Lone Star Roundup 5-17-03

David Gilliand was our host for the first Lone Star 912 Dallas Roundup. The event was another huge success, with new friends and new activities.

This 912 Roundup was held in the Dallas are, more specifically Heath, Texas. The plan was to arrive by 10:30am and have a morning Tech and photo session. The afternoon would involve dinner and a run to Jack Griffin's home to see his P-car collection.

Here's a look at how it went:

The morning of the 17th was cooler than expected, which is not a problem with air cooled engines and no air conditioning. My wife Cindy and I left Austin for Dallas around 6:30am and headed north arriving at our meeting point in Corsicana, Texas around 9:30am. Here we hooked up with Troy Berreth flying solo in his '68 followed by Greg Bade and Kitty in Greg's '66. The five of us made our way north from there to David's house in Heath, arriving before 11am.

The turnout was good, with our newest 912 attendees, Jack Griffith of Dallas and Bob Anderson of Spring, Texas there to enjoy the day.

We all had doughnuts and coffee, courtesy of David and his wife, and proceeded to go out and line the cars up for a photo opportunity. Below are some of the shots of the group.

After the group pictures were taken, it was time to move to our tech session, where we removed the motor from David's badly leaking 912 for service. As you can see, it was an interesting session for everyone and we showed those who had never attempted it just how easy the job can be.

We were already running into the early afternoon hours and a bit short on time. Some of the folks from Houston would be traveling home that night and had a five hour drive ahead of them! Again, David and his wife Dana came through for us with grilled burgers on David's back deck overlooking the lake. This gave everyone a chance to visit and allowed us an opportunity to hold our door prize drawing.

For door prizes, Kevin Weldon had donated a Porsche keychain and a set of Porsche valve stem caps he picked up at Zimms. We threw everyone's name in the hat and as there were no children present to do the actual drawing, we used the next best thing and had our Technical Coordinator, Troy Berreth, draw from the hat. This may have been an error on our part as Troy's magic fingers managed to find his name first out of the hat, allowing him to walk off with the valve stem caps. After averting an attempt on Troy's part to place his name back in the hat for the second drawing, Jack's name was drawn for the keychain. As you will soon see, we're pretty sure Jack could find somewhere to put it to use.

It was approaching 3pm and we needed to get going. David led us out in his Bimmer onto to some twisties before we hit the highway for Jack's place, arriving before 4. Jack's "garage" is a 2000 Sq foot private museum that houses Jacks current collection of 10 cars, 9 Porsche's and a vintage Beetle. There is no way I can do justice to Jacks collection with these pics, but it will give you a taste of what we were lucky enough to see.

By 5:30pm we broke up and headed our separate ways. As the summer Texas heat is nearly upon us, we agreed to disband and hold out till September when the heat starts to break. We'll try to gather informally in the meantime to keep in touch.

In Closing, I would like to thank the following people. Special thanks to David Gilliand and his wife for being our hosts. Thanks to Kevin for donating the door prizes and a place for my wife and I to spend the night, and to Jack and his son for sharing their incredible Porsche collection with us.

List of attendees:

1. Morrie and Cindy Larson from Cedar Park with their 67 912 coupe

2. Troy Berreth from Katy with his 68 912 coupe

3. Kevin Weldon from Dallas with his 69 912 Coupe

4. David Gilliand from Heath with his 66 912 Coupe

5. Bob Anderson from Spring with his caddy. Bob's 67 912 remains in California for Solvang in August

7. Greg Bade and Kitty from Katy with their 66 912 Coupe

8. Jack and Mike Griffin from Dallas with their 69 912 Coupe

9. Mark Wilson from Plano with his '79 911 sunroof coupe