Bmt 2023
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Bmt 2023
Hello BMT Family!
I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season/New Year, and I hope that 2023 has been good to you thus far.
As we get going into 2023 I want to take a little time to talk about the status of BMT and the position that I'm in personally.
I have made no secret of the fact that I, along with my best buddy, opened a retail store. It's been an amazing experience and we're constantly on track to see improvements all around, which is awesome!
The downside is that it requires a lot of work. I spend a pretty consistent average of 80-100hrs/wk working at or on it in some capacity. I knew it would be a lot of work going in and they say it usually takes about 5yrs for you to know for sure whether or not you're going to make it and right now we're only 18 months into that, so we're still pretty young. Because of all of the attention I have needed to devote to running the business you have seen Samantha's name on a lot of stuff because, as always, she keeps me from sinking this ship, and without her I'd likely be much worse off.
Last fall Samantha received a phone call from Jerome, who, if you aren't already aware, is one of BMT's founders, and is one of the primary influencers for BMT to be what it is today. (See this thread and look back to the first event for all of the conversation and details about BMT's origination)
He talked about this most recent BMT (Fall 2022) being his final outing with us. Furthermore, he asked that we discontinue running the Boston Mountains Tour.* Had this call not come so close to the event date we would have made this a much larger deal, but there wasn't time for that when Samantha took this call, so we scrapped the t-shirt idea that we already had designed and devoted it to Jerome instead.
Next, we started thinking about what needs to be done.
Do we ignore a BMT co-founder's wishes and keep running it anyway? Do we keep doing it and call it something else, partially ignoring him? Or, do we abide by Jerome's wishes and put a halt to BMT all together?
BMT has become such a big part of so many peoples' lives that we honestly didn't have a real good answer.
This event started out in 2007 with a meager group of S2000 enthusiasts hungry to get in some seat time, and quickly grew into an event that required a limit to the number of people that could be allowed to attend because of its popularity. OBVIOUSLY there were more of people who wanted to get out and drive then Jerome and Julie originally thought!
I’ve personally been attending since around 2009 and I’ve watched the event change a bit over the years from a more laid back kind of "We're going to be here if you want to join us" type of thing to more of a "Get your spot while you still can!" sort of event. All the while, it's been going on donations and good vibes only. It's pretty incredible, really.
Nobody is getting rich off of this, either. Donation money is used to help pay for lodging during the staff Pre-Drives and paying for things like appetizers at socials on occasion, sometimes certain meals, or like last fall, the pizzas we had delivered for our social time during that crazy rain storm we had! Tour Guide positions are strictly volunteer positions, and these people come out of pocket for food and gas just like any normal attendee, only they do it 2 extra times for our Pre-Drives as well as the event itself. Your Tour Guides generously give up their time, take days off work without pay and spend a pretty good amount to help make this whole thing work. Your donations have certainly helped lessen the impact that they feel, so believe me when I say, they have certainly been appreciated!
This has become such an amazing event with people traveling from the far reaches of the US to attend. We've had people join us from as far away as Texas, Ohio, Minnisota, Florida and even California. These are not short drives, and we appreciate the effort that attendees make to come join us for our little one-day event. I have been absolutely amazed by some of the cars I've seen join us, too. Even though this event started out as an S2000 based event, we've seen various other Hondas, Subarus, Mazdas, BMWs, a handful of Corvettes and Camaros, a motorcycle or two, at least 2 pickups that come to mind, some Lotus cars, Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens...I mean, c'mon! I'm sure there are some I'm not thinking of, but the point is we've made some serious noise in order to bring in the kind of owners that have a desire to put this kind of use/abuse on such a wide variety of cars throughout the years!
And then there's the people...you guys and gals that come to this thing. I get very sentimental when I think of you all. I have met some of the highest quality of people there are to know, from all different walks of life and age groups. We've had people anywhere from 16 trying to sneak into our event by flying under the radar, all the way up into the 80s still enjoying the awesome thrill of the drive! Your unwavering loyalty to this event and your incredible kindness is what drives this event's leadership to keep going.
So at this point you might be asking, "Where do we go from here?"
