January 2009 Events

For January, our plans are as follows:

January 3rd (1st Saturday), we'll be meeting as usual at Camille's in Brier Creek @ 9:00AM.

For this gathering though, we do have a little business to conduct...that being our calendar of events for 2009. There will be several events at VIR this year we can drive to as well as the Porsche Hurricane club Oktoberfest and our December Durham Rescue Toy Drive. But, I want us as a group think of other activities and ride-n-drives we can do, so, everyone put on your thinking caps and come with ideas!

January 10th (2nd Saturday), we'll be our 2nd Annual New Years Drive to Pinehurst. More details to follow; E.G. where to meet up, exact times, etc. Last year we had good participation from other owners in Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston Salem.

The general plan will be to meet in Pinehurst around 10:30ish and have lunch around 11:30. Afterwards, the plan will be to tour Bjorn Nordemo's famed Mercedes Benz restoration shop; Sports Leicht.

Durham Rescue Toy Drive...Thank You!!!

The words “Thank You” are not remotely enough to express my sincere appreciation for everyone’s generosity in helping with today’s Toy Drive for the Durham Rescue Mission. What a tremendous success for it’s first year.

Thank you to Marc, Whitney, and Todd for making the long trek to Raleigh for this event. I do appreciate every time you are able to spend a Saturday morning with us.

Thank you to Kevin Heimbaugh (the toy sleigh), Bob Kim, and Jerry Magolan for coordinating the Porsche group! Also a huge “Thank You” to Kevin for coordinating the S2000 owners, and to John for coordinating the NSX guys! Thank you Spencer for getting a few of the Lotus owners to come out. Without your help, today’s event would have been so much less.

As for the Italians, we had all 3 Countach's present along with a Scud, 599, a handfull each of 360s, 430s, 348s, 308s, a 575, and Matt in his 355 Spyder (top down and 30F!) and a beautiful Pantera. What a fantastic day!...enjoy the pics.

December 6th Durham Rescue Mission Toy Drive

Hello Everyone! I am extremely excited about our December 6th gathering. As the title suggests, we’re going to do something a little different this month. For our December meet-n-greet, we’ll be collecting toys for the Durham Rescue Mission. Here is our chance to give the gift of generosity to some of those less fortunate. Most of the children at the Durham Rescue Mission will probably not receive a Christmas gift without our help.

As for a Christmas present, the spokesperson at Durham Rescue Mission said the guidelines are pretty open:
- Boys & Girls ages 12 and under
- Please make sure the gift remains unwrapped

The plan for the morning will be as follows:
- We’ll meet @ Camille’s at our regular time of 9:00AM.
- We’ll start lining up cars around 10:00 - 10:15 and leave the parking lot @ 10:30.
- We will drive to the drop-off point; (currently Crosspointe Church) located at Rt55 & Carpenter Fire Station Road. If this changes, I’ll make sure the thread is updated. I’ll also bring maps for our drive.

The Durham Rescue Mission will have a truck at Crosspointe for us to load our gifts. Thank you everyone in advance for helping with this toy drive!

October 4th Gathering

The Triangle Italians will be hosting our monthly breakfast meeting on Saturday, October 4th at the Brier Creek Commons shopping center at the junction of Highway 70/Glenwood Ave and Interstate 540.

We'll meet @ 9:00AM.Breakfast and coffee will be available from Camille's Sidewalk Cafe, Caribou Coffee, and Bruegger's Bagels. We will be gathering in the outer parking lot near Chili's so that we can be close to all three locations.

For those in the Cary / Morrisville / Apex area, we'll meet at Leith Pre-Owned around 8:30AM and caravan from there...always a great drive.

Look forward to seeing all the area Italians out and about! Unfortuneately, I will not be able to participate this time as me and my family are taking the weekend to visit my parents...this is my wife's (very pregnant) last significant road trip before our new baby girl arrives!

September Breakfast Rain Date September 13th

Due to inclement weather via Tropical Storm Hanna, our 1st Saturday get-together was postponed to the 13th and we had great weather!

Thank you Daniel (Ricambi America), Peter Krause, Matt, and Adam for coming out. Shawn brought his Pantera which sounded awesome. Adam brought something special!

