Midlands Regional meeting
Midlands Region Meeting
Date: Saturday, 2nd March 2013
Time: 14:00 hrs
Venue: The Wheatsheaf in Loughborough (Harvester)
Ashby Road, Loughborough
LE11 4EX
Tel: 0150 921 4165
Google: 52.762814,-1.247635 - Sorry, I do not know how to "Blue" out the co-ordinates to provide a link. Copy and paste the co-ordinates on a separate tab and you will see the map.
Alternatively, Off at Junction 23 of M1 (Southbound travelers, turn left at end of slip road, heading into Loughborough. Northbound travelers, turn right at end of slip road, heading into Loughborough). After two sets of traffic lights, take first left and bear right. Harvester is immediately to your left side.
Hi
Saturday 2nd or Sunday 3rd?
Updating as of 22/02/2013 for two reasons:
1) to bring this thread back into limelight as with additional threads it had got out of view and out of sight means out of mind.
Secondly, it has been encouraging to learn a few members from London are coming. I have been walking in daze throughout this month and was panicking that our meeting is for this Saturday, i.e.. tomorrow but I have realigned my personal clock and calendar to learn the meeting is in fact NEXT week.
This gives me more time to chase more people to attend. I learn there are more than seven Midlands members but there is no restriction for members outside our region to attend therefore I will ask one or two of those members to see if they would like to come.
Please note those who are coming to please let me know so I can have some idea.
Confirmed attendants are as follows:
Howard Green, Mark Blunden and myself.
Unconfirmed attendants are Tee, Jameswaterfied, John Webber and m2bda. I have not double checked avatar names, sorry for the mistakes but I will make sure for next time that I have the correct names.
Just realised thats only a little over an hour from me and would have popped down.
Unfortunately my weekend "day out pass" is going to used up on Sunday 3rd attending the International Triumph Show at Stoneleigh to search for a few cheap spares for a Spitfire "resto" i have taken on for a family friend.
Shame, but will come next time for sure, in the absence of any Yorkshire meet...
Gav
'Shame, but will come next time for sure, in the absence of any Yorkshire meet...'
Well with the growing number of members form Yorkshire.... you could try and set up one on the fly.....?
Spider1V
Is there still time to confim attendance of this meeting? What time is it?
Regards
Kevin
Sorry for asking what time, I can now see it clearly.
Regards
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
There is plenty time, I just want an idea of how many attending, you may show up without confirmation; I only ask so I can secure a corner of the room to accommodate all attending. Meeting is around 14:00 hrs, I aim to be there for 13:30 hrs to receive any early comers.
See you there.
Current news on the Midlands meeting for tomorrow 02/03/2013 at 14:00 hrs at the above mentioned venue is still on.
Sadly I have had news of members not coming but I have decided not to cancel this meeting even if it means I alone attend it.
There is John Webber who has been ringing around his friends to come; I do not know how many will be attending through his efforts so it would be unfair to start making cancelation plans at this late stage.
Members who have confirmed as not to be coming now are: Howard Green, Mark Blunden, M2dxb and Richard Wells.
Attending, myself - confirmed.
Unconfirmed attendants: Tee, Jamie Waterfield, Kevin Suttgart, John Webber & Friends.
There are a lot more members in the Midlands region who have not indicated at all whether they are or want to come; sadly I do not have any contact details for them to be able to personally ask them; a shortfall in our information gathering system or that I have not been given access to that information, who knows?
Any how, the meeting is on, and I look forward to seeing myself at least, to be there.
Ah, I notice there is a change in format of the reply box, it seems less complicated, not that I used or could utilise all the functions the last one provided. The spell checker still insists on the American spellings; that I don't like.
CONCLUDING OUR MEETING - MARCH 2013.
The Midlands region reports its first meeting for the 2013 year. Postponed from an earlier date set in January, this meeting took place on Saturday, 2nd March 2013 held at a local venue in Loughborough.
Member from as far from South Wales, Pontyprdd to be exact and two from Loughborough were present; these being Kevin Stuttgart with his son Elliot, John Webber with a junior friend Reece Lamb (a keen Caravaner and off roader) and myself. Apologies received from Howard Green, Mark Blunden, Peter Wells, M2dxb and a guest of John Webber’s. Two other members, neither of whom made confirmations did not arrive. Our meeting lasted some two and half hours cut short by tired young soul and the long return journey (3 hrs) faced by Kevin. Thanking all who came in particular to Kevin for an extra ordinary effort and no doubt cost.
Our meeting was very relaxed merely to serve as introductions. On this occasion there was no plan for any vehicular activities but any such ideas could be developed for further meetings.
Overall, it was nice to put faces to names and exchange commonly shared ideas in particular interest to two tours to the factory coming up this year and one orgarnised by Puch for the Puch G-Wagen and Pinzgauer tour. Details of these should be in the ‘short to be released’ news letter.
For me in particular, it was worthwhile meeting as Kevin has kindly donated four workshop manuals covering the W460 and W463; and as already custodian to technical manuals for the club; I took it upon myself to gratefully accept the manuals for and on behalf of the club. Once I have, had the chance to digest the contents of the manuals, I will put it to good use for members.
We were all in agreement that, a meeting every three months or so should be arranged and to be held at varying venues so travelling distances are not a biased issue. Looking at the Map, the Midlands region is pretty vast.
In a way, I feel somewhat guilty towards Kevin; considering the distance he travelled, I should and could have been more hospitable in catering to his needs, I do apologies that I could not do more for him, I hope to put this right somehow in the future but I do not know how I can put this right at the moment.
