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(Click on a thumbnail for full size image.)
The Big Day.
After weeks of planning and anticipation, it was finally here. A perfect Fall day in New Hampshire. A lot of us had stayed in local motels the night before. Will and Pam from New Jersey were at the same motel as me, as well as Jamie, ("Parts Guy" on the message boards). There were some other Xs parked there, but I still haven't figured out who owned them all. The original plan was to meet at 9:30 at the start of the Auto Road, wait for stragglers, and then head up around 10, but I had heard the starting time was going to be 10:45 or so. Plenty of time for Jamie and me to get two jugs of coffee to serve, despite the long long line at the donut shop. Or so we thought...
When we arrived at 10:00 I was forced to go through a gauntlet of Xterra owners pointing at their watches and having lots of fun at my expense. Man, everyone was anxious to get going! (I am not exactly known for being a morning person- so I am quite used to it.) The official count of Xterras for the event was 23, plus a brand new Frontier. Not quite as many as went to the Gathering of Xterras this past summer in Colorado, but it should do for the record east of the Mississippi.
It was great to see all those Xterras gathered in one place. The best part was meeting all the people I knew from the different message boards, but had never met in person. I was impressed with how far away some people had traveled to join the event. In fact, in the 3rd pic from the right you can see Jeremy and Teresa, a couple from Virginia. This was at least their second trip to New England, as they had flown up this past summer to buy their Xterra from me. (It was great to see so many of my customers in attendance.) In the 4th pic you can see Clea, one of the folks from Nissan who flew out from California to be with us. Signing up at the table is my friend "XCanuck", a regular from the message boards who came down from Montreal. (We had 3 Canadian Xterras in attendance.) We had people from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Montreal, Ottawa, Labrador, and the people from Nissan in California, who drove an Xterra lent to them by my dealership.
We spent some time getting acquainted, checking out all the Xterras, and seeing what mods the owners had made to them. Clea interviewed each proud Xterra owner, and recorded it on digital video. My favorite mod was the interior of XCanuck's Xterra. (Thumbnail above- far right.) He has this nifty center console added to his X, new shifters, and lots of carbon fiber trim.
In the 6th pic from the right, we can see Dave from New Hampshire getting one of the NEXTerra T-shirts Matt Peckham had made up for the occasion. (Or does it show the part where Matt engaged us all with a little Three Card Monty?)