The February Club “Official” annual Business Meeting had a major unexpected conflict this year - the weather. Nothing new this year, as it is February in Chicago and we are having a strong dose of winter this year. We delayed the start 15 minutes to allow a couple of late arrivals to get there. It was a good meeting, as there were several very good comments and lots of discussion that we might not have had with a lot of people present. Thanks for the input from the people that were able to attend.

I want to congratulate the 2013 Club award winners: David and Lisa Novak, with the Safety Fast award; Jim Evans, Maintaining the Breed award; Doug Clark, Ambassador at Large award; Richard Meservey and Sundy Mead, New Member of the Year award; Ann and Jake Snyder, Cream Crackers award; and the President’s Award to Bill Mennell. The recognition trophies will be presented at the March meeting.

We still need to get some volunteers to help with the set up and clean up at our swap meet. If you can help, great, as it is important to the club since this is our major source of revenue. This year we are having the swap meet one month later than we have had in the past. If you can help, contact Victor L'Heureux who is managing the event this year, with Jim Evans overseeing.

We are still looking for a person to head up our e-bay/e-commerce sales effort. If you have any interest at all, please ask about this. The accounts are already set up and it is just a matter of posting, pictures and mailing out the items when they are sold. This could be a team effort, with different people doing parts of each job. We can be creative. Just let us know of your interest.

For our March meeting we will have Reinout Vogt discussing the upcoming driving events and Dave Bralich will be holding a tech session on oil filters. You do not want to miss this. For April, Steve Skegg will be hosting a tech session on getting your car ready for the upcoming driving season as well as topics of your choice. Just let one of us know what you would like to have for a topic. These should be informative meetings as we get our cars ready for the warmer weather.

-- George Phariss

The Steering Column Right Hand Drive

There must be some sort of a time warp happening. It appears on some days the days just drag out forever and other days seem to go so fast you wonder where the time went. Take this winter – when will it ever end? As I noted before, in November I had planned to rearrange my garage to accommodate my MGB for storage during the winter. Before I knew it, I was socked in with snow and ice and couldn’t move my car into safe storage. Now it seems that this winter will never end. Every day I look for an opportunity to move my car to shelter but the weather will not cooperate. Now it seems to be a lost cause – the snow keeps getting deeper and temperature keeps dropping. Even if I could remove the snow and ice, I’m not sure if I would be able to move the car with all the ice accumulation around the wheels. On to other tasks….

The 18th Annual All British Car Swap Meet and Autojumble is almost upon us. Jim Evans orchestrated this event from the beginning and has nurtured it for the past 17 years! Really impressive. Since 1997, the Swap Meet has been a valuable source of hard to find parts at a good price. In past years, over 100 vendors participated and 800 customers walked the exhibit halls at the DuPage County fairgrounds looking for that elusive part for their car; maybe even finding some new product that will make their car more worry-free.

Talk about a time warp. It was just a short time ago Jim and I were discussing the necessary tasks to make the upcoming event a success. Halls to rent, vendors to solicit, database to update, mailing lists to generate, printing of ads and placement of the event in periodicals and newsletters were all tasks that had to be planned and initiated. Where did the time go?

Most of the tasks are complete and now it is ‘getting down to the wire’. Remaining tasks are being addressed. We still could use a few more volunteers on the day of the Swap Meet to spend a couple of hours manning the registration desk accepting entrance fees and providing information. Not hard work, but necessary work to make the event go smoothly. Since you would be at the meet anyway, won’t you lend a hand? Thanks in advance for your support.

-- ~~ Victor L’Heureux