I’ve spoken with our staff and I’ve spoken with a few of you (you know who you are), and we decided that perhaps the only good way to appease the masses while taking into consideration what's been asked of us (from all sides) would be to make a pivot. It seems that many of you, while obviously excited for the drive, also really enjoy the social aspect of what BMT is. I constantly hear you all talk about how much you enjoy hanging around talking, catching up, and getting to know people through this event.
There are a couple of sticking points to implement the changes we’re looking at making, and we're doing our very best to work through them, but because of this, we're bumping up against deadlines for people to ask off of work and to be able to make other plans for travel, etc., so we won't be able to make things happen in a timely enough fashion for a Spring BMT(or whatever we're going to call it going forward). I feel like, at this time, we need to be aiming for Fall.
Secondarily, I am seeking some outside help. I simply do not have as much time as I wish I had for organizing this event and I have pushed Samantha to a breaking point. Let's face it, we all like her the way she is, right? We don't need her to turn into Warewolf and bite anyone’s head off...and she's starting to twitch every time I bring up BMT, so I think I need to stop leaning on her as much to help me out. (She already does our books for the store for free, soooooo, better not push it!)
There are 2 main priorities for me that I want everyone to understand very clearly:
1.) I do NOT want to turn this into a Rally-style event where people have to pay to attend. That's never been what BMT has been about.
2.) BMT has, over the years, turned into a pretty complex event from a coordination standpoint and I'd like to simplify things to some degree for both us as coordinators as well as you, as attendees.
If you feel like you might want to help, meaning you have the time and the resources to dedicate to this as a volunteer, please reach out to me and let me know.
Please note, we don’t want this event to just abruptly come to a halt. We love getting to spend time with everyone, and we know how much it means to you all to be able to attend.
We look forward to seeing you again soon, and we’ll keep working towards a solution for an event that everyone can continue to enjoy!
Have a great day, everyone!
*I need to update my post due to a phone call we received from Jerome to inform us that he does NOT want to see BMT come to an end, so that's good news for the event!
I apologize for any error in my previous statement as the information was not apparently entirely accurate, according to my source.
-Skyler
I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season/New Year, and I hope that 2023 has been good to you thus far.
As we get going into 2023 I want to take a little time to talk about the status of BMT and the position that I'm in personally.
I have made no secret of the fact that I, along with my best buddy, opened a retail store. It's been an amazing experience and we're constantly on track to see improvements all around, which is awesome!
The downside is that it requires a lot of work. I spend a pretty consistent average of 80-100hrs/wk working at or on it in some capacity. I knew it would be a lot of work going in and they say it usually takes about 5yrs for you to know for sure whether or not you're going to make it and right now we're only 18 months into that, so we're still pretty young. Because of all of the attention I have needed to devote to running the business you have seen Samantha's name on a lot of stuff because, as always, she keeps me from sinking this ship, and without her I'd likely be much worse off.
Last fall Samantha received a phone call from Jerome, who, if you aren't already aware, is one of BMT's founders, and is one of the primary influencers for BMT to be what it is today. (See this thread and look back to the first event for all of the conversation and details about BMT's origination)
He talked about this most recent BMT (Fall 2022) being his final outing with us. Furthermore, he asked that we discontinue running the Boston Mountains Tour.* Had this call not come so close to the event date we would have made this a much larger deal, but there wasn't time for that when Samantha took this call, so we scrapped the t-shirt idea that we already had designed and devoted it to Jerome instead.
Next, we started thinking about what needs to be done.
Do we ignore a BMT co-founder's wishes and keep running it anyway? Do we keep doing it and call it something else, partially ignoring him? Or, do we abide by Jerome's wishes and put a halt to BMT all together?
BMT has become such a big part of so many peoples' lives that we honestly didn't have a real good answer.
This event started out in 2007 with a meager group of S2000 enthusiasts hungry to get in some seat time, and quickly grew into an event that required a limit to the number of people that could be allowed to attend because of its popularity. OBVIOUSLY there were more of people who wanted to get out and drive then Jerome and Julie originally thought!
I’ve personally been attending since around 2009 and I’ve watched the event change a bit over the years from a more laid back kind of "We're going to be here if you want to join us" type of thing to more of a "Get your spot while you still can!" sort of event. All the while, it's been going on donations and good vibes only. It's pretty incredible, really.
