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Hope you enjoy this month's der Riesenbaum.

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The Redwood Region’s September is packed with events every weekend. Our outing to see the Transcendence Theater Group (9/10) will be over by the time you read this. We have over 20 folks attending, including my wife Sharon and I. As I write this, all are looking forward to this evening

of food, wine and Porsche Club friends under the stars.

I have yet to see one of these performances and am anticipating a GREAT night! Big thanks to Karen Sherman

for providing this opportunity to experience something new and magical.

Our last Autocross of the year is a Zone 7 event and it is only a short week after Transcendence. Thunderhill may be a bit of a drive, but the venue and the camaraderie make it well worth your time. Registration is open until September 14. PCA members driving a Porsche get a $20 discount. PCA National is hosting the Saturday night dinner.

Redwood’s tour to Murphy’s for the Ironstone Concours is happening during the week immediately following the AX. Lodging is still available for this fabulous overnight tour (9/21-23) into the Gold Country. Contact Jeff Hall for further info. Thank you to Jeff and

to Paige Gains for all of their work on this event.

Region members Holger and Martina Seibert are once again hosting the Oktoberfest celebration in Vacaville on 9/23. Join us for a repeat of our once-a-year backroads drive through Sonoma and Napa counties entering Vacaville from a very non-freeway direction. Our hosts will be serving up German sausages, sauerkraut, potato salad, and, oh yes, beer. All food and beverage are on you own, but the tour is free.

September ends with Rennsport VII at Laguna Seca. This is not a PCA event, but is one not to miss if you are a Porsche enthusiast. Rennsport, although put on by Porsche itself, requires the help of PCA and hundreds of volunteers to make it a success. If you are volunteering this year (my) Sharon and I will hope to see you down there. Our region’s own Sharon Neidel is coordinating this massive group of volunteers. Thank you Sharon!!

October will bring an opportunity for our members to have a great drive, give back to our community, and share a lunch together. The Charity Circle Adventure is scheduled for 10/5. The give back opportunity is to spend a few morning hours working at the Empire Food Bank warehouse in Windsor. Please join your fellow Redwood members in this valuable and much needed service. Have fun and do a good deed at the same time. A lunch entrée at Barley and Bine Beer Café is included.

The Golden Gate and Redwood Regions will co-host an annual Ladies Drive through Marin and Sonoma Counties on Sunday 10/8. The drive will be followed by a brunch. While men are certainly allowed (as passengers), the ladies will be behind the wheel. A fun time will be had by all. We encourage our female membership to sign up (and bring their men if so desired).

Finally, and definitely not least on the priority list, Redwood’s annual Members Meeting

will be held for the second year in a row at the stunning Chenoweth Woods under the redwoods. Those of you that attended last year know that this is an event and a venue

not to be missed. We hope to have registration open in a week or two.

That’s all for now. Down the road

Vern

What a busy time. Not only am I your VP but I also try to represent Redwood for PCA National events. In the next

three weekends I will be working a Club Race at Laguna

Seca, attending Treffen St. Louis as an observer for our upcoming Treffen Wine Country and working on the PCA

Team for Rennsport Reunion 7. I’m trying to balance my VP duties with all the National responsibilities, but this month’s article is going to be a short message as Rennsport is extremely time consuming.

I encourage everyone to attend the upcoming annual member meeting on 10/14/23. It will

again be at the beautiful Chenoweth Woods owned by our Safety Director, Rex Simmons.

What better place to hold the Redwood meeting than in a grove of Redwood trees. It’s just

beautiful. This is your opportunity to learn about the State of the Region and meet the

candidates for your 2024 Board of Directors. There will be an optional tour to the site and a delicious lunch. I am crafting the information for the flyer and should have it open on MSR very shortly.

See you at an event soon.

Sharon

Hello Zone 7,

August is in the books.

The highlight for me was Werks Reunion Monterey. If you attended you know that yet again this is a high benchmark event, I did volunteer to help set up and knew the event was going to be BIG. I assure you the team removing the flags had their hands full because the team I was a part of really sunk those well. Day of the event I was thrilled to see so many Region / Zone members. Judging was very fun and what privilege to learn about the cars and their owners. How to pick a favorite? Well, I do really like the “Werks format judging” as it isn’t a traditional Concours as we know at a Region / Zone or

National level. It is about, of course, preparing the car but also the story of the car and/or owner. The Corral was a show as well. Rows and rows of cars made for fabulous photos. Thank you to PCA and all the sponsors who made this event all come together.

There are some great photos shared on the Zone 7 Facebook page.

