The Virtual Zone Rep!
Perhaps “COVID-19 decision guilt” is a real thing. It feels pretty selfish. This past weekend, I skipped out on one of my favorite annual events in Zone 9. Rocky Mountain Region hosts the Rocky Mountain Thunder PCA Club Race every summer. Normally, I’ll drive the 560 miles to the race, and also run my own Cayman in the advanced solo HPDE segment of the weekend. Not so this year. Shortly prior to the race weekend the COVID-19 dashboards around here started blinking the wrong colors in a repeat of early summer. So I stayed home. The normal “obligation” for a zone rep at these events is to hang all of the signage in support of Pirelli and other sponsors, and to get photos with the race winners receiving their podium hats- a.k.a. “the hat dance”. As you might guess, things normally thought to be an obligation in normal years, have become “do it if you can” suggestions during 2020. Could I have made the trip? Yes. Do I feel like a slacker? Yes. Did I make the right decision? I’ll never know. You see, I’ve made the decision not to fly in the foreseeable future. I’m in that riskier demographic and they won’t take my car in the plane anyway. So half the fun is gone right there. And by driving I’m in 3 different hotels for a minimum of 4 nights due to my location in the northwest corner of this geographically large zone.
This issue has impacted not just the Colorado club race, but most all of my zone rep travel for the year. In fact, if there were to be an award for “un-zone rep of the year”, I’d worry that I might be a leading candidate. But I’m certain that I’m not alone. Despite changes in travel though, the “invisible” work of the zone reps does still continue. While many of the 14 of us “ZRs” are limited in our choice to fly or to do overnight hotel stays, we still are engaged as needed in support of helping region presidents or board members with support and answers to questions. Mostly this happens by phone and email, as well as some group meetings via Zoom. For example, during the past month, Zone 9 region presidents and VPs concluded our annual “region president’s meeting”. Normally held face to face, this year’s “meeting” was 7 hours of virtual meetings, spread over 4 sessions, held through my Zoom account. I admire the patience and flexibility of your region’s leaders in putting up with this necessary approach.
If there’s a silver lining in all of this, my guess would be that zone reps collectively will be hard pressed to spend anywhere near our already downwardly adjusted budgets. That begs a much broader question about PCA, and how the club is weathering 2020. Without sharing information that I should not share as a member of the audit committee, I will go so far as to say that the response of the Executive Council, and in particular our Treasurer as part of that team, has been to respond to the COVID-19 related impacts on the club (i.e.: growth impact in the first half, sponsorship budget adjustments) in a manner that will ensure the financial health of PCA. How can you help? Well, I think the fall raffle is about to be published and I expect there will be some pretty exciting cars in the mix!
So I encourage you to buy a ticket or three to further support the club.
Rich Sanders