Greetings from the USA
Ciao Bambini!
Just registered and logged into this forum. Your site is awesome!
As I've been reading, you're aparently all aware of Jim McGill's successful arrival in the USA with Sylvia the NIIMC Panda. I urge you all to visit the website of Club Fiat-Lancia Unlimited (
www.flu.org) and register on the message board there, where you'll hopefully read some accounts in addtion to the ones Jim and others post here.
Well, I'm guilty! I'm the fellow who retrieved Jim from JFK airport, and with the help of my fellow Club FLU friend Sam, retrieved Sylvia from the bowels of the dingy port just outside of New York City. My wife Jennifer and I had Jim as our houseguest during his first night here after a CRAZY day on July 11. As mentioned, read about it on the FLU message board under "Chatter". You'll find the thread there.
I'm also guilty of taking many of the photos you have seen that were not taken with Jim's mobile phone camera.
We're off to Detroit ourselves for the 23rd annual Fiat Freak Out, the biggest convention of its kind in N. America. I'm proud to say I'm a co-founder of this event, and we're so damn honored and proud to have Jim be among us!
I'll try to keep you posted with the goings-on over here.
MEANWHILE.........................
HERE'S A COPY OF THE POST I MADE ON THE MESSAGE BOARD OF
WWW.FLU.ORG, THE WEBSITE OF CLUB FIAT-LANCIA UNLIMITED.......
Wed. night, July 12
Yesterday was quite a marathon for me!
- Early morning: Drove from my home in southern New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, to northern New Jersey to pick up long-time FLU fellow Sam Germana at his hospital workplace in city of Elizabeth (he's legal counsel there). Wanted to do this in morning 'cause we were afraid if I got Jim first at 1:30PM landing time and THEN tried to get car, we wouldn't make it back to the port before 4PM closing.
- Drove Sam and myself to Port Newark, NJ...7 miles away....HELL of a time finding the proper terminal and lot...and not the most picturesque scenery, to be sure! Got there around 11:00.
- All paperwork was in order, except for need to pay cash to settle a final fee. Spotted Sylvia the NIIMC Panda in its rather eye-catching livery settled amongst thousand of Vovlos, BMWs, and the like being imported from Europe, along with all sorts of privately-owned cars from around the world. 11:45 AM....and union workers take a long lunch beginning at 11:45, forcing us to have to wait until after 13:00 to touch the car.....but I can't wait because I have to be at JFK at 12:30. So, Sam agreed to stay behind to get car after the stevedores' lunch break had ended at 1PM, and then he drove Sylvia back to hospital garage to await my return with Jim. I felt bad, as Sam should have been back to work, yet there he sat in his natty business suit, a lawyer sweating in a tiny room at a shipping facility next to a dock in seemy Newark, NJ. Yuk.
- Meanwhile, I dash away quickly from the port area and drive across Lower NY Bay via Verrazano Narrows Bridge to NYC and JFK airport. Park, retrieve Jim, head back to Elizabeth, NJ.
- Got car at Sam's hospital garage, drove back to southern NJ, stopping 3/4 of the way down along way to tweak/fiddle with Sylvia at buddy Sherman's garage. Set contact breaker dwell, re-timed ignition, fiddled with carb, idle, etc. Runs a bit better now.
- Went to my house outside of Philadelphia. Went to local mall to get Jim a mobile phone, then to dinner with my beautiful wife Jennifer. Jim was our houseguest, but he treated! Filet mignon and mashed potatoes were on his plate. Oh, those big American portions!
- Back to my house, posted messages and pix of day on the Fiat Forum site in the UK, then Jim to bed (he'd been up 23 hours) aroun 11PM Eastern Daylight Time.
- 5 AM...I get up to go to QVC TV shopping network where I had to be on-air at 7 AM!
- Rush back home after my TV appearance. 9 AM-ish. Jim's up, showering, getting ready.
- Off to mall to get his wris****ch battery replaced. We take photo of Sylvia parked next to a Chevy pickup truck with tires that must have weighed as much as the Panda itself. Jim is amused and fascinated. I tell him I'm sick of all those behemoths that clog our roads.
- Back home, pack car, wait for a call. I open the fridge, show him food. He will not eat! Tells me he's accustomed to fried, greasy food of Ireland. I didn't know that food was like that there.
- Meanwhile, Jim will NOT allow me to make him breakfast! I am allowed to make him a cup of tea with milk and sugar. Haven't had that since I was a little kid with a sore throat. I compensate for no breakfast by giving Jim some polo shirts and a cap bearing logos of USA-only auto brands, Lincoln and Mercury....and a faded but very cool red polo with Ferrari cavalino embroidered on the front. He's thinks I'm generous. I think he's nutz for not taking a free breakfast! I toss him a sports drink bottle with Fiat logo (courtesy Bruce's Parts Bin) for the trip.
- Night before, I scheduled travels of FLU members Tim Beeble from New England and Vinnie Tartaglione from northern NJ to rendezvous with Jim where Pennsylvania Turnpike crosses Interstate Route 80 in Pocono Mountain area of Pennsylvania. (Note: hotel across street is site of very first Fiat Freak Out 23 years ago! Ironic, eh?) Tim calls me at requested time of approximately two hours before he thinks he'll be at rendezvous point.
- Tim calls, and I send Jim off around 10:15, fighting the nortorious traffic on the Schuykill Expressway in Philadelphia to get to Pennsylvania Turnpike northbound. I monitor radio traffic reports, hoping not to hear of accident involving a tiny car driving on wrong side of the highway. Then again, this happens several times a week on the Schuykill Expressway, only difference being the perpetrators are usually drug- or booze-induced idiots, whereas Jim would have simply been a disoriented UK driver not knowing his automotive right from his left.
- I ask Jim to CALL ME if/when he successfully makes it to Pennsylvania Turnpike northbound. Call comes, so I know he's made it though America's 5th-largest city safely. He's on the move!
- Success! I call Tim on mobile, he tells me they're eating at the McDonald's at meeting point. Jim finally gets his fried, greasy food. They meet no less than 15 minutes apart! So, after an entire day of crazy travels and just over 300 miles of fast driving to cover all the ground, I've handed Jim off to Tim, Vinnie, and their companions. Now it is THEY who are responsible for Jim's next leg of his journey. He couldn't be in better hands!
And that's the story so far.........
Sylvia the Fiat Panda and Jim McGill: making tracks in the USA! They be jammin'! They be 'truckin'!
Distanti Saluti! Forza Fiat! Mi piacere!
Bobb Rayner
"The Fiat Freak"
Co-founder, Club Fiat-Lancia Unlimited and Fiat Freak-Out
Suburban Philadelphia, USA