August had me attending other Region and Zone events as well. Including the Golden Gate Region DE at Sonoma Raceway and the West Coast Series Club race. Diablo shut down Main St in Pleasanton for a concours. Made the rounds to multiple events during CarWeek in Monterey. PCA, Zone 7 and your Regions have so much to offer. I hope your memory book and calendar are full.

And coming up fast is perhaps the BIG one.

Rennsport Reunion 7 is September 28th – October 1st. Laguna Seca for tickets. Porsche corrals are SOLD OUT. If you swap / buy “find” a corral pass it needs to be for

the MODEL Porsche car that you will have there. A link to parade laps also below … you need to already have a Corral pass to purchase Parade laps. Each day will have morning parade laps, purchase for the day you want to participate.

Want to volunteer at Rennsport? That link is also below.

Well, I am off to Salinas to the Zone 7 2-day Autocross events held by Golden Gate

Region and Loma Prieta Region info on that series on the Zone 7 Website.

Thank you and see you at an event soon.

Brian

Any questions, please email me.

Sept. 16th - at Thunderhill Raceway - by Sacramento Valley Region

Sept. 17th - at Thunderhill Raceway - by Redwood Region

Sept. 15-17 - Laguna Seca Raceway - by Golden Gate - DE and Club Racing

Nov. 19 - Laguna Seca Raceway - by Diablo - DE

For a list of upcoming PCA events check out pca.org/events/

Sept. 20-24 - PCA - Fall Treffen, Missouri. -- Sold Out!

Sep. 28 – Oct. 1 - PCNA - Rennsport Reunion 7 - Laguna Seca, Monterey

weathertechraceway.org

April 21-25, 2024 - PCA - Spring Treffen – Sonoma, Ca. - treffen.pca.org

Registration typically opens about 3 months prior to the event.

Porsche Parade, Birmingham, AL, June 9-16, 2024

Porsche Parade, Oklahoma City, OK, 2025

Laguna Seca September 28 – October 1

Information and to Purchase tickets: porscherennsportreunion.com

To volunteer to work: sign up at Rennsport Reunion volunteer.

Porsche Club of America is pleased to announce that Princess Cruises will host this year's inaugural PCA National at Sea! Join us as we board the Sky Princess one of Princess' Royal-Class ships for an adventure like no other. This adventure includes a seven-day Western Caribbean voyage from Ft. Lauderdale, FL, visiting four tropical destinations including Honduras, Cozumel, Belize City, and Costa Maya. These destinations feature activities exclusively for PCA members.

You can obtain more information and register on their website.

 The Redwood Region PCA Annual Meeting will be coming up next month (October 14^th), and your club nominating committee

is thrilled that we will be presenting the following slate of recommended candidates for our 2024 elected board positions:

President: Sharon Neidel

Vice President: Pat Burke

Secretary: Eileen Gaines

Treasurer: Don Magdanz

Come out for a wonderful day (and a pre-lunch driving tour out to the coast if you like)

and get to know more about these committed volunteers and about the club. The gathering is for everybody and the business part is only a few minutes long; mostly it’s

fun and lunch with your friends in the magnificent Chenoweth Woods redwood grove.

Another combination of fun, volunteering, and food is coming up on Thursday October 5^th, our first “Charity Circle Adventure”. A 70 minute optional driving tour starts from Windsor, which loops us back to the amazing Redwood Empire Food Bank warehouse, where “Team Redwood” will help create meals for Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino Counties families who suffer from food insecurity. After our 3-hour shift we will convene at the

Barley & Bine Beer Café where the club will pay for your lunch item; you pay for your beverage of choice (they have more than 30 beers on tap plus wine and non-alcoholic choices). As of September 1st, 11 of you have signed up; thanks to those of you who

have already contacted me about how to join the squad. We are hoping to field a team

of 20. Signing up is a two-step process: you must register as a part of our team on the REFB site and also register for the driving tour/lunch on our MSR site, where there are more details about what to expect. Let me know if you have any difficulty.

Hope to see you then!

Sharon & I headed down to Monterey on Thursday morning on August 17 to help with setup at this year's WERKS Reunion at the Monterey Pines Golf Course. Upon arriving we see Vern & Sharon Rogers already there hard at work helping with setup. Sharon (mine) helped putting the "Goodie Bags" together for

the "Judging & Corral" entrants. I went with the group laying out the two fairways that would be used for the 160+ "Judging" entries. Another crew was laying out the "Werks Porsche Corrals" where almost 600 Porsches would be parked by Models. Besides that, the parking company that was hired were laying out the fairways to be used for the over 1,000 vehicles (over 1/2 would be Porsches) in "General Parking". Also, all the Werks' Vendors were busy setting up their tents ready to sell lots of Porsche items to the attendees. At the front of one of the fairways, the Porsches in the "PCA Dealer Restoration Challenge Monterey" were being placed for their judging, Friday morning. At 3 pm. we started to see some of the "Judging" entries arriving so they could be placed on the fairways.

