February 2000 Newsletter

In Memorium

Dave Lindeman died February 7th. Dave was an early member of the RM356C and a good friend. He bought a 356 Porsche from a used car lot on Broadway and towed it home on a rope. He did the complete restoration including engine work and paint. When he was finished it was beautiful and fast. He always took the lead on the run to Santa Fe. Dave, we all miss you, you kept the 356 faith.

Road Trip

BJ and I took off Friday, January 28th for the big 356 REGISTRY Swap Meet in Anaheim, CA. We had the new pickup full of parts which we had spent the previous weeks cleaning, painting and pricing. Slow going due to snow at the beginning but then turn right at Albuquerque and on to California. There was a nice party at the host location on Saturday night but early to bed for the 5:00 AM wake up call. Even that early we were the 12th vendor in line.

We got into the site and set up with the help of Roland from CO. We immediately started selling and did well; over $65000 in sales. There were over 100 vendors and with all the competition we had to offer good deals to move the parts. There were over a 1,000 buyers. We will do it again next year as we still have plenty of parts on the shelf (now all clean and painted).

While driving into California I asked BJ to look for weird stuff. We thought we had it when we saw a stretch Hum-Vee limousine. But the weirdest was while on the freeway we looked over at a stripmall and between a doughnut shop and children’s clothing store was a place selling wholesale caskets. Only in California! (and I’m a native son!)

At the Swap Meet we met Toshiyuki Suzuki, the guy from Japan that bought all my 356 oil filter canisters last year. While his English is not too fluent, I think he saw