Thomas Sottile wrote:James your East Coast event was great, the only negative thing I can remember was running out of food twice. once on board the ship and also at the sat night dinner. Other then that it was great
Thomas: Thanks for your post. I attended your Holiday in Mystic and it was a well planned and executed event and great fun for us....except we had car trouble on the way up and had to return home to drive a non-Porsche back to Mystic, all in one day. I remember after driving all night and arriving at 8:00 AM the hotel staff was very kind to let us in our room early to try and catch up on some sleep, however, our room was directly above the kitchen exhaust fan and we knew exactly was was being cooked... and again, the hotel was nice enough to give us another room on the other side of the hotel. Things do happen out of everyones' control, but we do get past them to make the best of the situation and that was greatly appreciated.
Yes, the caterer aboard the USS Yorktown blamed running low on food, on the group - saying the people who got to the self serve buffet line first (the people who drove or came by bus) put more food than expected on their plates, so the people who came by tour boat, which took a little longer, got what was left. They never ran out of food, they just ran out of the good stuff and the "leftovers" were not that great for people who arrived by boat. Everyone was fed before the speaker's presentation - (Senator Glenn McConnell who was also chairman of the Hunley Commission) who talked about the recently recovered H.L. Hunley - the first submarine to sink a ship in battle. And the caterer at the ballpark never ran out either - they said we had more people on the field than we gave them a headcount for so there may have been some "gate crashers" who walked over from the hotel that did not register for the Saturday drive-up awards dinner because it was so close to the hotel and convenient. They had to set up additional tables and chairs and prepare additional pork tenderloins which took an additional half hour because pork is not something you want to serve "half baked". And we had a record 250 cars and 600 attendees at this Holiday and it's a tall order for a caterer to feed 600 people in a single sit-down dinner, but they did it.
Having said all of that, you will never be able to plan an event that is a 100% perfect for everyone as hard as you may try. I will always appreciate anyone that is willing to donate their time to plan and host an event for everyone else's enjoyment ... and expose themselves to critism when it doesn't go quite as well as planned.
One final note, your concours at Mystic was well worth the extra effort it took for us to get there and made our non-Porsche trip well worth it. Thanks for the memorable time in Mystic.
Jim Phillips
Greenville, SC
