In The News

My name is Charlene, and I am the President of the Abbotsford Costco Employee Association ( or CEA ). Our group in conjunction with other staff volunteers at our warehouse, opted last year to support the BC Children's Hospital with a Show and Shine Car Show. We hoped if we were successful that this would become an annual event. We called it our BC Children's Hospital Charity Show and Shine, which we are proud to say is going to be run every May long weekend so we can do our part to help out this great charity. We have 3 employees with young families in our Abbotsford warehouse who owe their children's lives to the BC Children's Hospital. One of those employees is on our CEA Committee. We could not be happier to say Thank You to the BC Children's Hospital through our Show & Shine, especially as we see these now healthy children grow and thrive.

We hope your organization will come out to our event. Last year we requested all vehicles entering the Show & Shine provide a nominal charity contribution of $10 per vehicle which went 100% to BC Children's Hospital. We are pleased to let you know that pre-registration is encouraged and we look forward to offering tax receipts for these charitable contributions. We will also be improving our concession stand by offering hot food, our lot will be wired for tunes and we hope to have live radio station coverage of the event and offer participants dash plaques. As with our 2004 event, we will still offer children balloons and face painting with any charitable donation and a car wash by donation.

We will be working hard to see this event promoted in the newspaper, online on carclub forums and events listings, on Lower Mainland radio stations and on local television in order to get the word out. If you have the ability to publicly post this event or let other clubs know about it, we encourage you to do so. We also welcome prizes for participants and we are thankful for the donations of goods and services we received in 2004 for this charity event. Companies such as The Keg, Boston Pizza, White Spot, Sammy J Peppers Restaurants, Lordco, Wakefield Sperling, Canadian Tire, Tidy Tanks and all sorts of of other local supporters.

January 2005

Dear Car Enthusiast and/or Car Show Promoter,

You may have heard about our Running of the BULL and the Elgoatarod in Eldorado, as well as some of the other events going on here over the past three years. As luck would have it, the FLDS have moved in and with them, hordes of media types. As a result, they normally mention something about the EOBOC, Elgoatarod, Running of the BULL, Count Dracula’s Quality Pre-Owned Casket Company or all four in their articles. To make a long story short, I think both events are going to mushroom this year and I won’t have time to coordinate the car shows that usually accompany the festivals.

I am looking for someone who might be interested in conducting the car shows during our events. The Running of the BULL is our premier event and is held the last full weekend in July each year, shortly after the Spain event. Last year we had over 4000 people and it is growing exponentially. The Elgoatarod is held in the early spring, after the Iditarod, and has been drawing only about 1000 people. By farming out the car show, I hope to be able to spend more time promoting the Elgoatarod so I can pull in more people for it, hopefully to get it up to the level of the Running of the BULL. The only other established event is our Haunted House, which could support a car show, I suppose, and it is held the last weekend of October. It has only drawn about 500 people in the past.

Our organization is called the EOBOC (Eldorado Olympic Bid Organizing Committee) and our purpose, quite frankly, is to keep Eldorado from dying on the vine. We have several permanent "unusual" displays up all year as well as additional numerous smaller events, all trying to draw some attention and visitors to our little village.

If you have any interest in such a venture, please contact me at eoboc@hotmail.com, 325-853-3109 or P. O. Box 199, Eldorado, Texas 76936. We are trying to raise money for our various projects, and I thought we could work on some sort of percentage, but would be willing to talk to you about any other ideas you might have on the matter.

Sincerely,

Jim Runge

P. O. Box 199

Eldorado, Texas 76936

Legislation (A.B. 3425) that sought to unreasonably restrict the hours of operation of motor vehicle racetracks in New Jersey has been withdrawn from consideration by the State Legislature. The bill would have prohibited the operation of racetracks located within a one-mile radius of residential housing before 11:00 a.m. and after 10:00 p.m. on Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, tracks could only have operated between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. These time restrictions would have made operating any race facility nearly impossible. The measure represented an attempt by a small group of New Jersey residents to silence racing without regard to racing enthusiasts and would have imposed a statewide, one-size-fits-all approach to racetrack control which ignored the significant economic and recreational benefits these facilities provide.

We Congratulate All of the SEMA Action Network (SAN) Members and Related Businesses Who Urged State Legislators to Oppose the Bill

We will let you know if there is an attempt to bring this bill back for consideration in 2005. Congratulations again.