I guess I shouldn’t be “that guy”.
Hunkered down is the term I’m hearing most. As I write this, my home city, Salt Lake, is the “hot spot” for Coronavirus in Utah. Hopefully we’re entering a plateau in virus cases. Perhaps by the time this monthly letter hits your computer or mailbox, we’ll all be in a phase that has us coming out of hibernation. For now, though, I like the term “couped” up. It sounds the same as being cooped up, but I like the comparison to our car models. You have an extra escape hatch from a targa or a cabrio. But a coupe, really fits the bill for this semi-voluntary full enclosure, with a limited number of doors.
Shortly after the Utah Governor announced our program called “Stay Home, Stay Safe”, and our local mayor put into place even more stringent measures, I got an invitation from a local P-car owner to join him for a morning drive up a local canyon. All official PCA drives had been canceled. And the invitation was to just 3 others from the immediate neighborhood. Feeling cooped up, I jumped on the opportunity. We had an enjoyably spirited mountain drive, while maintaining our social distances. I referred to it as an analog version of a “Zoom” meeting. I even posted it on my personal Facebook page.
After returning home that same day, I began to see a very active email thread among members of my former “pre-retirement” region- not in this zone thank goodness. The discussion was among PCA members, communicating on PCA club mail servers, to arrange a similar kind of planned drive, as an alternative to an official PCA activity. While the discussion started small, lots of people chimed in with ideas very quickly. It appeared that the drive may not eventually be contained to a small number of cars. People were clearly wanting to get out and drive with their friends. And it took quite some time before one or two PCA members mentioned that, should anyone from the public be into “entitlement shaming”, that the event could bring a lot of embarrassment to members individually, but more likely to Porsche ownership in general. Even then, some members tried to wrap the proposed “non-event” into a charity fund-raiser. The hospital charity idea was well intentioned, but still contained the same public relations risks. So I pointed out this email thread to my counterpart zone rep, who in turn worked with the region President to provide the direction needed to stop the discussion.
That whole situation pointed out that I must own up to some level of hypocrisy in having made my own canyon run earlier in the day. Yes, our group was small. It was VERY local. It was not a PCA event. In fact it was not all Porsches. Nonetheless, I’ve now declined the invitation for two subsequent Saturday morning canyon runs, and any future runs until our state restrictions are eased. Perhaps, in my role as zone rep for PCA, the negative PR risk would be higher should anything go wrong with our drive. But regardless of my personal profile, in light of all of the challenges people are facing in terms of physical, emotional and economic health, I made my own decision that it’s the right thing for me to do. I’ll just have to make up for it, as soon as this countdown hits “zero, blast-off”.
Hopefully, I’ll be in your region having fun with lots of you later in the year. Until then…please stay as safe as you can!
Rich Sanders