Friday morning, we arrived at Monterey Pines at 6 am. and of course even though the "Judging" entries had been instructed to arrive at 7 am. they were already lining up to be placed in their assigned place, so they could get cleaned up from the morning drive. My task is working with our volunteers in taking the "Judging" Porsches to their Class location on one of the two fairways being used for "Judging". The "Judging" Porsches are separated into 13 Classes for judging either by model or modifications.

Porsches continue to roll in and everyone works on that final cleaning before the "Werks Judging" starts at 9:30. Redwood Region had quite a few Judging entrants with a few pictured below. Once the Judging starts, I have some free time to wander around, see "old" friends, meet "new" friends, visit the Vendor booths and of course, admire the Porsches on the fairways.

I go to see Sharon and find her working at the entrance on the "Problem" desk, where people that either forgot their Judging/Corral Tag or had it "blow" out their window(?) and she has to look at the lists to verify. Then I walk over to the "General Parking" entrance and watch a continuous line just about every make and model of vehicles enter that gate including Ferraris, McLarens, BMW's to make their way to park. That parking team parked over 1200+ cars with Porsches being over 1/2 of them. I then go for a stroll through the Werks Porsche Corrals and there were some amazing Porsches parked there!!

Once all the "Judging" has been completed, my next task is rounding up the 13 Class winners so they may drive across the stage area to collect their 1st Place Trophy.

Golden Gate Region just announced an autocross event at Sonoma Raceway's Paddock area on Saturday, September 30! Come out to Sonoma and show your Redwood support for our sister region and have fun with your car in our own backyard. Register today!

Redwood Region's second autocross of the year is Sunday, September 17 at Thunderhill Raceway's skid pad. This is a Zone 7 event weekend event with sister region Sacramento Valley.

Register now for Redwood's event on Sunday 9/17 or for SVR on SVR's event on Saturday 9/16.

If you have any questions, please email me.

On behalf of the entire Redwood Region of the Porsche Club

of America I would like to extend a warm welcome our new members enrolled in the month of August!

I encourage you to attend some of our events in the upcoming months which can be found in the calendar section of our Region's website.

Our events are a great way for you to meet other PCA members and have some fun with fellow Porsche enthusiasts and our amazing cars. From our website you can also access current and past issues of der Riesenbaum, our monthly newsletter!

In the month of July, we welcomed six new members and two transfers to the Redwood Region PCA. You all should have or will soon be receiving a complimentary Redwood Region name badge. Please wear them to our events and meetings. Also, if you’d like to order a name badge for your associate or family member, check out our website for full details and instructions.

In August 2023, twenty-five PCA Redwood Region members marked 5 or more years in

the club. Six are celebrating more than 20 years with the club and three are celebrating more than 40 years! Enthusiastic congratulations to John Hefler, John Fitzgerald who are both celebrating their 50th year with the club and to Leroi Gardner who is close behind with 47 years under his belt. The Porsche Club of America thanks you for being such dedicated members!

As always, please send any and all questions about membership, to me email me. 

Cheers,

Jeff

The Redwood Region hosted Hot August Night on Saturday, August 26^th. The 107-mile Monte Carlo rally started at Auto Sport Detailing in Santa Rosa at 6 PM, ran east to Lake Berryessa, then back west to finish at Shari’s Café and Pies

in Rohnert Park at midnight. 16 cars registered for the event:

5 from Golden Gate, 4 from Redwood, 3 from Diablo, and 4 non-PCA or other regions. Trophies, consisting of model 356 race cars mounted on plaques, were presented to the drivers and navigators of the top three cars.

James Tong (driver) and Vamsi Rayaprolu (navigator) from the Golden Gate Region finished in first place with a total score of 7 seconds for 12 checkpoints, including 8 zeros! This was not their first invitation to the podium as James and Vamis had finished 3^rd overall in the recent Mt Hamilton rally. Todd Simi (d) and Michelle Simi (n), Redwood Region, took second place with a score of 21. They zeroed every checkpoint except one, where they picked up their 21 second penalty. Third place went to Mark Poff (d) and son James Poff (n), Diablo Region, with a score of 91. Mark and James took first place in the expert class on Mt Hamilton, but bought 80 points on a single checkpoint in the night rally. Interestingly, the top four cars were all Caymans. Boxsters and 911’s made up the balance of the field after the lone Mercedes Benz dropped out.

