President's Message

By the time you read this we will have had our May 10th Run for the Crab. As I have mentioned previously, this event was brought to the 2014 Calendar Party last year by member Sharon Castle. I have been really looking forward to some great crab, and a fabulous Spring time drive. The Oakmont Golf Club is a wonderful venue. We had 60 participants, 9 of whom had steak instead of crab. Be sure to see the after-the-fact article by Simone Kopitzki (who had crab for the first time in her life) below. Big thanks to Sharon, to Simone, to Don Magdanz (for the route), to Kurt Fischer (for leading the tour), and to other members who made this run and excellent meal possible. Not really sure who I can thank for the weather, but it was beautiful!

We had a number of new members, as well as folks we have not seen a while attending. It was very nice to see Charlie Alegria, Gary Bayless, and Greg Fuller, as well as both John and Wynne Bergman. I hope to see you all again soon. Susan and I shared a table with David and Mary Margulies who have moved, now permanently, to Napa from the East Coast. They are long time PCA members, but new to our Region. I want to extend a big welcome to them and the other new members who attended. We are a very friendly group, and love to have new folks come out and join the rest of us... Great Cars and Great People.

On Saturday, May 5th we had our fourth autocross of the year, and for those of us without power steering it was a better workout than going to the gym. The course featured lots of tight turns and was really a blast. Cars with high horsepower were kept on an equal footing with the 914's and 912's. I know that Tristan Bayless, Jamie DeRuiter, Andy Brian and Bob Schoenherr all had a great time.

Redwood Region will host a Porsche Corral at Sonoma Raceway for the Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival on both Saturday, May 17th and Sunday May 18th. Your $30 per day entry fee includes the corral which will be in the paved Media lot at turn 2. Come on out to see some great historic vehicles race, and add your beautiful Porsche to the amazing group that will be in the corral.

Just a week prior to this year's Porsche Parade, June 7th, Redwood will be hosting a dinner run to the Plaza Bistro on the Square in the town of Sonoma. This is the third year in a row for this popular event. The Region is paying for reserved parking just off the square as in prior years. See below for further details.

Many of you have already registered for Porsche Parade in Monterey. If you have not, I urge you to entertain the idea. This will be my first Parade, and I can hardly wait. I, like many others, am volunteering at the event and know I will enjoy the opportunity to meet and work with lots of folks from other Regions. Susan and I plan to take both our '99 Boxster and our '83 SC. I am looking for someone to assist with getting the Boxster to Monterey. Susan has had some recent neck injuries and will have a very challenging time driving that far. Please contact me if you can assist us by driving our Boxster down with Susan.

Also, regarding Parade, I understand that banquet tickets for all people that want to sit at a specific table must be presented at the time the table is reserved. That requires some coordination ahead of time. Susan and I will be attending the Concours banquet, as well as the Victory banquet. If you have interest in sharing a table with us please contact me. More than a request for company at our table, I want to assure that you understand the process so that you can coordinate ahead of time  with folks you want to share a table with.

That's all for now.  Down the road.

Vern

From the Editor

Happy reading and enjoy!

 Zone 7 Parade Concours Preparation School - April 26, 2014 

by Simone Kopitzki, Redwood Region Sponsorship Director

My First Crab 

A crowd of about 60 people and 35 cars gathered at Kaffe' Mocha in Santa Rosa on a chilly and breezy morning. We embarked on a beautiful 42 mile drive though wine country arriving at the Oakmont Golf Course. By the time we sat for lunch the wind was still blowing off and on, but the temperature had warmed to about 70 degrees.

Lunch was served outside on a beautiful terrace overlooking the golf course's 18th green with a gorgeous view of the course and mountains of the Valley of the Moon. The crab was served out of the "pot", buffet style, with all the condiments and accompaniments: butter, bread, lemons, herb and cocktail sauces, fresh greens and crumbled blue cheese. And there was a private wine bar just for us!  

The table was set with "nut crackers", the sight of which made me a little apprehensive as I had never eaten crab before. Yes, I know I have lived in the Bay Area for 11 years now, but never before have I had crab!  I thought an event like this would be perfect for my first time; I could see how others maneuvered their way through all those shells to get to the good stuff. And it was fun! We got "dribble bibs", which were somewhat pesky as they blew around in the ongoing wind. But we made it - it was great. My first crab - very yummy.  

