Once again the fall weather has brought another change of season in the Mid-Atlantic region. Time for school, cleaning leaves, football, and... THE 4TH ANNUAL FALL FOLIAGE TOUR! Mike Deluca once again was able to meet and exceed our expectations with his annual event. This year we had a great time in Wildwood, NJ and the weather cooperated with us the entire time (Still trying to figure out how that happened). In all the event was a huge success.
Club members were coming from every direction and location for this event. Some of us made small caravans on the way to the central meeting point. Several of us met Marc Levy at his house in Central NJ. When we arrived we had the pleasure of greeting Ken and Chris Koncelik and seeing a couple of teasers. Ken and his wife had just arrived from Long Island earlier that morning where they picked up a car that is Ken will restore and auction off at the 2004 Pigeon Forge DeLorean Car Show! Ken's truck was loaded with parts for the car and he is eager to get started on the project. (Personally, many of us are eager to buy a ticket!)
As if seeing the raffle car was not enough, Ken busted out the official t-shirt for the 2004 show! We didn't have to drool long because he brought tons of them to sell that weekend and we all quickly snatched one up.

Several members began the tour by meeting at Marc Levy's House and greeting Ken and Chris Koncelik as they arrived from Long Island with a surprise in tow!

What does Ken Koncelik have planned? He is going to fix up this car and raffle it off at the Pigeon Forge DeLorean Car Show in 2004!

Wait a minute! What else does Ken have up his sleeves!?
Once we were all done getting the latest lowdown from Ken, we got some gas and hit the streets to take a really great back road through central New Jersey to meet the rest of the group. Kudos to Marc for setting up this scenic part of the trip!
Our Vice President Gary Gore chipped in to help Mike plan the tour by arranging a central meeting spot just off of the Garden State Parkway. As owners started to arrive, they were greeted by Gary and others who had arrived earlier.
Food and bathroom breaks were quickly sought by some attendees who had driven quite a distance to meet up with us. Once everyone had eaten lunch and said their hellos to one another, we headed back outside to the parking lot to look over some of the cars, stretch out legs and find out what was going to happen next on the agenda for this leg of the tour.

Our central meeting spot showcased a parking lot full of DeLoreans!

Mike Deluca and Gary Gore lay out details for the drive to Batsto Village for the photo Shoot

Tiffany and Susan Olejnik stand ready to get underway in the parking lot with Aaron Crocco

With our 2 way FM radios in hand, lunch in our bellies, and a line 18 cars long, we were ready to roll to Batsto Village!
Mike Deluca (White shirt... with a Bricklin on it!?... come on Mike!) and Gary Gore gave the crowd the basic info for the next leg of the trip. We were all to drive scenic back roads through the pine barrens to Historical Batsto Village for a photo shoot. Gary promised that the drive would be nice and relaxing with great foliage to view. We were all excited to travel in a huge caravan to our next location, so cars were lined up and two-way FM radios were handed out for drivers to stay in touch on the road during the drive
We set out on our scenic tour to Batsto Village. Along the we were treated to many great sites and an overall pleasant drive. Once we were officially off the main roads we waited for the entire group to catch up and formed a single line of 18 cars for the remainder of the trip.
The drive to Batsto village took us about 40 minutes to complete. When we arrived, we immediately obtained permission from the visitor's office to set up for our photo shoot. We lined the cars up on a nearby field and everyone started to snap pictures like crazy. We attracted a steady crowd of onlookers as well who stopped to gaze at the site.

We didn't mind having to stop for others to catch up on the way to Batsto Village because the scenery was great!

We all arrived together at Batsto Village ready to do our photo shoot.

Is everyone ready to take photos? Hey... lets stand on Ken Koncelik's truck for a better view! ;)

We pulled all the cars out onto a field for the photo shoot and lined them up with doors open.

The sky was clear and the sun was shining (as you can tell from the reflection on the cars). We took a ton of great photos.

And everyone was right! The pictures from on top of Ken's truck DID come out nice!

A group photo of everyone who attended the event

The Ladies of the DeLorean Mid-Atlantic Club

Sorry... it was difficult to get everyone in one photo, so here is a second angle with some more faces.

