Half way through the 2005 Jackson Hole drive, just after lunch at Jackson Lake Lodge, this "group drive" (of three cars that came up from Utah) disintegrated into an "I'm outa here" clustering of individuals, led by a club officer too arrogant, insecure or otherwise f___ up to even respond when he's said "hello" to! Ongoing lunch/dinner table references to "the church" got real old...real fast... but went on and on. I personally regard LDS as a tax-exempt, secular doomsday cult that, until February 12, 1917, required "good" church members to recite the treasonous "Oath of Vengeance" blood oath - against the people of the United States for having "caused" the death of LDS "profit" Joseph Smith.
I certainly didn't go on a Ferrari drive to "share" smugly superior discussions about "our ward" and "learning Italian on my mission", etc.
AND I didn't drive 1,200 miles, round trip, either to listen to discussions about a damn church OR to go my own way when I was supposedly on a group drive! Therefore, I'm going to end my "membership" with FOC Utah - not because of the church/cult stuff - but because it wasn't really fun being a "part of", two years in a row.
FCA Denver knows how to have a REAL Group Drive... so, I'll go with them in the future!
This Utah "club" is a clique that I'll never be a part of since I'm not an "exotic-a-year" Utah rich kid... or a good Mormon... or a Steve Harris Import employee (WAY too intent on defaming another regional dealer, who fixed a couple Harris Import cars after they broke down, a couple hundred miles off the lot in Salt Lake).
I took the best pictures of the Utah group in Jackson Hole, two years in a row, showing the cars, the drivers, the environment. And I offered the pictures to the FOC Utah website. But because I'm not a part of the clique, my pictures were never posted.
I generally came away from this "group" feeling like gentile turd from Wyoming.
I'll probably stay in touch with just two or four of the people that I've met
on two FOC Utah trips (a couple of the others will be
in federal prison soon for capital fraud).
Hopefully, I can still subscribe to PILOTA magazine -even though I
wouldn't give a nickle to the Utah crowd.
Fortunately, on this trip, I did real work in Yellowstone and left an art print behind in
Jackson Hole and can thus (honestly) charge the whole trip off as business
related!
My guess is that one shit in the "Utah group" let us pay him in cash for
our share of the dinner, so he (or his employer) could charge the whole table on his card and take
it has a tax-deduction.
Considering that last year's president of Utah FOC was arrested for a $14 million bank fraud, screwing the IRS for a couple hundred dollars for a "business-related meal" is no big deal.