One month ago, the Roadrunner Region served as host for Treffen Tamaya, in Bernalillo New Mexico. While not surprised at all, I was still blown away by the number of times I heard praise lavished on the region’s volunteer team. As I asked attendees how their weekend was going, the answers had less to do with the great weather, the location of the event or the great tour routes, than about the planning, the communications, the timing of events and the helpfulness of the local volunteer team. Caren Cooper, Tom Gorsuch, and Cindy Jacisin (National President, Vice President and Secretary of PCA respectively) made similar comments at a volunteer recognition gathering on the last day of Treffen. Every single volunteer from the Roadrunner region should be beaming with pride as a result of the extraordinary experience that you provided for PCA members representing 55 different regions across the U.S. and Canada. While this article length will not allow for a list of all volunteers, I should mention one in particular. As well as last year’s “Fiesta 50”, this year’s Treffen Tamaya was led locally by Harry Season. The reason for mentioning Harry, is that he did such a fine job with both events, that in February, the Executive Committee of PCA asked, and then tasked him to be the planning lead for all Treffens in the coming years. So, in addition to completing the execution of Treffen Tamaya, Harry was simultaneously in the process of traveling to undisclosed locations lining up the next couple of years of Treffen events. Congratulations, Harry. And for the rest of us, stay tuned for the next year’s Treffen surprises.
Also during the past month, I had the opportunity to join the Alpine Mountain Region as they hosted a “Mix it up” 2-day autocross and HPDE weekend at Pike’s Peak International Raceway. As was the case at Tamaya, the highlight of the weekend was the stellar organization of the volunteer club members. They dedicated their talents and clearly had fun doing it. The highlight for me was to check out the smiles on the faces of the first time HPDE drivers during their required 4-session “chalk talk” meetings, as they came off the track. Mark Stolberg continues to do a terrific job of making driver educational sessions, fun, interactive and upbeat.
Finally, just prior to writing this letter, I came off of a weekend in the Intermountain Region volunteering for the PCA Club Race at Utah Motorsports Park. As zone rep, I have some special duties during Club Racing weekends. In addition to supporting Pirelli’s sponsorship for the event (hanging signage and banners, photographing race winners and awarding winners with their Pirelli hats), the main job is to be there to pick up any organizational detail that’s about to fall through a crack. Well, again, owing to awesome organization by the IRPCA team of volunteers, there was little that I had to do.
In case you are not catching the common theme to all three of these happenings, it’s about volunteers. This past month, regions all around the zone featured big social events, tours, autocrosses, track days, and a PCA Club Race. In parallel to “live” events, all regions have continuing commitments to communications that include websites, newsletters and email blasts. As a member of PCA, if you find that you enjoy any or all of these types of activities or communications, I would ask you to ask yourself how you can help out in your region. No region is ever successfully run by a continuous set of long-term volunteers. Just like sports teams, having a number of players coming up through feeder leagues, and having extra people on the “bench” serves as a way to maintain the health of the organization. So if you find yourself enjoying PCA but not being involved as a volunteer, I would ask (actually beg) you to look at skills that you have, or may want to learn, and consider volunteering now. You can start small. You can control the level of commitment you want to make. But it won’t start until you step up. So PLEASE consider contacting anyone on your region board and expressing an interest in how you might help out. There’s a lot of quiet satisfaction that can come from volunteering. We’re an all-volunteer organization. Have you done your share recently???