Category Archives: MOGSouth Club Posts

In the mountains of Clayton, Georgia                            September 15 – 17, 2017

The Fall Gathering of MogSouth was great.  The winds of hurricane Irma traveled up to north Georgia causing downed trees and power lines, but the area recovered in time for the gathering. Richard and Janet did a wonderful job of planning and providing a fun filled weekend.

Many of us gathered at Kingwood Resort Friday night. After some “Noggin” time we headed to the Moon Pie Italian Restaurant for dinner. We had a private room for our group. After ordering we had plenty of time to meet new people and get caught up with old friends. A day of travel and an evening of good food and conversation made us ready for an early turn in.

Saturday morning everybody was recharged with a nice buffet breakfast. Gary Heck provided a demonstration of his new car trailer soon to be in production. A brief meeting prepared the drivers of 14 three and four wheel Morgans and a few tin tops for a 35 mile tour through the Georgia hills. Richard had checked the route and found the roads cleared for travel. We had a brief stop at a historic covered bridge before arriving at our destination, Folk Pottery Museum of North East Georgia.

Back on the road we traveled to the Ihn’s home in the mountains. They have a beautiful home and setting for lunch on the porch. There was a bountiful buffet of sandwiches, salads, chips, beverages and cupcakes that were yummy!

After lunch Richard gave us a tour of his garage where he has a few cars in the process of restoration. We had the remainder of the afternoon to explore Clayton’s antique shops and boutiques.

Late afternoon the Kingwood gathering room was open for noggin before dinner. The MogSouth group had the whole restaurant with the exception of a few small tables. Our dinner selections arrived in waves and were all very tasty. We had time for more conversation and noggin during the dinner. Jim Clark presented Janet and Richard with a beautiful pottery plate hand made by Colette, commemorating the event and thanking the Ihns for a great Fall Gathering.

Early Sunday morning people were through the breakfast buffet and on the road home. A few stragglers were left to say goodbyes and thanks to the Ihns for a well-planned weekend and wonderful time. We all expressed our best wishes for recovery to our friends in Florida and neighboring states affected by Irma. Hope to see everyone in Athens Georgia for the Christmas Holiday Gathering December 1-3.

Brian & Rosie Miller

Greetings from Clayton GA!  The Fall Meet will soon be here! 

It is now time to make your choice for dinner to be served at the Kingwood Resort on Saturday evening (September 16th) at the Fall Meet.

You can choose one of the following:

[  ] Grilled Rosemary and Garlic Strips Steaks with Caramelized Onions and Mushrooms or 

[  ] Five Ounce Filet topped off with a Red Wine Veal Demi glaze or 

[  ] Mountain Trout Pecan topped boneless filet accompanied with a Lemon & Parsley sauce or

[  ] Grilled and Cheese stuffed Portabella Mushroom or 

[  ] Pasta Primavera

Please let Richard at richardihns@gmail.com know of your choice, by name, as soon as possible

To all MOGSouth Fall Meet Attendees:

We will have some customized gifts for all of the MOGSouth Fall Meet attendees.

For everyone attending, please email me at richardihns@gmail.com your name and address as you would like to have on the gift. This will be an individual gift.

Unfortunately, being a surprise, we cannot provide any more information at this time.

This information is needed ASAP to make sure we have it done on time.

Richard

Greetings from West Palm Beach Florida!!

The 2017 GatorMOG Fall Noggin is October 27-29, in West Palm Beach, Florida

Please join our hosts Mary and Bennett Shuldman for a weekend in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The weekend will include a special private tour and lunch visit to The Wilson Collection.

The collection includes over 100 cars, European. American, with vintages mostly 1950 and 1960’s and 15 vintage road racing cars.  All finished cars are licensed and driven on a daily basis and all road racing cars compete in the Vintage series either VDCA, HRS or SCCA.

To see more about the collection visit their website:  www.wilson-collection.com

ID: car    Password: collection

Hotel reservations can be made as follows:  Embassy Suites Palm Beach Gardens  

4350 PGA Boulevard, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33410, Phone 561-622-1000 or 800-362-2779

Name of Event:  GATORMOG – Fall 2017   Room rate:  $125/night

Please make your reservations by September 27, 2017 and send an email to Bennett at:  bshuldman@aol.com to confirm your attendance.

More details will follow to all those whom register.

Happy Eclipse Year from Clayton Georgia!

As everyone knows the 2017 MOGSouth Fall Meet is taking place in Clayton Georgia over the weekend of September 15th (Friday) and September 16th (Saturday).

We are blessed with 75% of the county being National Forest and a cozy little town full of character.

The Kingswood Golf and Country Club Resort is a beautiful place and we have blocked 20 rooms at the resort hotel.  Rooms are $109.00/night plus taxes equaling $127.08.

