volunteers. We accepted the challenge to become National Rally Chairs and appreci- ated all the help we received. We want to thank Chuck Manley and the board for pro- posing and nominating us as rally chairs. I want to say I got to watch Kate work on this rally for a year and a half. Kate was super organized. She sent out all the emails, did all the communications… so organized, she managed access to all the emails in different folders; you can probably realize how much communication was required. I suggested to Kate that we create a standard answer for all the emails we received as they began to stack up, but she insisted on taking the time to answer every single email personally, I think she did a great job. Kate: It was truly a team effort; we
divided our duties based on personal strengths and personalities, I think it works well for any rally chairs to do this. Husband wife co-rally chairs worked out really well. Dutch: The second thing, because we live
so close to the site we were able to visit the site a lot, and the event staff got really excited about the upcoming event as our consistent presence kept it in the forefront of their minds. Building a relationship with the Hamburg event staff was very impor- tant and ultimately contributed to the suc- cess of the event. The third thing we can attribute to the success of the event was the positive effect Executive Director Bob Aldridge had on the overall outcome. We were really able to use his knowledge as an asset to give us all the different aspects of decisions that needed to be made, a very wise man. Bob is a great leader, he never told us what to do; he would lay out the dif- ferent options and then support our decisions.
• Things That Went Well: Dedicated and devoted Committee Chairs who knew what they were doing took a huge load off of us. They all wanted to do the very best they could. Volunteers made it happen. A few
honorable mentions: our local clubs, the Niagara club, the Finger Lakes club, and the Ontario club, all stepped up and worked very hard. The GS Giant
event was a huge success for partici- pants and spectators. We needed to fill a whole in the music line up and took a chance with a last minute addition, The Carnival Kids Steel Drum Orchestra. They were very well received and sounded great. The lesson here, mix it up a little when planning for the national. Having venders close to the beer gar-
den worked out well for both. Each site presents its own unique requirements, and rally central became our focus. Having the first-aid station collocated with the beer garden, turned out to be very convenient.
It allowed rally goers
the opportunity to hydrate and medi- cate at the same time.
• Challenges: Toward the beginning sig- nage was a problem, but once the sign committee was fully ramped up, we were able to quickly flood the rally site with lots of signs directing rally goers. You can never have enough signs.
• Navigation: The address to the fair- grounds was not the entrance to the fairgrounds, making for some confu- sion as people rolled in from a long trip.
• Uber taxi limo golf carts: There were not sufficient numbers of carts and vol- unteer drivers available. Sam Garst, golf cart chair, did an awesome job. We had a lot of really positive comments on the limo carts. One of the challenges we faced with transportation was that the wagons being pulled requires a very unique skill set to drive one safely on a crowded rally site. Future rally chairs might want to reconsider this as a non- viable transportation option. The porta-potties could have been serviced more often. Gate monitoring was a bit of a challenge this year. We seem to have trouble getting volunteers to mon- itor gates for the full block times neces- sary probably due to lack of shade or support facilities at the gates. This caused a problem with control of car access to the rally site and camping
area. Future security chairs may con- sider having gate guards pass out lami- nated cards with general rules to participants as they come through. There needs to be a better plan for con- trolling rally access for early show times with people potentially showing up early before registration, setting up camp and not registering. Security vol- unteers controlling gates and registra- tion volunteers may need to be set up early in order to accurately track all reg- istered guests..
Bob Aldridge pointed out that we had
four out of the last five rally chairs present in the room. Bob then presented a framed and signed photograph from the rally to Kate and Dutch. Wes Fitzer presented Kate with a brown
BMW women’s riding jacket and Dutch with a Black Leather BMW riding jacket in addition to their monogramed Kermit chairs. Wes Fitzer said, “Kate and Dutch handled everything with such grace and congeniality.”
2017 National Rally Chair - Greg Feeler The 45th BMW MOA International Rally will be at Salt Lake City, Utah, next year. Salt Lake City has long been known as the “Crossroads of the West.” Greg introduced Rally Co-Chairs Brian Burdette and Pat Carol. There are three big pieces to next year’s
rally. They are:
1. Site Layout: This year we’re trying something new, a virtual site tour of nearly 400 photos organized by facility, utilization, and location. The virtual tours will be used in conjunction with GoToMeeting in order to greatly improve site planning. We believe this will help bring volunteers up to speed more effi- ciently. Much current planning is focused on traffic flow and vendor access. We have a great working relationship with the site staff, and we are making great progress. I believe the site’s close proxim- ity to a wide variety of hotels will help to
January 2017 BMW OWNERS NEWS 87
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