Florida Land Rover Club
Spring Rally
Osceola National Forest
The Osceola cleanup was a success
11 Members attended the Richloam Cleanup!
A big Thank You to Dave and Hillary Squire and Pete and Sara Sendtko for making both of the cleanups! Heeel Yeah!
Spring Rally 2006 Recap from a Presidential Perspective.
Let me first start off by saying…..Holy fierce wind storms Batman! That was a crazy Friday mandatory drivers meeting.
When an event goes as smooth as this one, many Thank You’s are in order……
I would like to thank Gordo for taking good care of the “rookies” and making sure they always had a trail leader. I would also like to thank him for helping me make sure we had an AWESOME raffle. I appreciate all your assistance and could not do it without you.
Thank you Dave, Hillary, Josh, and Sean for helping work the booth.
A big HELL YEAH goes out to Jonathan, Adam, Tony, Mandy, Pete, Sara, Kevin, Mike and Gordo for helping set up and break down that monster of a tent.
Thanks to Kaz and Jake for being the Rally Masters and helping us have another terrific Spring Rally.
Thanks to James for fixing so many broke trucks and bringing the baddest 101 I have ever seen.
Thanks to everyone that helped in any way, shape or form. It takes a lot to pull an event like this off and without all the assistance we had, we could not have done it. Thanks to everyone and anyone that I missed (webmaster ;).
Lastly, thanks to everyone that joined us in Osceola. We had a great turnout and I am very appreciative of those that made it. It makes it all worth while seeing so many people enjoy themselves. We all have a common bond, our love for Land Rovers, and to see everyone enjoy each others company is heart warming and rewarding for me. Thank you all.
THE EVENT
It seems as the years go by, I get to the Rallies earlier and earlier. At this pace, I will be arriving at the Fall Rally on Monday morning. My little tribe and I arrived to beautiful Ocean Pond Wednesday evening around 8PM. We secured what is becoming our usual spot directly across from Camp Gitter Dun. To my delight there were quite a few folks already there. Jake, Jonathan, Sean, Gene, Adam and Tony to name a few. We set up camp and exchanged hellos with our old friends.
Thursday morning we basically continued setting up shop. I brought a 30 x 30 canopy tent that the club is considering purchasing. I solicited some help setting that up. Pleasantly, it did not take that long. It took Jonathan, Adam, Tony, Mandy and I one hour to set it up. Many other folks arrived later that morning including Gordo and his friend Ed. Merv, Jim Cartier and his family and some others also arrived early Thursday. I thought it was a great turnout for a Thursday. We went on a mid afternoon trail ride, scouting for some mud and water.
As everyone quickly found out, it was a dust bowl out there. Don’t get me wrong there was water and mud, but not what we are used to in Osceola. When even a Volkswagon Beetle can traverse the infamous “Carwash”, you know it’s dry. The good thing about the terrain this year is that when it’s dry, not much trouble can be had. After last years issues, we had some repenting to do and the lack of rain over the past couple months was a great help.
Friday morning, Dave, Sean and I made up some “Rally Bags”. Thanks to Rovers North for supplying the bags. We made them up with stickers, maps, catalogs and some trinkets. By being able to just hand out a bag and shirt, it made working the booth much easier. Dave and Sean some edgeumicated fellas. We also set up all the raffle products and made the registration area look very nice. This was not hard considering we had over $3200 worth of product to raffle off. In the early afternoon we opened the registration booth. After a couple hours or so, it was time to “LINE EM UP”. We went on a trail ride to a nice muddy trail Merv and Chris found. Good find Gents! It was a good trail with a lot of mud and some fairly deep water holes considering the lack of rain. It proved to be much fun. We got back to camp just in time to fire up the grill and get ready for the Mandatory drivers meeting.
Around 6:30, there were roughly 30 guys standing under the monster tent waiting for the meeting to start when out of nowhere…WHOOOSH, a tremendous wind storm with 40+ mph winds came howling in. For those that latched onto a rope, you realize we almost lost that joker. Had it not been forJames’ 101 and Matt Yates’ Disco that tent would have been wrapped around Gitter Dunn’s campsite. The forestry officers joining us for the mandatory meeting even got to participate in the “save the tent” fiasco. All in all team work prevailed over Mother Nature and we had a great meeting. A big HELL YEAH to everyone that assisted. We only lost one thing and that was a Safari Gard $100 gift certificate. Not too bad!
We then had our traditional Friday night run. Gordo lead the beginner run and I brought up the rear. My exhaust fumes are too toxic for me to be anywhere else in the order. We found some nice and gooey trails and had a real good time. As is usually the case with large groups, someone always has car troubles. First timer, Ed had some alternator issues or maybe viscous fan issues, so he had to cut it short and head back to camp. I followed him to make sure he made it safely.
Saturday comes much too quick at the Rally’s. I had been there since Wednesday evening and boy time does fly. We opened up the booth for little bit and had the Saturday drivers meeting. Then we lined em’ up. I again brought up the rear of the beginner run lead by Gordo. We got to the first trail which is another gooey one. Even though there was not a lot of water, we managed to find some slick, muddy trails. I hope everyone had the luck we did. One of the newbie Disco’s got stuck. Sean Panek, who drivers a nicely lifted and outfitted P38 went to recover him. During the recovery process, his girlfriend Meg blew out one of his CV joints. OUCH! During the process, she ended up getting stuck. We had everyone reverse it to the hard road so I could get behind Sean and Meg to recover them. I went back in and luckily for me. I got to use my brand new Blue Diamond synthetic winch rope. It was so much easier to work with than the regular cable. Lighter, safer and easier on the hands made that purchase worth every penny. I winched them out safely and we all headed back to the trail head to assess the carnage. Sure enough CV broken. Sean limped back to camp and once again, I followed to make sure they got back safely.
In his usual form, James got Sean fixed up enough to make the 4 hours drive back to Tampa. For being such dry conditions, we sure did have a lot of trucks with open hoods. I know British 4x4 will be busy the next week or so after the Rally.
The Raffle and Club News
Club news is that we have good news. Seriously, the club is in excellent shape. Both from a financial and moral stand point. We have had 4 terrific events in a row. We have money in the bank. Our membership is increasing. We had our first Rovers Only Rally in a long time. Our money situation is that we made about $3500 at the event. It cost us about $3000 to put it on, so we did our job. We made enough to have another Rally. Can I get a big HELL YEAH !! We had 46 ROVERS attend. That’s a big time number folks. For a bunch of rowdy Rover-holics to gather 46 Rovers in one spot is pretty darn good if you ask me.
The raffle was a great hit as usual. The main products were a Lokey Superwinch, Rovertym Springs, DAP Synthetic Winch Line, Safari Gard Diff Guards and Certificates, Rovertym Diff Guard, 4x4 Adventure Gear Sand Ladders, Lokey Power Tank and a Lokey Hi-Lift Jack. That’s a lot of great gear provided to us by our sponsors. And PLEASE do remember to buy stuff from our sponsors. They do keep track of sales per state and we need to make sure we mention the FLRC when buying from them. If you do not know who the sponsors are, look on the home page and sponsors section. Visit their websites and call them when in need. It is important that we do so, even if it’s for something simple.
Finally, officer’s positions are opening up for vote at the Fall Rally, which will be in Richloam. Please check the home page as their in a thread to volunteer or nominate. Gordo and I are in our 2nd year and I was the Rally Master leading up to being voted in as President. So really this was the 4th Rally that I have been responsible for. I feel as though the club is on an upswing and would like someone to come in and take the reigns. Could it be you?
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