After maybe the busiest four to five months for travel in my entire career - the car industry may be going through a tough time lately, but the new products keep rolling out and the car makers have to tell us about them - it's been a bit slow for the past week or so. Time to catch my breath, do some of that 'family' thing.
Starts right up again in July, with Buick Regal in Vancouver and Kelowna next week, VW Jetta (San Francisco) two weeks after that, then Kia Sportage (Whitehorse Yukon - again??) followed by a week of vacation.
This week we had a farewell lunch for the retiring president of Nissan Canada, Mark Grimm, a nice guy who's had a long and distinguished career. He noted that his predecessor in Nissan Canada's corner office, Brad Bradshaw, and his replacement therein, Allen Childs, all were office mates at Ford's North Carolina regional headquarters earlier in their careers.
Coincidence, or did someone at Nissan just steal Ford's Human Resources battle plan?
In any event, best wishes to Mark. He's heading back to his native upstate New Jersey, but the betting is his phone will be ringing, and he won't stay 'retired' for long.
The lunch was held in a restaurant on Eglinton Avenue just east of Dixie, whose parking lot might be one of the most dangerous in the region - it is shared with the Driver Examination Centre. All those newby drivers coming in to take their driving tests, nervous as heck, and all trying to (properly, it must be said) back into their parking spots.
I was in our 'new' Miata, and chose - for the sake of the paint job on its doors - to park a long LONG way away. Let them practice their parking on somebody else's car...
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