As a reminder, also keep in mind that the Hurricane Region of the Porsche Club of American will be hosting Oktoberfest in Cary on September 27th. For more details, visit the following address: http://hur.pca.org/OktoberFest/OktoberFest0809flyer.pdf

Well guys...each month, someone from our group shows up in something special. July was Woody's Audi R8, last month we had a gorgeous red Ferrari 599GTB, and this month was no exception. This past weekend, Adam (usually drives his silver Lambo Countach) showed up with his newly acquired and quite rare Lamborghini LM02. Damn!

Yes...that is a Lamborghini V12 engine under the hood!...and she sounds sweet!

Triangle Italians: September 6th Gathering

Triangle Italians will be hosting our monthly breakfast meeting on Saturday, September 6th at the Brier Creek Commons shopping center at the junction of Highway 70/Glenwood Ave and Interstate 540.

We'll meet @ 9:00AM.Breakfast and coffee will be available from Camille's Sidewalk Cafe, Caribou Coffee, and Bruegger's Bagels. We will be gathering in the outer parking lot near Chili's so that we can be close to all three locations.

For those in the Cary / Morrisville / Apex area, we'll meet at Leith Pre-Owned around 8:30AM and caravan from there...always a great drive.

In addition to our regular meet-n-greet, Joel Hoffman (one of our regulars) will be collecting donations for his 2-day endurance ride in The MS Bike Tour to be held in New Bern, NC on September 13th & 14th. If you have been to some of the Triangle Italians gatherings, you’ve probably met Lauren and Joel. Joel is one of several regularly attending 308 owners and occasionally drives his green Innocenti Mini Cooper. Lauren’s the one using the blue walker to get around the event site. Any donation large or small will be greatly appreciated!

Look forward to seeing all the area Italians out and about!

Triangle Italians @ Brier Creek on Saturday July 5th

Triangle Italians will be hosting our monthly breakfast meeting on Saturday, July 5th at the Brier Creek Commons shopping center at the junction of Highway 70/Glenwood Ave and Interstate 540.

We'll meet @ 9:00AM.Breakfast and coffee will be available from Camille's Sidewalk Cafe, Caribou Coffee, and Bruegger's Bagels. We will be gathering in the outer parking lot near Chili's so that we can be close to all three locations.

Look forward to seeing all the area Italians out and about!

June 5th Gathering

Triangle Italians will be doing something a little different for our June 5th get-together. Rather than meeting @ Brier Creek for breakfast, we’ll be driving to VIR to watch the Gold Cup Historic Races.

We’ll be meeting at Sheetz on the corner of T.W. Alexander & South Miami Blvd (actual address is 3021 South Miami Blvd). The plan is to meet ~ 7:00AM, gas-up, get coffee, leave, and arrive @ VIR around 8:30AM.

Tickets for the Saturday races are $15.

Link to VIR Gold Cup Races:
VIR Website

Looking forward to seeing everyone and assembling a good caravan of Ferrari’s for our drive to VIR!

Triangle Italians - May 3rd Breakfast

Triangle Italians will be hosting our monthly breakfast meeting on Saturday, May 3rd at the Brier Creek Commons shopping center at the junction of Highway 70/Glenwood Ave and Interstate 540. We'll meet @ 9:00AM.

Breakfast and coffee will be available from Camille's Sidewalk Cafe, Caribou Coffee, and Bruegger's Bagels. We'll be in the parking lot near Camille's. Please park out towards the center of the lot so that we are not interfering with normal customers.

Track Prep Tech Session:
For those interested, we'll be headed over to Apex Vintage around 10:30 - 10:45 for a shop tour and track prep tech session. This will be a great opportunity for those participating in the May 17/18 FCA event @ VIR. Apex Vintage will complete a track prep for one early model (70's - 80's vintage) and one late model (90's - current). We'll also have a shop tour and look at having a motorcycle instructor explain the specifics of preparing a motorcycle for a track day.

We'll see on May 3rd!!

April Recap

We had our inclement weather rainy day make up breakfast this morning and while it was small, we had some pretty cool cars come out. A special thank you goes out to Adam for bringing out his stunning 1989 Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary Edition. That alone made getting up this morning worth it. However, that wasn't the only beautiful Italian out there, so thank you to everyone else who came out. You can view pictures at the following address:

Photo Album

Informal Inclement Weather Breakfast

Due to unfavorable weather conditions this past weekend, we're planning to gather again for breakfast this coming Saturday, April 12th. If the weather looks nice and you've got the morning free, come out and join us. If it rains, hey, it makes for a cool looking picture...

