Slipstream - April 2012

Drifting
By John Hamilton, President
FIFTY YEARS
YOUNG.
That’s what
your Maverick
Region is, with our
official anniversary
on December 24,
2012. As our fiftieth year celebrations
get underway (Saturday, April
28th: a car from each year at Texas
Motor Speedway), we are now
getting items shipped to us from
the national Porsche Club. Our
first gift pack included our special
commemorative window decals with
the PCA logo and the “50th Anniversary
- Maverick - est. 12/24/62”
around the outside. These are
FREE to you, so see me or Christy
Payne and get one on your car to
show your pride! The second package
was a 50th Anniversary banner,
similar to the window decals.
The third package just arrived
this week. It included two plaques
commemorating our anniversary
AND a binder with copies of our
original charter! (I guess I’m not
the only one who never throws
anything away.) It was most
interesting to read the charter
and the purposes of the club.
Here’s purpose #1: “To promote
the highest standard of courtesy
and safety on the road.” Very
interesting! Methinks we need to
“reinvigorate” that purpose... not
through a training course, but just
through awareness. I’m sure it happens
to all of us from time to time:
someone else is discourteous on the
road and it upsets our day. How do
we react? Does our human nature
make us “tighten-up” the space between
our car and the one in front
of us so that no one else can “cutin”?
Or do we contain our emotions
and realize that the “discourteous
person” is in the minority and we
should set a better example? Hard
2
to do sometimes,
but if we’re going
“to promote the
highest standard of
courtesy and safety
on the road,” we
probably need to
go with choice “b.”
One of the leaders
at a previous
employer sent out
a poster to every
branch. It read:
Courtesy is contageous...Catch
it!
Good advice.
Mav of the Month
Like many organizations these
days, we’ve been challenged by
financial constraints that are
more evident than in years past.
So after going through all the
emotional reactions, we started to
figure that we needed more facts!
One of our region’s
long-time leaders
took the bull by the
horns and gathered
the financial information
from sources
present and past and
put it all together for
us so we could see
where our challenges
were and make educated
decisions on
how and where to cut
expenses or adjust
programs. Over the
past two months
James Shoffit has dug
into all the financials
for the past five
years and developed
trend data that has
given us the ability to
make the adjustments to keep us
financially viable. This took a lot of
time, persistance and hard work.
So James: we’re ecstatic to award
you as our newest Maverick of the
Month with a gift card to the Silver
Fox restaurant in Grapevine. Thank
you, James. You always have, and
you continue to make a huge
impact on our Maverick region!