As many of you know, the Iowa MINI community (primarily Eastern Iowa MINIs and Central Iowa MINI owners) has had a fall colors drive each October since 2003. This year will be the eleventh such event. Over the years, the location has varied, and route planning/event responsibility has alternated each year between EIM and CIMC. In all previous years, the work has been handled by Daryl Hanneman (of EIM) and Greg Beachy (of CIMC).

This year it’s the responsibility of the Central Iowa owners to come up with a date and route for the event. Unfortunately, Greg has been relocated to the Kansas City area by his employer, and is unable to do much work for the event this year. I’ll have some time to coordinate route planning, but I’m going to be out of town from time to time in September and I’ll be out of town for most of October, so other members of the club will need to help on this.

Please send me any and all ideas you have for a scenic Iowa countryside drive, and I’ll try to assemble a good route from those ideas. In addition, someone will need to take charge of things the day of the event itself since I won’t be here. Without help from other members of the club, this longest-running and most enjoyable Iowa MINI event may end, and that would be sad.

At this point the tentative date is Saturday, October 12 (which is the traditional Columbus Day holiday) with an alternate date of Saturday, October 19. Any and all comments, ideas, suggestions, and volunteers can contact me at rogersitterly (at symbol) yahoo dot (.) com or using the contact form below.

Thanks, Roger