April Gathering

Greetings. Triangle Italian Motoring Enthusiasts will be gathering for breakfast on Saturday, April 5th at Camille's in the Brier Creek Commons shopping center. We will be there from approximately 9 AM to 10:30 AM. At approximately 10:30, we'll head out and drive to the Long Road Racing garage where Glenn Long will give a tour of his shop and some instruction on setting your car up for your next track or drivers education event. For those not familiar with the Long name, Glenn's son Tom was the Spec Miata national champion in 2005 and has regularly driven in the Grand Am series for Automatic Racing. In this years Daytona 24-Rolex, Tom drove the BMW M6 for Automatic Racing as well as a MX5 Miata for Freedom Autosport in the Grand Am event. Glenn Long manages the Freedom Autosport Grand Am racing team. See Eric at the event and he'll have maps and directions to the race shop!

Maserati of Raleigh is also supposed to be bringing one of their cars to Aprils event...hopefully one of the new GranTurismo's!

These gatherings have grown very large and we're trying to bring a little order to the insanity. Please look for the other Italian cars and motorcycles as we are trying to park in a group. There will be many red Ferrari's, so just keep your eyes open. You'll also have less of a chance of getting a door ding if you're parked next to another nice car.

As this event becomes larger, we are subject to more scrutiny. Please keep your vehicles at least two rows back from the building fronts. This allows normal patrons to park closer, which keeps the shop owners happy, and it keeps the shopping traffic from parking in between our cars. We also ask that you practice sane driving within the Brier Creek Commons area. The parking lot is not a race track and treating it as such is the quickest way to end this event. I thought I wouldn't have to address this but there were a few incidents last month. Finally, for clarification purposes, this is an opportunity for car enthusiasts to join each other for breakfast. This is not a car show and no individual or organization is responsible for anything that occurs within the parking lot. We are not allowed to block off or rope any areas of the parking lot due to liability issues. Enough of the boring stuff though, we look forward to seeing everyone.

Regards,
Eric

Recap - March Gathering

Thank you to everyone who came out on March 1st to enjoy what turned out to be a very large gathering of sports cars and motorcycles. In addition to the standard assortment of Italian cars and Porsches, the AC Cobra group joined us yet again, along with a selection of NSX's, S2000's, Ford GT's (including a twin turbo Ford GT...wow!), and some American classics. Thank you to all of the groups and individuals who come out and make these Saturday mornings so special. Our pictures are up at the following address:

Picasa Album

New Logo

Mailing List

If you are reading this blog but are not on the mailing list, please send an email to TriangleItalians@gmail.com

Its the quick and easy way to find out about upcoming events.

Thanks,
Eric
Triangle Italians

Upcoming Events...

Saturday; March 1st, 2008:
Greetings everyone. The gathering on March 1st will be held at Camille's in Brier Creek on Saturday, March 1st at 9:00 AM. For those of you who couldn't make it last month, you will be in for a treat if this month is anything like this past month's meet. We saw a little of everything this past month including quite a few AC Cobra replicas, a GT40 replica, a Ford GT, Dodge Viper, a group of Elise's, some late 60's Camaro's, a pair of Stingray Vette's, in addition to the standard assortment of Italian machinery and our Porsche friends. We invite everyone to come out and enjoy what will hopefully be a pleasant Saturday morning. We're excited about the fact that more enthusiast groups are picking up on our first Saturday event and we hope to see it continue to grow.

I've updated our Picture album with images that I've collected from the various recent outings, so take a look. Unfortunately, I can't find my camera cord so most of these images have been grabbed from other attendees. Enjoy: http://picasaweb.google.com/TriangleItalians

Ray Munsch, who leads the Porsche Club gatherings, has asked me to extend an invitation to all of you to come out to their weekly gatherings. They gather at Camille's every Saturday morning at roughly 7:30 AM (they're much more motivated than we are). If you have any specific questions in regard to the PCA event, you can contact Ray at rmunsch@nc.rr.com

We're still working on the shop tour and tech session at Apex Vintage. We also have some other shop tours in the works as well. We're also looking to host a dinner at some point on a weeknight. There are plenty of things to look forward to and we're always looking for ideas. Please don't hesitate to shoot us an email.

Regards,
Eric
Triangle Italian Motoring Enthusiasts
triangleitalians@gmail.com