Southwestern Ont. May run in question

When?

Hair: running late Apr. to early May

The voting for a date is in and confusion won. It seems some club members have commitments which are ruling out a Saturday date. It has been suggested that we move the date to a Friday in order to take in Hair. Unfortunately, Friday may be an option only for retired members; It may be out for the nine to five Morgan folk.

Once we are willing to consider a Friday, why not consider an earlier weekday. We might pick up some better prices, if we did.  I am considering Tues., May 1 through to Fri., May 4. Note: Hair starts at 7:30 p.m. during the week and 8:00 p.m on Fridays.

E-mail me, give me your thoughts, leave me with some options. I'll try and come up with an excursion that satisfies all at the best price.

Good tickets to Hair in the center balcony run about $60 for those 65 and older. If we buy ten tickets as a group, we should get all the tickets for about that price. There is a 20 percent group discount. (You cannot combine discounts.)

For a place to stay, the Holiday Inn and Suites is $80 and the Four Points Sheraton London is $100. Both are close to the 401/Wellington Road interchange.

With enough club interest and a definite date, I'd try and get us a similar deal closer to downtown but I make no promises. It would depend upon availability of rooms, I am sure.

My suggested itinerary:

• Meet at eleven at Cora's near Ancaster. Grab a bite and hit the road for London. Let me know what day or day works for you: May 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th with the accent on one of the first three.
• Travel as a group from Ancaster to London, reaching London around four.
• Stay at either the Holiday Inn and Suites or Four Points Sheraton London.
• Dinner at Ken and Judy's around 5 p.m. I could post a simple menu to ensure everyone is pleased. Leave directly for the theatre from the Wightman's.
• That night the group takes in the evening performance of Hair at The Grand Theatre.
• The next day the club could have a short run, similar to last year, stopping at both Winter Wheat and Pinecroft if desired. This has been requested by some club members. It might be possible to have the lady artist who runs Winter Wheat meet with the club members. She does this at times. The question is: Will she be home?

Angelo's lasagna

I believe I can serve a good, quick dinner for everyone, assuming the numbers are not too large, and then get all on their way to The Grand in record time.

I'm not a chef, oh am I not a chef, but I can bake an oven ready dish. I'm proposing to serve a dinner of simple appetizers, salad, and two types of lasagna --- a vegetarian one and a beef one. Both versions of lasagna would come from Angelo's, a well respected, locally owned and operated bakery/deli in London.

There are two LCBO's near my home.

Comments or Suggestions

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, please contact me directly:

Ken and Judy Wightman
e-mail:  londondailyphoto1@gmail.com

Drive for Life

Our friends from the 'Jagged Edge' extended an invitation to the MSCCC to join them last Tuesday evening for an introduction to the 'Drive for Life' programme at the organization's centre in Mississauga. This organization focuses on training drivers 'from the head to the feet' following a programme with the acronym SPOT, to teach; Scanning, Predicting, Options, and Take Action.

Steve and Martin Beer, and I showed the Morgan colours among nine or ten Jagged Edgers, who could be described as a splinter group of Jaguar owners. There was a mix of class room sessions expanding on the points in the SPOT programme and sessions in simulators. These simulators put you in a typical driver's seat with a typical dashboard and controls for an automatic transmission car. There are three wide screen monitors to fill your peripheral vision as you sit at the wheel. The first run you take is a 20kph cruise just to make sure you can adjust to not feeling anything as you accelerate and brake. A small percentage of people have trouble when the feeling of motion is cut off while still seeing the motion. Then the action starts, you drive along a typical looking mixed use urban/suburban road and deal with road construction, pedestrians that step out on the road from behind visual obstructions and drivers that do not follow the rules of the road. 'Teaching then a lesson' is not the answer.

Later they put us in some 'fun' scenarios; I tried to drive a top armoured Humvee through a battle in an Iraqi town. Crashed into a pick-up truck that pulled out in front of me just at the edge of town. Steve, Martin, and Rob, all drivers in the Chump Car Challenge, went head to head to head in a race track scenario. The sophistication of the simulators was shown off here. Since we had not driven in hills before they were asked to just accelerate to 80kph and hold it through the first two turns of the track, to verify they would not get any vertigo from the vertically moving scene while not feeling the motion. After they competed that he asked them to do it one more time before starting the race. This time all three spun out, he had changed the car from a front wheel drive car, a Ford Taurus, to a rear wheel drive car, a Ford Crown Victoria. The different dynamics of the cars calls for a different driving technique even in the simulator. Martin won the race by several car lengths.

Considering how I was consistently NOT steering to where the vehicle I crashed into was coming from, I'd better take the 'top up' course they offered us. Check out their web site for more details about their programmes. They do a lot of work training people who drive as part of their job; taxi, truckers, emergency crews, even the military. The testimonials show they get results.
http://www.driveforlife.ca/