<VV> re: Tim's Report

[Eric Holz]

Tim,

I live in the Greater Buffalo area, and I'll agree with you on the choice of
venue.  Having the host hotel right downtown, well... sucked.  Given the
requirements we received from CORSA, we had VERY limited choices.  The main
sticking point was the number of seats the hotel could provide for the
banquet dinner.  I can't remember if it was 400 or 500 off hand, but I doubt
that Corsa will meet their minimum seating requirement at this dinner
(especially at the price negotiated by Corsa...some things should be left up
to the local chapters to nail down.  A cheaper dinner would have been worth
more to us than free rooms to some people.)
We had some other choices available to us that were more out in the country,
that had banquet capacity issues, but corsa wanted the "free  publicity"
offered by having the national convention right downtown, so the local
television channels: abc, cbs, and nbc would cover the event.  I only saw a
20 second blurb myself............
As far as all the events being off site, once you got to where you needed to
be, I feel it was worth the drive to have the event at a premium location.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
Given what we had to work with we feel we did the best job possible for all
convention goers.

I hope this did not dampen your corvair spirit.
Thank YOU for coming,

Eric Holz
'63 vert
34.5 Corsa proven miles per gallon.



-----Original Message-----
From: virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org
[mailto:virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org] On Behalf Of Tim Verthein
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 7:07 PM
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
Subject: <VV> Tim's Buffalo Report

OK, over on the Forum..matt asked about reports/experiences from
Buffalo.  Rather than try to type it twice....here's my report...

................

WE hated the downtown location. OK, I'm a small town guy, cities scare
me.  The fact that we'd pull out of the parking lot and instantly be
lost was very unnerving. To the point where we didn't even want to
leave the premesis.  We tried to get to a Denny's one night, wound up
in Canada. This kinda thing has GOT to be done at an out of the city
location.  I'm still recovering. I hate downtown, I hate traffic, I
hate being lost.  There was NO place to go that was handy from that
hotel.  You couldn't run to a family type resturant.  The resturant in
the hotel seems to have good food, limited selection and wildly
expensive. you couldn't stop at a handy store, get gas, choose another
resturanta, or much of anything.

Now, taking into account what the clubs had to work with given that
location, it was OK. I thought having the valve cover races and
welcoming party on the navy ship was way cool.  The park for the
concours and display was very nice, on the lake, and quite nice indeed.
 The track for the autocross was a neat facility.  Although I wound up
not running due to clutch cable paranoia, things seemed to run OK,
except I wondered why it was fair for some to have to run in the rain.
My biggest beef from a clubs duty standpoint was the lack of good (or
any) directions.  My god, getting anywhere was a scary nightmare.
maybe not to people used to being in a city, but holy god man. The
track was a long way away.  We got THREE different sets of directions
off the internet, which were different than those provided by the club,
but we got there.  Same for the park for the car display, etc. I
realize the club folks have to deal with the city, and the perception
of out of towners, but my god..if we didn't have in room internet and
our iBook with us, we would have never got anywhere! But the events
themselves (once we found them) seemed to be organized and in
appropriate locations. GOOD DIRECTIONS are the key to happiness for out
of towners.

I feel bad for anyone who may have been there with a family. Kids in
this atmosphere would have driven me to the edge of insanity.




Tim in Merrillville
(yesk, that's MERRILLVILLE)



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