President's Message

Greetings Dogwooders

It wasn't my idea to include the photo at the right. No, it's not me riding the motorcycle, no it's not Spanky on the back; he's our cat. Look at the reflection in the helmet. That's Shamu, our motorhome. This is the scene we saw earlier this year as we were heading north through South Carolina.

Carolyn, Spanky and I are just now getting home from ten days of motor homing fun. We spent the weekend of April 16 – 18 at the Dixie Fair Grounds in Winston-Salem, NC at the planning session for GEAR 2010. It will be held October 20 -24 in Winston-Salem so be sure to mark these dates on your calendar. My plan is for Dogwood to win the bean bag baseball event this year so be prepared for tryouts and practice at Dogwood rallies between now and then. There will be lots more GEAR info in the future so stay tuned.

Following the GEAR planning session, we enjoyed a couple of days at Thousand Trails Forest Lake where we visited the Richard Childress Racing Museum and did some geocaching. From there, we went to Virginia International Raceway for the Dogwood rally hosted by the Gruels and Martins. The food was outstanding, the racing was excellent and as usual, there was an abundance of Dogwood camaraderie and did I mention, the food was excellent. VIR turned out to be a good location for a rally so plan to rally with Dogwood at this same location at the Virginia Historic Races June 4 – 6. There’s more info on this elsewhere in eNews.

Once again, it’s time to start thinking about elections of Dogwood Officers. Your nominating committee (Jim Buelow, Nancy Cummings, and Carol Warthan) will soon be starting its work to select candidates willing to serve the chapter in the positions of President, Vice President Membership, Vice President Rallies, Vice President Communications, Secretary, Treasurer, National Director and Alternate National Director. The nominating committee will also nominate three members for the next term of the nominating committee. If you have an interest in serving in any of these positions, throw your name in the hat by making your wishes known to any member of the Dogwood nominating committee.

Carolyn and I will be hosting Dogwood's next rally June 4-6 at VIR. We’d love to have a huge turnout. Mark the dates on your calendar and make your reservations. We look forward to seeing ya’ll there if not before.