Mike Deluca wants to make sure he captures it ALL.
Once the batteries had died in all of our digital cameras, and we ran out of film, we left Batsto Village and headed out for our next rally point. We had set one more meeting place just off of the Garden State Parkway for any late or last minute attendees to meet up with us.
After stopping at the rally point for a while and taking a break, we embarked on the last leg of the trip. A straight shot down the parkway to Wildwood! What a sight... all these DeLoreans traveling down the highway at 70mph in a group! We got a ton of stares from other cars and trucks on the road.
Ahhhhh... finally here! We arrived in Wildwood around 5:00 that day. The hotel was all ready to check us in and they managed to get us all set up quickly. The parking lot looked a lot like a DeLorean dealership. Even though this beach town is fairly quite this time of year, we managed to draw people who wanted to take a fast look at the cars. The club members were more than happy to oblige.
Mike Deluca had arranged to rent the house on the other side of the hotel. This would provide us a large meeting area to get together and relax in before and after dinner.
Everyone made good use of the downtime to stretch out and take it easy for a while. Several members took the time to look closely at each others cars and help out with questions that anyone might have had.
As always, Rob Grady was ready to pitch in and look over a few cars and do some small inspections.
A few people decided to check out the local boardwalk while others ran out to local stores for snack food and drinks to consume later that night.

From above the cars almost look like models

Dan Deutsch, Ben Maxwell, and Gary Gore hanging out.

A local Wildwood resident gets a chance to sit in a DeLorean. Do you think he is excited?

Tiffany Olejnik asks 'Is it time to eat yet?'

Tom Grippenburg, Marc Levy and Laura Magee pose the question to everyone who was at the hotel 'Does anyone know where Rick Gendreau is?'
Everyone was just relaxing until we noticed something wrong... we were missing a member of our group and didn't know where he was! Worse than that, he had no cell phone to call us, or vice versa!
We finally found our missing member Rick Gendreau. He got separated from the pack and was lost. After getting directions from some locals he showed up 30 minutes after the rest of the group arrived.
Hats off to Rick for driving his car to the event from New Hampshire. Many of you may have seen this twin engine DeLorean at the Memphis 2002 show.
Rick has the front engine up and running and the car is a sight to see. With little storage space, his passenger seat contained a spare tire and his luggage. The car only has a 5 gallon gas tank so Rick has to stop every 80 miles to refuel during his trips!
NH to NJ, 5 gallon tank, twine engine car, no cell phone, got lost, and still had a smile on his face. Rick deserves this page dedicated to him.

Rick Gendreau shows his twin engine car to Mike Paine and David Delman

Rick's car currently has one working engine of two installed. The front has a Honda Prelude motor currently powering the car.

The rear of the car has a Cadillac engine that is currently not hooked up.

With twine engines, the car not only lacks room for a spare tire or luggage, but also only contains a 5 gallon gas tank! Rick has to fuel up every 80 miles he drives!
Now that we finally had all our members safe at the hotel, we made announcements about dinner and some basic plans for the boardwalk car show the following day.
Dinner that night was to be at a restaurant called "The Ravioli House". The owners of the restaurant had been a pleasure to work with and gave us huge expectations for the meal that night. Our dinner would be served family style with several courses to help fill us up. Dinner was to start at 7:30 and everyone was getting hungry. We quickly set up plans to depart and get underway.
Dinner at the restaurant proved to be amazing. Food just kept coming out of the kitchen and placed on our tables. We had soups, salads, platters of cheese and cold cuts. There were homemade pastas, chicken marsala, veal, and stuffed seafood platters. Everything was topped off with an assortment of Italian pastries and cookies.
Every member of the club left dinner with a full stomach and a smile on their face. The waitresses were great. The food was to die for, and there was no lack of it to be sure! Many of us packed up the large number of leftovers to snack on later that night.
After dinner, we all went back to the hotel and over to Mike and Lori Deluca's place to hang out and have some drinks. The family room in the house proved to be large enough for all of us to squeeze into comfortably. We didn't snack much since food was pretty much the last thing on our minds at this point.
Funny enough, Discovery channel just happened to be airing the episode of Monster Garage with the DeLorean/Hovercraft. Many members had not seen it yet, so it was a good chance to check it out. It wasn't long before Cheryl Abato noticed an uncanny resemblance between a person and the show and Rick Gendreau. To some people's surprise, it WAS Rick. It was really interesting to watch the show and get first hand info from Rick on what happened and his feelings on the show. Surprisingly enough he had no hard feelings and was able to tell us a lot about the show.
Breakfast, checkout and then a little roll onto the Wildwood Boardwalk. We were not too sure how many people we would see here during the off season, but once we arrived on the boardwalk, it was crowded with on lookers who had tons of questions and wanted to see our cars.