We really enjoyed the crab and the great company. There were a bunch of new people at the lunch who also enjoyed being there as well as us veterans. I was very happy to see John and Wynne Bergman. He told me that he had just recovered from a stroke suffered in October. He is doing very well and I am glad that he is able to attend club events again. This should remind us all how quickly life can change and that we should all enjoy life sooner than later.

The event was a great success. Sharon Castle did an excellent job planning and organizing. A big thank you to Sharon -- well done and this was her first event for our Club. It was a great day and we drove home very stuffed and happy. Looking forward to the next event with the Redwood Region.   

Photographs by Simone Kopitzki. To see Simone's entire photo collection click here.  

by Ben Maurice Brown, Redwood Region Member 

Biscotti and Cars is an event for all car enthusiasts, it is held from 8:00-10:00 AM on the first Saturday of each month in front of Poggio restaurant in Sausalito. Free parking is available for attendees from 8-10 AM on a first come, first served basis in the Bank of America parking lot (Lot #2) across the street. Delectable cappuccino, biscotti, panini and other breakfast fare are available for purchase at Poggio. The monthly Feature Car is placed front and center in front of Poggio. The Feature Car owner will be presented with a poster and plaque commemorating their entry. For PCA members, upcoming Feature Cars representing the Porsche marque include a 1969 Porsche 912 and a 1973 Porsche RS 2.7. Other Feature Car marques scheduled in 2014 include Lancia, Lotus, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes and Ferrari.    

Looking forward, we made two enhancements to increase attendee convenience and enjoyment.  First, free parking was has been arranged through the City of Sausalito in a lot across the street from Poggio. This lot will allow early bird arrivals to ogle and photograph many great attendee cars grouped in one central location close to the Feature Car action and edible goodies at Poggio.  

Second, I worked with Justin Kuzmanich, from Fanmouth, to establish a photographic website for Biscotti and Cars. This website will allow attendees to view images of both attendee cars and Feature Cars. This website will also allow attendees to upload digital jpeg images which they take at our events. The website will include sections with images of Feature Car Posters, images of Feature Car Previews of upcoming events and a link to Matt Kelleher's extensive photo archive of past Biscotti and Cars events.  (Ed. Late news, the Biscotti and Cars website is now up. To view click here.)  

We now have two Marin County weekend events involving caffeine and automobiles organized by Redwood Region PCA members. On the first Saturday of each month, all Redwood Region PCA members are cordially invited to attend Biscotti and Cars in Sausalito, organized by myself and Vin Damico. And then, on the first Sunday of each month, you can attend the Coffee and Cars event in Novato, organized by Kurt Fischer. Hopefully attending both events will make for a pleasant, car filled weekend with other enthusiasts. Looking forward to seeing you.

 Golden Gate Porboys Beginner Autocross School - Sunday, June 29, 2014

Member Profile:Dana Wailes and his 1971 911 

by Bill Newton, Redwood Region Member                     

Dana's 911 in camping trim -- taking a break from strenuous autocrossing photo by Dana Wailes

A visit to their shop is a very interesting experience. Dana has quite a wide range of projects in his repair bay: an all-aluminum bodied Audi A8, a red 1965 912, Dana's 1971 911 and a 4-cylinder Cummins diesel motor waiting to be installed in Dana's early model International Scout. The atmosphere there was one of calm professionalism; perhaps a bit of "automotive zen."

Dana's 911 started life as a 1971 Sportomatic 911T. This car hadalready caught the attention of Excellence magazine writer David Coleman and was featured in the December, 2002 issue. This article had some pretty good things to say about the Sportomatic gear box. It was explained as a "semiautomatic, not an automatic device based on Porches's 901/902 four speed gearbox; a driver needed skill to operate it efficiently."

Dana and his 911 are doing quite well in RR AXs photo by Barbara McCrory/ground-speed

Working out at the Airport photo by Barbara McCrory/ground-speed

Redwood President, Vern Rogers, has this to say about Dana: "Dana Wailes has been a regular at Redwood Autocrosses for a few years now.  Although he shows up as a participant, he has always been willing to assist

Vern's comments speak for themselves. Having Dana at our autocrosses can be invaluable to the distressed driver. And, it's just plan nice to talk to him and to see his car evolve.

Autocross Results

by Bob Schoenherr, Redwood Region Membership Director

Redwood Region autocrosses at the Santa Rosa Airport are extremely well attended by PCA members from the entire Zone. We do our best to provide an enjoyable and rewarding experience for all participants. Drivers and the working crew like to know their times immediately after coming off the course. We were not able to do this during the first three 2014 autocrosses as our display stopped working; we had to depend on radio communications only. Timing slips and the recording of scores were becoming painful for all and not the experience we wanted.