There are also 2 and 3 bedroom apartments available for rent.  If you are interested in splitting and apartment with Morgan friends this might be a good choice.  Breakfast cost is $7.00/person plus tip.

We will have a hospitality room available at the club house for Friday arrival and Saturday before and after Dinner.

Dinner will be at the Kingswood Golf and Country Club Resort Club House on Saturday night at a cost of $30.00 per person including taxes and tip.

The menu main course will include a choice of a meat, fish or vegetarian.   We will be soliciting your preferences soon.

The program also includes a Saturday morning drive and lunch at a local restaurant.   Free time after lunch is planned for shopping and exploring our cute town of Clayton or a visit to my shop for those interested.

Don’t miss it… We will have lots of big surprises for everyone.   Hope to see many of our Morgan friends there!!

If you have any questions please email Richard at richardihns@gmail.com or call 239-633-2845 (cell)

This year’s MOGSouth Holiday Party will be held on Saturday, December 2 in Athens, Georgia.  Our organizers and hosts are by Stacey and Ben Schepens.

Thank you to Stacey and Ben for volunteering their time and for their efforts on behalf of the Club’s membership!

A note from Stacey:  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays in July!  I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful summer.

This year our MOGSouth Holiday Party will be in Athens, Georgia.  You don’t have to be a Bulldog fan to enjoy Athens.  It is a great little city with lots to do all within walking distance of the host hotel.

I have been able to book a block of rooms at The Graduate in Athens (www.graduateathens.com).  In the block there are 20 Standard King rooms and 20 Standard rooms with 2 Queens.  Rooms are $129 a night – you can book for Friday and Saturday or just Saturday.

Breakfast is not included however there are lots of places in Athens for any meal of the day (not to mention lots of places to grab a drink at night).

The hotel does have rooms that meet ADA requirements.

Dinner and hospitality will be at this hotel – more information on that forthcoming.  Details regarding dinner costs are still being refined and will be published as that information is available as well as information on happenings and things to do in Athens on December 2.

Folks wishing to make reservations should call the hotel directly at 706-549-7020 and ask for the MOGSouth Car Club block.

Don’t delay – this is a busy weekend in Athens.  There are other hotels in downtown Athens – the Hilton and Indigo are also quite nice.  I would avoid the Holiday Inn Express.

Hope to see many of you there!   Questions? E-mail Stacey Schepens at piesaresquare@comcast.net or call 404-932-9815.

The first ever North American Morgan Three Wheeler Convention.

May 18 – 22 in Augusta GA.     A long weekend (4 days actually) of activities for the greasy Morgan Three Wheeler enthusiast and another set of activities for the less greasy set.   Lots to do.   Lots of moving parts.  Lots and lots . . . . darn impossible to keep up.

Hard to believe that there hadn’t been a North American Morgan Three Wheeler gaggle before.  Sharing knowledge about these silly beasts has been a problem for a good while.  Certainly for me.  What went where, and how, left me clueless most of the time.  A newsletter about British doings with occasional practical articles, emails, photos and an online forum have definitely helped but unfortunately these two dimensional, text messages lost something in the translation.  So with the Convention we brought folks together for the face-to-face contact and gave them direct access to the cars.  This was far better, more three dimensional, or so it seems as was evidenced by the sheer volume of participants.

We also planned activities for the ‘spouses’ (for lack of a better word). This meant that those that were not terribly interested in the greasy, and somewhat mystical, inner workings of these beasts had something more interesting to do.  Much of what we planned for the ‘spouses’ involved Augusta itself – a trolley ride, a tour of the Woodrow Wilson boyhood home, the Saturday morning farmer’s market.  One activity was needle felting, a handy-craft resulting in cute bits of fluff.   I was told they were ‘hedgehogs’.  Andrea took Lee Charlton’s needle felting session twice.  I now have nightmares of hedgehogs. . .  lots of hedgehogs overrunning the house.  And of course, the dogs are not amused.  The needle felting class was a grand success, with a single session expanding to three – so a big ‘thank you’ to Lee.

We planned for 40 or so attendees and a dozen or so cars, but ended up with 70 plus attendees and 23 cars.  I was in continual fear that all the complex planning for the event would simply fail under its own weight – the inability of the restaurants or other providers to satisfy our enlarged state.  Well, I fibbed a bit about the quantities of participants and luckily the suppliers were able to meet the actual demand.   It couldn’t have gone better.  Even the weather cooperated.  Hot and a bit humid, but no rain.  Rain would have been a big problem.  We were lucky all weekend.   Breakfast on the hotel porch, each morning, was divine.