Up and at em! The next morning after breakfast we got ready to go onto the boardwalk and strut our stuff

Brett Bonte's girlfriend Mary was ready to get the show on the road... err... boardwalk..

The North Wildwood Police Department met us at 12:15 to open the ramp up onto the boardwalk

A Local Police officer directs us to our final location

Time to get set up and looking nice for everyone
One thing that every attendee agreed on was the fact that we definitely generated a ton of positive publicity for the cars. We spoke to anyone who asked about them, and answered every question. There were even articles about us in several newspapers loaded with facts and details about the car and our club.
We typically like to dedicate a page to having a picture of each of our members and their cars. This year since it was a two day event and some people had to travel home early on Sunday we were not able to get a photo of everyone who attended while on the boardwalk. We are sorry for those of you who missed on this opportunity. Catch us next year and we will make sure to include you.

Dan Deutsch and Karen (NJ)

Kevin and Cheryl Abato (NJ)

Rob and Debbie Grady (NY)

Gary Gore and Jennifer (NJ)

Mike and Lori Deluca (NY)

Marc Levy and Laura Magee (NJ)

Scott and Carol McMullan (PA)

Brett Bonte and Mary (NY)

Bill Robertson (NC)

Dave Delman (NY)

Tiffany and Susan Olejnik (MD)

Michael and Phil Paine (NY)

Brent Lundgren and Felecia (PA)

A nice shot of our line-up from 'higher up' on the boardwalk.

Kevin Abato takes a unique approach to get 'higher up' on the boardwalk for photos.

Brett Bonte and Mary chill out and relax on the Wildwood boardwalk with the beach behind them

When Marc Levy really misbehaves, we just lock him in his own car for a few hours

Didn't your mother always warn you about girls on the Boardwalk? Cheryl Abato, Laura Magee and Lori Deluca must be up to no good!

2:30 came pretty fast, and our time was over on the boardwalk

Thanks to Dave Delman for this great shot of us leaving
Our boardwalk show was a huge success. People flocked around to see the cars and talk to us. We officially ended the day at 2:30 and were escorted off the boardwalk once again by the North Wildwood Police (They were really nice to us the whole time we were there. THANKS GUYS!) Some members decided to head home at this time. Others decided to go to Atlantic City since it was only 40 minutes away.
Some of us decided we were not done yet with the group, so we headed to see the Cape May Lighthouse and do some shopping in the historical old Victorian town.
A group of eight DeLoreans Arrived in Cape May, NJ at the lighthouse, and suddenly again we were the center of attention. Pictures were being take by tourists and questions asked.
It was starting to get late and we were hungry and still wanted to go shopping and see the old Victorian homes in town. We packed up and headed to the center of town to do just that.

Cape May, NJ Lighthouse

Sadly, we did not get a chance to go up into the lighthouse and take photos of the cars.

It's like looking into a mirror of a mirror

A New Jersey Beacon and an American Icon

Local Cape May Traffic Officer Andrew Delp Dishes out the law to this illegally parked car. (Thanks for posing for us Officer Delp!)
When we parked, we were immediately flooded again with questions from people passing by. A local newspaper reporter followed us through town to interview us and take photos when we stopped for his column.
Around 5:00 P.M. we finally had eaten and shopped around town for a little while. Everyone started to think about the long trip home and wanted to get on the road. We said our goodbyes, fueled up our cars, and headed on our way home.
Everything about the tour this year turned out perfect. The weather was great and everyone enjoyed themselves. Mike Deluca pulled it off again and made the Fall Foliage Tour IV a great weekend for all who attended. Let's see what he cooks up for next year!