This was a year of firsts for me.
It’s hard to believe now, but it was almost exactly a year ago that I attended my first CVR meeting. I didn’t purchase my Boxster until early August of 2018 and, being a worrier, I wanted to replace the IMS bearing before I drove the car. Also, I thought it would be bad form to show up at a Porsche club meeting in my wife’s Kia Sportage. So my first meeting was in October 2018 and from the minute I walked in, I knew CVR was different. It isn’t just the cars – it is very much the people.
A year ago, I hadn’t driven a car on a track. I’d done a bunch of AutoX events at Lime Rock with the Miata Club, but I’d never been out on the “big” track. It was always something I wanted to do and, truth be told, was the main reason I bought the Boxster. (It’s track-ready out of the box.) This year, I drove Lime Rock twice. Once in a Track Night in America event, and once in a CVR DE event. The TNIA experience was fun, but the CVR DE experience was inspiring.
A year ago, I took pictures of cars for fun. This year, the International Motor Press Association saw fit to accept me into their ranks as an accredited photojournalist. So now, I’m one of those guys who gets to racetracks and take pictures from places the spectators didn’t know existed. How cool is that? OK, I have to get there at the crack of dawn and wear a funny looking bright orange vest, but it’s a small tradeoff. The best perk though was that I got to go to the IMPA Manufacturer Test Days at Monticello Motor Club and flog a whole bunch of high-performance cars around the track at speed for two days. I’m still grinning from that one.
All that said, the best “first” for me is Challenge.
This year, we (Phil Capella, Shelley Krohnengold, Don Phelan, Jeff Coe and myself) transformed Challenge from a stunning, award-winning, print publication into PCAs first, 100% all-digital magazine. We started the year with an idea and ended up with a digital magazine with advanced features like color photo galleries, video galleries, and a self-service classifieds section. We made the process of writing and submitting content simple, and opened the magazine up to a larger pool of writers and photographers. The idea that I would take over from Shelley Krohnengold as Challenge Editor was the furthest thing from my mind, and yet here I am. I hope I can do half the job he did.
On so many levels, this has been a truly remarkable year for me, and I owe much of that to CVR and to the friends I’ve made here. And while I’m not someone who looks forward to adding another digit to the number of years I’ve been around, I’m anxious to get this one over so I can see what the next year brings.
Peace.