Grady and I spoke with other regional autocross directors to seek their advice and to learn what they were using for their timing systems. After some troubleshooting and phone calls we realized that repairing our display was not cost effective. Our vintage system timer is 13 years old; the broken display is 8 years old - this is ancient as I found out during my calls. After a week of calls and research I found a system that appeared to be simple, wireless, and to meet the needs of our autocross team. The best part it takes 5 minutes to setup, less than 5 minutes to train people how to use it, and the price was only $500 more than just replacing our old broken display. The system is a made by a company in Wylie, Texas called FarmTek. Mike, their engineer, and I had long talks on our requirements and on setup. Grady and I talked it over for many an hour and then decided to recommend this system to our Board. We went ahead with the purchase after Board approval. Anita and I set it up and played with the system the Friday before its intended first use at our May 3rd autocross event. Anita and I were amazed at how easy it was to setup and operate. We only hoped it would be the same at the Santa Rosa airport the next day.

Farm Tek Electronic Timing System

Saturday came and I set up the system ... it was too easy, something had to go wrong. Tracy, Kim and Tristan were in the trailer for the first runs. It worked great and the display was bright so that everyone could see your time. Second run group: Greg and Penny same thing, it worked great except for one error due to a timing sensor blowing over. We set it back up and we were fully functional again. With our old system timing gates we would have had to realign on our hands and knees. The afternoon run groups went well too. I'd say that we were very happy with the performance and ease of use of the new system. Of course it wasn't perfect, yet!  I need to turn the display time on for a longer amount of time for our next usage. In the future we have plans to setup a wireless network which will allow you to check times on your smartphone and download the times into a spreadsheet. This will make the autocross experience even more exciting for our members and our competitive group will have more tools to help them compare their driving skills. We hope to have some of this ready to go by our July autocross. Stay tuned.

Redwood History - Porsche Parade 1980

October 1980 - Jim Hurson said...

'80 Parade: Have returned from the Parade in Portland, and to say that it was a success would be an understatement.  This was my fourth Parade, and they somehow keep getting better.  Redwood, as usual, received a significant share of trophies and had loads of fun. . .something we do well.  Thanks to Emmett Wilder for his efforts at coordinating and planning our trip, the parties, etc.  I know that I, for one, left Portland wanting still more.

Our First Porsche Parade by Vern and Martha Stein

Everyone in the Redwood Region should be extremely proud of our people who placed in the Driving Event - they were really great.  A special note of thanks to Emmett Wilder who led a fantastic tour; everyone should know that it took a $175,000 935 Turbo to beat Em's top time at the track, and just barely at that ... somehow, it's just not fair!  We can't wait for the 1982 Porsche Parade in Reno!

Perspectives on Parade ... and Other Exceeding Fun Things !!! by Yvonne Saber

The fun's getting to me...!  A few days here and there one eventually gets used to.  But nine days!  That sort of thing borders on habit-forming --- or worse!!  One really hesitates to get back to "normal" life! ... for any of you who knows what that is!

Summed up perfectly --- I overheard a most appropriate comment on the last day of Parade "Can you die of fun??..."

Unofficial Winners from Redwood region who attended the Portland 1980 Parade:

 Tech Quiz - 924, 944, 968 Parade Prep 

Board Meeting Minutes

Membership Report

Membership Information

Der Riesenbaum is the official newsletter of the Porsche Club of America, Redwood Region, encompassing Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, and Sonoma Counties. This publication is intended to inform Club members about Club activities and other related matters of interest. The opinions expressed in der Riesenbaum are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Porsche Club of America, Redwood Region, its officers, or its members.

Letters to the editor, feedback, questions, and suggestions about der Riesenbaum and the Redwood Region in general are welcome. We also encourage members to submit photos and/or write-ups about Club events or related activities. Written contributions and photos are welcome and should be emailed to the editor. The submission deadline for publication in der Riesenbaum is the 5th day of the month for that month's publication. Material received after the deadline will be considered for publication the following month. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit all material submitted for publication.

All written content and images in this publication are protected by copyright. Permission is granted to reprint any original content herein provided credit is given to the author, to der Riesenbaum, and to the Porsche Club of America, Redwood Region. 

Click here to visit us on the web or here to visit our Facebook page.

Thank you all for supporting your Club!

Barbara McCrory & Jerry Gladstone, der Riesenbaum Co-Editors

Porsche Club of America, Redwood Region