Nobody is getting rich off of this, either. Donation money is used to help pay for lodging during the staff Pre-Drives and paying for things like appetizers at socials on occasion, sometimes certain meals, or like last fall, the pizzas we had delivered for our social time during that crazy rain storm we had! Tour Guide positions are strictly volunteer positions, and these people come out of pocket for food and gas just like any normal attendee, only they do it 2 extra times for our Pre-Drives as well as the event itself. Your Tour Guides generously give up their time, take days off work without pay and spend a pretty good amount to help make this whole thing work. Your donations have certainly helped lessen the impact that they feel, so believe me when I say, they have certainly been appreciated!
This has become such an amazing event with people traveling from the far reaches of the US to attend. We've had people join us from as far away as Texas, Ohio, Minnisota, Florida and even California. These are not short drives, and we appreciate the effort that attendees make to come join us for our little one-day event. I have been absolutely amazed by some of the cars I've seen join us, too. Even though this event started out as an S2000 based event, we've seen various other Hondas, Subarus, Mazdas, BMWs, a handful of Corvettes and Camaros, a motorcycle or two, at least 2 pickups that come to mind, some Lotus cars, Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens...I mean, c'mon! I'm sure there are some I'm not thinking of, but the point is we've made some serious noise in order to bring in the kind of owners that have a desire to put this kind of use/abuse on such a wide variety of cars throughout the years!
And then there's the people...you guys and gals that come to this thing. I get very sentimental when I think of you all. I have met some of the highest quality of people there are to know, from all different walks of life and age groups. We've had people anywhere from 16 trying to sneak into our event by flying under the radar, all the way up into the 80s still enjoying the awesome thrill of the drive! Your unwavering loyalty to this event and your incredible kindness is what drives this event's leadership to keep going.
So at this point you might be asking, "Where do we go from here?"
I’ve spoken with our staff and I’ve spoken with a few of you (you know who you are), and we decided that perhaps the only good way to appease the masses while taking into consideration what's been asked of us (from all sides) would be to make a pivot. It seems that many of you, while obviously excited for the drive, also really enjoy the social aspect of what BMT is. I constantly hear you all talk about how much you enjoy hanging around talking, catching up, and getting to know people through this event.
There are a couple of sticking points to implement the changes we’re looking at making, and we're doing our very best to work through them, but because of this, we're bumping up against deadlines for people to ask off of work and to be able to make other plans for travel, etc., so we won't be able to make things happen in a timely enough fashion for a Spring BMT(or whatever we're going to call it going forward). I feel like, at this time, we need to be aiming for Fall.
Secondarily, I am seeking some outside help. I simply do not have as much time as I wish I had for organizing this event and I have pushed Samantha to a breaking point. Let's face it, we all like her the way she is, right? We don't need her to turn into Warewolf and bite anyone’s head off...and she's starting to twitch every time I bring up BMT, so I think I need to stop leaning on her as much to help me out. (She already does our books for the store for free, soooooo, better not push it!)
There are 2 main priorities for me that I want everyone to understand very clearly:
1.) I do NOT want to turn this into a Rally-style event where people have to pay to attend. That's never been what BMT has been about.
2.) BMT has, over the years, turned into a pretty complex event from a coordination standpoint and I'd like to simplify things to some degree for both us as coordinators as well as you, as attendees.
If you feel like you might want to help, meaning you have the time and the resources to dedicate to this as a volunteer, please reach out to me and let me know.
Please note, we don’t want this event to just abruptly come to a halt. We love getting to spend time with everyone, and we know how much it means to you all to be able to attend.
We look forward to seeing you again soon, and we’ll keep working towards a solution for an event that everyone can continue to enjoy!
Have a great day, everyone!
*I need to update my post due to a phone call we received from Jerome to inform us that he does NOT want to see BMT come to an end, so that's good news for the event!
I apologize for any error in my previous statement as the information was not apparently entirely accurate, according to my source.
-Skyler
Last edited by BMT Staff; Mar 6, 2023 at 05:18 PM. Reason: Jerome has updated us as to his feelings about the continuation of BMT
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