one day tours that he started last year with the Lincoln Highway Tour. This year it will be along the Blackhawks Trail and again will carry a little bit of a historical theme. Then there is the Orphan Auto Picnic. We decided that the Orphan Picnic will be the official Club Picnic and together with our friends of the Vintage MG Club of Chicago we'll have a well organized MG corner at the event. And lastly, on Sunday August 1 we'll try to get an organized trip to the Vintage Transport Extravaganza at the Union Rail Museum. Of course we still have several recommended car shows were we encourage the members to show their MG, but this Extravaganza can become more of an official club event.
If you studied the calendar carefully you may have noticed that there are also a couple of things missing. They are Autocross and Technical sessions. We are still searching for a place Autocross and the Monthly Technical Session that we started last year have not been scheduled yet. Stay tuned for more information next Month. And one more important thing, you'll find three rallies on the calendar: Lands End, Lucas Memorial Night, and Halloween. There will be more about rallies in general and these three dates in detail in my next Directions. I also thought of new slogan for the 2010 Driving Season. It is based on Menard's "The more you buy, the more you save". I say:

“The more you drive, the more you smile” -- Reinout Vogt