In addition to Todd and Michelle Simi, the Redwood Region was well represented by Jenny Rivas (d) and Matt Collier (n) in her 2001 Boxster S. It was their first rally and they missed a turn on the first leg, ending up 8 miles off course. This earned them the maximum penalty of 300 points (5 minutes) at the first two checkpoints. But the first-timers continued to press on regardless (Press On Regardless, first run in 1949, is the oldest continuously run rally in North America) and in the process, they earned some very respectable scores at subsequent checkpoints, including 2 zeros, 2 ones, and a six. What a wonderful display of competitive grit and perseverance! That’s what rallying is all about.

An interesting discussion took place at the conclusion of the rally among people who had participated in both Mt Hamilton and Hot August Night. The question posed was which rally format did they prefer, day or night. All the participants preferred night rallies because of the lack of traffic and the additional safety on twisty roads by being alerted to oncoming vehicles by their headlights. Interesting, and worthy of future rally format consideration.

On Saturday August 12^th, 40 Redwood members congregated

on the usual launch pad near Kaffe Mocha in Windsor, ready to partake in an annual tradition for at least as long as I’ve been a member: a great drive out to the Maple Creek winery in pastoral Yorkville for lunch and wine tasting.

After our safety meeting, 23 Porsches headed west to make the loop around the Santa Rosa Airport. Everyone stayed together very well with Craig Steele as our “mid/relay”

man on the radio, and Kurt Fischer in his Porsche-support vehicle (yes, it’s a BMW) working as sweep. It was an absolutely gorgeous day with temps in the low 70s…but

we discovered that Sonoma County has also taken advantage of our great weather by stripping out the pavement on a long section of Mark West Station Road! At least the roadbed was firm, and we got back onto real pavement, craftily lulled into a false sense

of security up to Wohler Road, which was similarly scraped down to naked dirt!

Slowed but undaunted, we figured it was time for good karma to come back around, and after crossing the Wohler bridge it did, along Westside Road and West Dry Creek Road

as we headed north with relatively few cyclists on the rest of the tour. This route is absolutely beautiful in August as the entire valley, filled with some of the world’s finest Zinfandel vines, is just so lush.

After a very brief bio break at the Hamburger Ranch in Cloverdale, we split into two groups and headed west on Highway 128. Once again, this road has some of the best-maintained twisties in all of Northern California, and unlike last year, 5 different cars in front of us actually used the clearly-marked turnouts to let us by! Twenty-two miles of pristine asphalt were enjoyed by all, ending up at the Maple Creek driveway where we were greeted to the smell of barbecue coals. As usual, the air was toasty warm (92 degrees or so), but everyone had a great time since the Maple Creek staff kept us plied with plenty of cold water as well as tastes of crisp Chardonnay, “Buckin’ Blanco”, and

their classic “Cowboy Red”. We enjoyed salmon, tri-tip, and bruschetta in the shade,

the meal topped off with frozen drumstick ice cream. Perfect!

We are so lucky to live where we do that we can depend on this great tradition: roads meant for Porsches, warm weather, beautiful scenery, and terrific and unique wines. Bundle that with terrific comraderie and it just can’t be beat.

Come and join us next year!

              Redwood Region cars and people at the 67^th Porsche Parade.

Please send them individually or, in bunches to redpcasecretary@gmail.com "

The August Board Meeting was held on Tuesday the 29th.

at Mary's Pizza Shack, 423 N McDowell Blvd. Petaluma

If you’re interested in joining the next meeting via Zoom, send me an email and I will forward you the meeting link.  

We currently have 5 Sponsorship Memberships at the Gold Level.

Our Sponsors are:

A huge benefit to our members is that our sponsors offer discounts on most services

to our members – mention that you are a PCA Redwood Region member!

Be sure to patronize our Sponsors!!

If you’re in business to service Porsches, please email me: Jeff Hall

Dress in style and get your Redwood Region branded items in our Goodie Store.

Visit Redwood's on-line Goodie Store here.

Contact Bobby

We encourage letters to the editor, feedback, questions and suggestions about our newsletter and the Redwood Region in general. Want to contribute to the newsletter?Submit photos and articles about Club events or related activities. Please submit your entry by the 5th day of the month for inclusion in that month's newsletter. Articles received after the deadline will be considered for the next month's newsletter. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit all materials submitted for publication.

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