Actually, we had planned the event around the parking garage, wanting somewhat of a hands-on experience with the cars. The parking garage, only one of two in Augusta, offered us shelter from potential rain or more likely, incessant sun, but the parking garage soon became irrelevant. The hotel ‘gave’ us three banquet/meeting rooms.  Something I would have thought they would have charged us for, to use for the weekend.  We ended up using these rooms for our technical seminars with only sporadic trips to the garage to emphasize some technical point, on an actual car.  Air conditioning in these hotel rooms, given the warmth of the day, was much appreciated.  We actually started each day with a morning meeting for all, in one of the rooms, to pass on the daily plan and highlight any communications we needed to disseminate. It worked quite well, but communication was the bane of the weekend.  We set up a bulletin board in the lobby, posting the latest and greatest, but it was like pulling teeth to get folks to refer to it.

Following the technical seminars and ‘spouse’ activities, our Friday involved a short, scenic drive through a number of the charming neighborhoods of Augusta.  Massive houses with amazing grounds – each undoubtedly steeped in history – adorned the route and we paraded some 22 vintage Morgans and newer 5 Speeders into downtown Augusta, to Enterprise Mill.  Enterprise Mill offered us a quaint park like setting for a small car show, a box lunch and a ride along the historical Augusta canal.

Saturday involved vintage Morgan driving familiarization and test rides offered by the 5 speeder vendors who attended.  We found a big parking lot at a local school that kept us off the public streets.  Later in the day Graeme and Jenny Addie hosted the group for an evening dinner party at their home.   Great food, great company and wonderful comradery.   Certainly all good stuff and a highlight of the weekend.

Another great Morgan gathering.  Many thanks to the MOGSouth members who participated and hopefully they enjoyed their experiences in Augusta.  It isn’t likely that I will be involved in the next one, however, we (Duncan Charlton, Graeme Addie and myself) learned a lot and will pass that on to the next set of folks that have the privilege (?) of planning and executing the 2^nd North American Morgan Three Wheeler Convention.

What a great meet!! We had a ball!!

A superb location, a superb turnout and a great itinerary of events for the Club membership.  Greenville, SC has certainly grown up since I lived there around the turn of the century.  I was lost on almost every street we took.   The downtown has been transformed with cobbled streets, quaint gas lights, and gardens and trees aligning main street.   A plethora of shops, cafes and other delights were in place and we had numerous opportunities during the weekend to stroll and enjoy the sights.   The only challenge we had was parking.   No different than any other busy downtown.

The Spring Meet turn out was quite good and I was amazed at the variants of Morgan cars.  Series 1, 4/4s with Lotus Twin Cam, CVH, 1600, Plus 4 2 Strs, 4 Strs, DHCs, Flat Rads, Aero 8, Roadsters, Plus 8s and even Joe Speetjens in his Corvette powered Plus 8.   Lots of oohs and aahs and lots of tires to kick.  I think I counted 17 cars but might have missed one or two.

Members came from far and wide. In attendance were;
1. Graeme & Jenny Addie
2. Emma & Brian Slater (Graeme & Jenny’s daughter & Family)
3. Chuck & Karen Bernath
4. John Bigler
5. Mark & Andrea Braunstein
6. Austin & Jinny Britton
7. Pat & Judy Buckley
8. Lynn Craig
9. Rick & Sam Frazee
10. Lee & Trisha Gaskin
11. Gene Spainhour & Pat Harris
12. Gary & Judy Heck
13. Fred & Gay Hollinger
14. Richard & Janet Ihns
15. Andy & Anne Leo
16. Lance & Connie Lipscomb
17. Gene & Betsy McOmber
18. Brian & Rosie Miller
19. Dorothy & Glenn Moore
20. Ian & Barbara Shelmerdine
21. Joe & Cynthia Speetjens
22. John & Debbie Stanley
23. Robert & Nancy Ullerich

Saturday morning was a drive through the twisty bits to Ceasars Head State Park and then to lunch, a short drive away, at the Hotel Domestique.  Wonder drives, views and it was great to top it all off with as superb lunch.  Then back down the mountain and more exploring in and around Greenville.

Custom Sketch from Caesars Head SC by Lynn Craig. [I have better resolution if desired. Send me an email. Mark]

Dinner was at the Liberty Tap Room and Grill right nest to Flour Field, the local Baseball Stadium.  The place was electric as there was a ball game going on as well.  I was surprised the Liberty Tap Room and Grill could handle our crowd.  They did and the dinner was great.   (Be sure to see the pictures in the Photo Gallery. Event Photos )

Sunday came with a threat of rain, but we didn’t really get hit, heading south for Florida.  We heard others, heading north and west, did get a downpour.  Well, no amount of rain could put a damper on the meet.

‘Job Well Done’ to the Leos (Andy and Anne) and the Buckleys (Pat and Judy) who organized the event!!