by Willy Wiley

On January 28, the chapter’s elections dinner was held at the 500 Blake Street Restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut. The roads were clean and 93 of your fellow members and their guests came out for this annual event.  The food was good, the doorprizes were numerous, and the speaker was.. well absent. I’ll get to that later.

Roger Chartier once again worked hard to come up with some great doorprizes. There were enough of them so that every chapter member could go home with one.  Among those who contributed doorprizes this year:  Masscash Sales, Performance Automotive, Watertown BMW, BMW of North Haven, Darien BMW, BMWNA, Connecticut Valley Chapter.

Now about the speaker, Mike Miller. Everything looked good until the morning of the event. I tried calling Mike to give him directions to the hotel were he was going to stay for the night and got no reply. OK, I was not going to panic; he still could get back to me in time as he was going to drive in from Pennsylvania. And then I got the call. He had been to the hospital to get his back problem under control, which he told me about earlier, and wound up being put on medication that precluded any chance of driving. Mike requested that we publish the following:

Dear CVC Members,

I'm terribly sorry I missed your annual dinner this year after agreeing to speak. I have an old back injury that flares up every few years, and it was just dumb luck it flared up the week before the dinner. I couldn't even move, let alone speak. But if you'll still have me, I'll come visit one of your chapter meetings in the near future. Anyway, I hope you found a suitable replacement for me...like maybe a rerun of Two Guys Garage.

Oh, and the dinner refund? Bob forgot to tell you that you had to bring me the dinner to get the refund...

Warm regards,

Mike Miller

He later added: Of course, you're all welcome to e-mail me with any BMW technical questions you have: techtalk@roundel.org. The free dinner comment was the result of Chapter President Bob Morin saying that Mike would be paying for anyone’s meal if they emailed him.

In place of Mike we did get a member to step up. Tim Healey, of West Hartford, gave a brief speech on his experience with fleet management and how the Chapter driver training events have helped him to drive safely. After Tim’s speech Bob opened the floor to others who might like to talk about their experiences. Tony Nestora took up Bob’s offer and “came out of the closet” and admitted to be being car-aholic. We ended the evening with testimonials from Jack Jones and Sheila Morin on their experiences.