Hello everyone! This is the Tom-and-Tom Team. We are your new Autocross Co-Chairs (gulp) and we want to introduce ourselves and to kick off the 2010 season with a big hello. First, we want to thank Drew for his leadership and for making the last couple of Autocross seasons so enjoyable and successful. Tom and I had so much fun and made so many new friends that we decided to jump in this year and take the reins for 2010.

On December 9, 2009, NNJR-PCA held is annual charity auction at the beautiful Villa in Mountain Lakes, NJ. This year’s beneficiary was Employment Horizons in Cedar Knolls, NJ. For those of you not familiar with Employment Horizons, the organization provides job training and placement for people with disabilities.
Going into this year’s event, we got off to a great start with the Villa, as two past event issues did not come into play this year. The first being that we were the only event that evening which  allowed us to have the large room. This eliminated the need to use two rooms as was the case in some of the past auctions. That had caused attendees and auctioneers to do a shuffle between the two rooms. The second being the issue of parking. Without another event at the Villa that evening, parking would plentiful. This had the added benefit of holding down the cost of this event, as the valet parking service is quite expensive. This would have been required had there been another event at the same time.

As I sit down to write my first column as Track Chair, NNJR has just returned from a spectacular season-ending Driver Education event at Virginia International Raceway. The weather over the years at this early November event has always been great, and this year conditions may have topped all previous.  Early morning frost gave way to brilliant sunshine with very comfortable temperatures by mid-morning and pleasant warmth the remainder of the day.  Driving and track conditions were pretty much ideal. If you have been to VIR before, there is little need for me to encourage future attendance as the track speaks for itself. However, if you have not been to this marvelous venue and have been considering adding this track as one of your long distance events, then mark off next November 5-7, 2010 on your calendar, we have already confirmed those dates for next year.