wow alot of Fits , now i really wished i went. maybe i can go back in time and go there, btw my name is Marty Mcfly lol jk its just Mardy. Whenever the next meet comes up you guys will know me by my name.

 

ciburri - Ivan
Thank you all for showing up and fully participating with food and drinks! It was great! My wife can't stop saying how much fun it was!
Bernardio, Elem3nt and everybody else who did not make it, you were trully missed!!! Don't worry though! Judging by the fun we had, next meet is just around the corner! No doubt it will only get biger and better from here!
I propose our next meet event to be a cruising event since we all enjoyed driving in formation. Some nice twisty road with great scenery and a nice final destination lunch at a decent restaurant so we do not have to carry coolers and all the gear and then cruise back!
Nice thing is that we never went over 40 mph (still too fast for 20mph posted limit! LOL!) and we had it well under control! Fit is such a cool car and driven by down to earth people with egoes in check that we do not need to go balls out and wreck to have fun!
We can keep it within limits and enjoy scenery, get some awesome pictures in the process and have a blast!
I am thinkering with parts I need to mount a camera with strong suction cups to the roof or hood for some action shots!

Once again, thank you all!
Ivan

 

Ivan,

I suggest a cruise from Watsonville up Hwy. 152 to Mt. Madonna- there is a restaurant on the summit. RE: driving videos- there is an inexpensive digital video camera being sold at Best Buy and other stores called "Flip Video". It is about the size of a deck of cards, records 30 minutes of video & audio. I bought one from Costco a few months ago, then made a bracket out of aluminum bar stock that anchors with velcro to the passenger visor. I attach the camera to the bracket with more velcro. I tested the setup successfully driving around town, and intended to make a video of the road up to the park on Mt. Hamilton. The camera has a flip-out USB connector for instant computer downloads, and retailers who sell it have DVD burners for the use of camera owners to make DVD copies in-store.

Another excellent destination IS Mt. Hamilton. There is a LARGE park 1/2 way up with water and BBQ pits. However, the elevation is high enough so that cold temps. and even snow could be a serious problem during the holiday season. From Watsonville to the top of Mt. Madonna (Pacheco Pass) is accessible except for the rare low elevation snowfalls (you can see Monterey Bay from the top on a clear day, and the ocean is only about 20 miles away).

If you continue over Pacheco Pass to the East, you will wind up in Gilroy with access to Hwy. 101, which will take everyone living north of Santa Cruz County back up to the major Bay Area freeway networks (Gilroy to San Jose on 101 is only about 20 minutes at non-rush hour). The entire length of Pacheco Pass will delight the performance drivers, EXCEPT for the people ahead of us who can't drive (but then again, they're everywhere).

I was thinking during the formation drive down from the top of Mt. Diablo that we could do our own Fit version of the "Volkswagen Roller Coaster" ad on TV. We just need someone in a helicopter to film it.

My trip to Mt. Diablo going up Hwy. 680 was 90 minutes from home in the Santa Cruz mountains. This is North Santa Cruz County. Watsonville is a 1- hour drive for me, but 1/3 of my route is city streets to get to the freeway.

For Tool and his Dad, it would take 60-75 mins., for Anthony from San Carlos, it would be about 90 min. For Macbuddy in Modesto, I'm guessing at 2 hours, for leandro82 I'm guessing 60-75 min., and for you and Tamarra (sp?), 90 minutes from Dublin. All of my time guesses for people driving South is based upon an EARLY start. ALL of San Jose seems to fill the freeways heading South to Santa Cruz/Monterey on weekends, but that's in Summer weather. The holiday season is usually cold and damp enough to reduce the tourist traffic.

Anyway, there's two suggestions. If anyone is interested, I will go up to the restaurant on Mt. Madonna to check out hours, menu, parking, etc. There is also a Mt. Madonna Park that I have never been to, but I will look it up to see if it would work for a photo shoot.

 

No, it was 20 mph max. You probably couldn't see the fine print on the signs: "except for CuTeBoi".

 

One question for the Mikes:

Did you both really have to get SSM Fits?^^

 

Im up for anytime anywhere, ill will be at the next meet forsure! All the ideas above sound good to me!

 

Awesome, and I think the speed limit in most areas were at 15mph... I think I passed that up by at least 40mph... =P

oh wells. Thankfully baby wasn't there, or else I wouldnt' have been doing all the donuuts and swerves as hard as I took them. Maybe when he gets older I would do it with him in the back, but he has to be in a booster seat, not a baby seat, I wuold want him to see the road properly. and not get scared cause he can't see.


At the moment, I'm configuring my servers for the accounts, but baby needs some taking care of in the next hour, I'll get something up for the raw images later tonight.

 

Wow, looks like you guys had a good turn out. We just had our meet down here in So Cal and we had about 21 Fits show up and I was just thinking as I was looking through the Pics that maybe we could organize a (whole) California meet. I think it would be pretty dope. Anyone down? (sorry, didn't mean to thread jack)

 

^A whole Cali meet would be massive! That would be really cool!

