So, my sons and I were recently featured in our local PCA chapter's magazine,
Spiel. The cover features my friend Eric's ("soteric" here on Pelican and on the S Registry, proprietor of Auto Foreign Services) car and, inside, you will find an article about my sons and I and our involvement in R Gruppe. My good friend Randy Wells graciously offered to write an introduction to R Gruppe as a lead-in to the article, and took the cover shot of Eric's car as well.
It was kind of funny how this all came about. It started with a local monthly cars and coffee kind of gathering known as
Exotics at Redmond Town Center. They meet every Saturday, featuring a broad variety of marques. Every now and then, however, they will declare a "German Car Day", or an "Italian Car Day", and so on, highlighting the country of interest. This particular day was the German Car Day, and on my way in to park, I was directed into the center courtyard, right next to their big fancy fountain - "center stage", so to speak. I usually park well out in the back of the lot with the rest of the plebeians...
At the end of the day, as I was approaching the car to get in and leave, a couple of guys stopped me and asked if it was my car. Turns out it was our local PCA chapter president and a writer for
Spiel. They wanted to do an article on my car, and had been trying to catch up with its owner (me) for quite some time. Like more than a year, apparently. I didn't think I was that hard to find.
Anyway, they seemed to like the car, and were pretty excited to do an article about it. Until they saw the R Gruppe sticker in the window (we haven't always had the best relationship with Porsche and the PCA)...
"Are you really R Gruppe?"
"Well, um, yes I am..."
"Wow, we didn't think there were any of you guys around here." (Seattle area.)
"Yeah, um, we kinda keep a low profile..."
It looked like that might have been enough to make them reconsider. Then, after a little discussion amongst themselves, they thought it would still be alright to do an article in their PCA magazine, so they asked me if it would be o.k. to do that.
"No way in hell" was my response. They looked kind of taken aback, at least until I followed up with "unless you include my two sons. They are both members as well, the youngest since he was 14 years old". That certainly got their attention, and now they were even more excited, with the idea of doing a "father/sons" or "family" kind of a story.
And, well, as they say, "the rest is history". Here is a link to the issue containing the resultant article, and Randy's intro to R Gruppe:
https://digital.nexsitepublishing.com/i/1432571-november-2021/0?