On the whole the ownership of G-Wagens attended were of experienced hands, one member appreciating the simple virtues for of his G-Wagen, a excellent example of a W460 - 300GDL finished in pristine white and immaculately polished. The wheels were in Black alloys, providing a balanced contrast to the vehicle outlook, simple and very practical, the essence of an early G-Wagen!
Our second example was a distinctly unique example of G. Blinged so that it would be literally unnecessary to put out up any Christmas decorations outside ones home as is currently fashionable. The LED lights, yes, LED lights along the side moulding strip made this model very unique. Ps, the LED lights were housed in the screw holes of the moulding along the entire length. In its own right, a very functional vehicle.
So to close our meeting, in conclusion, it was neither an outright success nor a complete failure.
fair play to Rakesh for taking the trouble to pull it all together, and well done to those who took the trouble to support the meeting and Rakesh for doing all the organising .
what a shame about the attendance ,if a member can drive from south wales to loughborough it is a bit poor if a few more who live nearby cannot atleast pop by to show support, tony bruegger and i drove an hour and a half for a meeting in an area where there are quite a few members and when we got there the only person there was spider ! (and he was the host/organiser) we had a nice evening with some good laughs and a fine meal at a really good village pub of joe's choosing / would we do it again ? yes , we really enjoyed it and it was a blast getting there down the a303 in the 606 powered g - but nobody else bothered to show up... what's that all about?
good on you Rakesh and those that did bother (and at some distance too)
a few days later we did the salisbury plain trip -another fantastic gwoa organised activity -thanks joe
yes gordon , we had 28 people on a list to come over the saturday/sunday and in reality we got less than half despite plenty of notice and making sure the dates we chose were the best for all those who wanted to make it / the best bit was i moved the dates to accomodate the majority who expressed a preference for that weekend and not one of them then attended ?? we had allowed for the numbers and had laid on facilities to cope / i even cooked the overnighters a breakfast, and served it like a butler.
tony had got his american truck collection out of his 'toybox' (including his 1200 bhp tractor puller) and had some of them running and gave a great show of firing them up and deafening the visitors with the scream of detroit v8 and v12 and gave a tour of his g wagen projects in his farm workshops ,all was done for fun and there was lots of unlimited information available for those who wanted it /gordon stayed for about 2 hours after all the others had gone to really go into detail on the 606 /605/662 engines and gearbox combinations - tony and i enjoyed having the opportunity as Rakesh said of putting faces and characters to names on the forum - if only there were more.
club stalwarts like gav /shaun/mark etc did come and we had a really good w /end i could of opened up some of the farm for some offroading or gone to a friends offroading course but did not in the end as there were so few vehicles it seemed a bit lame to go there bearing in mind the quantity of trucks i had given the impression we would be turning up with due to the 28 people/g wagens i had on my list / tony and i might do it again this year in the summer /depends on how we are fixed wtih our own workload / activities .
joe has made mention of a hampshire /newforest meetup for the spring /pub evening meal for which we are in range of and will make the effort for that.
Always been the way people saying they will and dont fxxkem thats what i say there loss ,some members put time,effort, and money into holding an event because of numbers only to be sxxt on by tossers, here endeth my sunday morning sermen amen
Nothing new there !!! obviously you ve not been there long enough to realise how hard it is to get members involved in outing !!! Poor turn out at most club events.
just as well clickely group is well alive :-)
Rakesh is made of steel !!! thanks Rakesh for organising.
Always comforting to know that one can rely on Shaun to say it like it is
From the point of view people are what they are; we cannot change that. What we need to do is move forward to see how people can be engaged. I don not claim to have an answer to that, but one who understands motivation may.
Disappointing as it was, our turn out was low and usually is at AGMs as well, what I would like to hope for is work out a better solution or try to. Perhaps my planning was all wrong for this meeting. If another meeting is held, it will be with a different approach.
I do appreciate we all need to think twice on how we spend money and jumping in our vehicle, given fuel prices they are, we all think very carefully and have to justify our journeys. Holding meetings in this climate may be the wrong think to do. .I do not know, I am a poor analyst
Most of the cancelations I got were all a last minute thing, unfortunately in bulk but I do not believe it was by design. I am not putting any blame on any one but a point of ironary is the very people who originally asked for a meeting could not or did not come.
On this topic, take the example of our 20th anniversary. I put up on the forum, a survey to find out how many would like to take part. The posting was on screen for a month, it had some 70 views but NOT ONE comment! Conclusion one draws from it people are not interested so I have resigned my self as the members not wanting one. There is a news letter going out very shortly to put the same survey to those who have no internet access; if their response is identical, then it will be deemed to having no milestone to mark for the club. We will just have our normal AGM in that year.
In my constitution, I am not a leader by any means nor an original thinker, I take lead by example an instruction and try to execute my duty to the best of my ability, which is around average. This is not quality of one who can do success but I will say I gave it a try and failed trying, which is result enough for me.
To any further meetings, all I have to say is, I will take the lead from members, if they don't want one they get just that, no meeting.
I do not hold any grudge against any one, i am sure each had a genuine reason, it is just that, I do not know. I have drawn a line under this topic. Let us move on..... forwards, first step.
Hi Tee,
Sorry Tee, no photos. I need to work on my camera equipment side of things. Mobile is 07981826364. My mobile lives its life largely switched off unless I go out. It remains off unless I need it. I am best got on line or on my landline. I am mostly at home.
Better luck next meeting. I was sorry you could not make it either, but you did say.
Rakesh
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Sorry, folks: my error; it is Saturday, 2nd March 2013. Thank you for brining it up.
The date had been amended as you pointed out my error.