Carlisle: tent to be reserved

I am hopeful that we will have 25 cars for Carlisle. If you remember, that is the number required to qualify for the free tent. Right now there are 11 people who have confirmed that they will be attending. I have heard from a few of them that even if we don’t reach the 25 cars they would be willing to pitch in toward the $150 tent fee for groups with less than 25 members. I think this is a great idea. It is always good to have a shady spot to gather. The last several times I have had sunburn has been from car shows.

So, I am going to reserve the tent and put up the $150 fee. It will be reimbursed later should we reach the 25 car mark. If not, I am hoping that everyone will consider chipping in. It is, of course, optional. We will divide the fee by the number of people who attend and it will probably be in the area of $10 a person. If necessary, we can decide all of this once we get there so don’t send me any money now.

One other reminder: the tent is an important reason to make sure you specify “triplewhitefox.com feature Mustangs” when you register. That will not only help us to be organized together but is also counted toward the 25 registrants we need for the free tent.

TripleWhiteFox.com merchandise

In my latest round of web site updates, I added a shop link to each page. You may have noticed it. For now it’s ‘hiding’ up there. This is something I have been working on for a little while and it’s finally time to tell you about it. The idea for this was generated by own desire to make a sticker with my new fox design for my daily driver. In trying to research ways to print it, I came across cafepress.com which prints items on demand. It seemed like a good concept and one that lets me get into selling items without having to worry about stock, shipping, customer service and so on. Essentially, cafepress handles all of this and I can concentrate on the creative process which is what I love.

Once I did the sticker, I figured ‘why stop there?’ There seems to be little or no merchandise for the feature car enthusiast. I like to think that I have a creative side (as well as a creative wife always willing to provide input wink) so I tried my hand at a t-shirt design. I have been working on tweaking it since the translation to the printed item was somewhat of an unknown. I have been through a couple of iterations and now am at a point where I can share it. I have had the following shirt made with their ‘Direct Printing’ method. It offers less image quality but is more ‘wearable’. The other option is ‘Heat Transfer’ which is the opposite: better image quality at the expense of how it feels.

tshirt front

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Web site changes

Lately, I have been spending large amounts of time on my Mustang hobby which, since my car is still in storage, means this web site and email. A lot of it is involved in organizaing the upcoming reunion. I have corresponded with dozens of people on the topic over the last couple months and it has taken up quite a lot of time. It is well worth it. I have a feeling that the reunion will be a big success.

I also have been spending a lot of time on updates to the site. Even though it may seem like most of the content is static, the entire site is always receiving incremental changes. It seems like I am doing updates several times per week. Some days it is listing a car for sale, others it is updating the Where are they now sections. My latest change is immediately obvious here in The Den.

Blog updates

I have switched blog software. I have done this for a variety of reasons; some of which are only relavant to my experience with it. The new system uses a much more widely accepted and used software and, as such, is more robust. It is a lot easier to use and manage.

I think there are two things about the new system that will make you happy. For one, it is easier to look at and use. The second thing, and the most important, is that it better protects your email address. Email address was optional in the last system when posting comments but, if you entered it, it was exposed to the whole world. In fact, I recognized this early on for my own email address and setup a secondary email address to use in the blog: blog_at_triplewhitefox_dot_com. The only place I have published that address was on the old blog and the amount of spam that I received was way too much. In contast, on my regular address, I receive no spam. I feel bad that your email address has been exposed to this and have finally corrected it.

When you post on this blog your email address is required but it will not be included with your post. It is required only for the purposes of accountability so that bogus messages can be tracked and identified more easily. I hope more of you will consider commenting here. With the new software I can better track the comments. I am still in the process of migrating all of the postings from the old system into this system. Please bear with me for a couple days while that continues.

Reorganization

The other change you probably noticed was a reorganization of the Feature Mustang section. I had some feedback (and have noticed as well) that the use of this site by 1992 feature car owners is much lighter than that by 1993 owners. This can be mainly seen in the number of registry members; 27 for 1992 vs. 153 for 1993. My concern was that this site was viewed by 1992 owners as more 1993-oriented. To correct this I have consolidated the 1992 and 1993 “home” pages into one page that represents both cars. It also contains a single list of “Latest updates”. As I move forward and come up with other ideas to equalize things I will make those changes as necessary. The fact is that there is no other site for the 1992’s and I want to this to be a first class site for them.

Running Fox 2.0

Attentive viewers of this web site may have noticed the new fox image that I switched to in mid-February 2007. It is used in the page header as well as in my avatar in the discussion forum. The old one was something I found in an image library and did not have official rights to use. It was a red fox that I tweaked to make look more white. I once had a question whether it was trademarked or something but I could not have done that since it was not mine to begin with.

I have wanted to correct that for a while and I finally got around to it. The new fox is one that I can call 100% my own. I always liked the idea of the running fox because it combines the “fox” body with the traditional Mustang running pony. The new fox more accurately follows the running leg position of the pony. I just thought you might find it interesting in case you were wondering about the change. As you might imagine, I like the fox a lot and even had one made into a sticker for my daily driver. Almost no one will know what it means but that doesn't bother me. I know you know what it means.

Fox sticker

Getting the word out on Carlisle, Part II

Things are going well with the organization of the reunion. We had our first 7-up car confirm. This is thanks in large part due to an email that was just printed in the March 2007 issue of Mustang Times:

Dear Mustang Times,

I saw the news item in the February 2007 issue of Mustang Times on the Carlisle All-Ford Nationals to be held in June 2007 and the mention of the inclusion of feature cars as well as the encouragement of owners to attend the event. Well, I wanted to inform you that I have been trying to organize 1992 and 1993 feature cars owners since late last year and now, with the help of Steve Cracknell who runs the 1990 7-up registry (90limited7up.stangnet.com), the 1990 feature car crowd. My hope is to get a good representation of these cars organized together under Carlisle's car club program and I already have a fair number of interested owners. I am hoping that you can help me to get the word out to owners of these cars. I am pretty sure this is the first ever “reunion” of these feature cars. For more information, I encourage feature car owners to check out the details on my web site, www.triplewhitefox.com, on how to join our group in Carlisle, PA.

Before I even received my issue I heard from two 7-up car owners regarding my letter. They were very nice to print that especially since the Carlisle show isn't an official MCA event. Also, if you haven't already seen, I have added the list of expected attendees to the Carlisle page.

I also sent an email to Mustang Monthly in early February. If we're lucky, they'll print that.