 

Harris Ranch meet, it sounds like?^^ A relatively central location (albeit a LITTLE skewed towards N. Cal, but there's GREAT steak to be had once we're there... ^_^

 

I would say we should wait on the next fit meet before we decide anything larger, we are tasting what is out there and testing the waters before going for something big. Our first fit meet didn't turn out so well, and I think we should take it slow before we organize an all California meet.

 

Awesome, I finished the FTP server, and I have it working with Tyler's account, I'll start sending out the PMs with a simple tutorial on how to do it. Any questions will have to come back to me.

If people already have FTP programs, please use it, and just provide your username/password I provide as needed.

These accounts will be active for a week, after that, I will go look into them, make sure they are pictures (raw uncompressed ones) and lock them for download only through my website, this will keep it from someone to upload strange stuff and have people put my name in the buff >.<

Anyways, I'll go and start making the usernames/passwords for everyone =D

EDIT: Girlfriend is a little upset, so I'm heading to bed, I made a list of usernames, without passwords, wonder wehre Lilcat is, I love his photography, it's awesome, either way, this is just abotu done, all photos and files will be uploaded to this address: Index of /~anthony/images/fitfreak/2007-09-FitMeet

so far the only folder there is the one I tested using Tyler's account. =P

I'll send everything out tomorrow afternoon, when I get a chance.

 

I see. Well just holler at one of his So Cal-ers when you guys would be down.

 

Hey James,
If you guys ever have a meet at the Northern end of SoCal, I'll be there. I grew up in San Gabriel, lived in Alhambra, Rosemead, Riverside, San Bernardino and worked in Los Alamitos, Cerritos, and Long Beach.

You SoCal freaks seem to have been very successful in getting a good response to your meets. I'm guessing that it's because no matter what location is proposed for a meet, you may have enough fitfreaks within driving distance to show up. I don't know if we just have less members scattered over a wider area or what the problem has been, but this last meet is only the second attempt, and the only really successful one. As a first step to grow into more, and more frequent meets, it sems to have served that purpose.

Anyway, an ALL-CAL meet sounds great to me, but organizing it would be a nightmare. Thanks for the thought! Maybe it'll work.

Dave

 

I agree, i think we should do a few more before planning a MASSIVE all of cali meet...That would be ALOT of planning..

 

I don't need much of an excuse to go to Harris Ranch either! All the SoCal guys would get to race each other over the Grapevine! No fair-- its all flat and downhill for us (well, after Hwy. 152 past San Luis Reservoir, anyway).

 

James you are not jacking the thread at all, welcome!

I am all down for state wide meet, anywhere really! I was checking your SoCal meet thread, but since it was falling on the same weekend we were planing ours and on my best friends wedding anniversary trip to Vegas(that I could not attend due to our meet, but long story short got pushed to this coming weekend! ) I could not even plan on driving down. Otherwise I would!
I lived in the San Fernando Valley (Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, Encino) for 9 years before moving to NorCal.
As Dave (MANXMAN) stated Harris Ranch is possible or somewhere off HWY 1 even (nice scenic route for both ends of the state). Both ends could arrive in a nice convoy to the meet!
And yes, we are still wet behind our ears and still learning to walk this meet thing! LOL! We will get better! 10 cars showed up, 1 could not find us and 1 more that wonted, just got his car from the body shop that afternoon.
Dave is right, there is more of you down south. Up here we are all a bit older and/or have family obligations that makes it hard.
Maybe if we plan something for the spring would give us enough time to pull it off right. We can run two(back up!) point man/woman from each area to organize us locally once we all together, statewide on a single thread, suggest and set on a time and place?
What do you guys think?
That will give us some time to get our act together up in NorCal through more practice.
Ideas? Comments? Suggestions?

James, check with South what they think too.

Looking at all small cars popping around (Scion's, Smart's, Fit's,....) I got an insane idea about an ultimate small car meet and cruise! That would generate media attention all over US and abroad. Small cars would get their recognition. Next step - GLOBAL DOMINATION! LOL!
One funny thing during our meet, a Toyota FJ Cruiser stumbled to our spot and found itself surrounded by 10 Fits. It took off faster than it came, but not before throwing an insult about "baby car meet". It got few of us ticked off.

 

Well, if anyone in NorCal is interested, I'm thinking of heading down to the meet in Milpitas on Friday nights that I mentioned last Saturday, it'll give us a chance to meet at an already set location, and help us start to get into the hang of meeting up more often. If anyone's interested, lemme know, and I'll post up the info and other related information.

 

Steve-
I didn't hear much of your conversation about the Mipitas meet. When you have the time, please either post or pm me the info.
Thanks-
Dave

 

Hey Ciburri, if we take a HWY 1 trip, I might have to stop at an Oyster bar along the way...or the Harris Ranch run sounds good too. If we do, I'll call a Harris Ranch rep. and see if he could get us some kind of group discount (I hope he still remembers me).