2002:    A (busy) Year in Review

Whew.  This has been one busy year.  We know that we cram a lot into life, but this year was certainly a lot.  We drove cross country three times, did better than we could have hoped racing, and saw a 42 year old wife enter her first bikini contest!

We started the year by buying a truck on E-Bay.  In California.  Driving it back was just a part of the early work in preparing the race car.  Bella lived with us until she went to the Garskies and it was sad to see this little Daddy's girl leave.  Spring saw us driving cross country:  this time towing the race car to San Francisco for a trade show and race at Sears Point.  During all of this, our beloved Barley began having seizures and died in the Spring.

The racing season got under way with our first disappointments of the racing career:  little mechanical problems and setup problems with the car kept us from running as hard as we would like.  We eventually finished out the regular season with Dan collecting his first wins and wrapping up the series championship.  The car was a real focus this year with it being used for trade promotions, car shows, and even a national advertising campaign.  Bobbie drove her pink RX-7 at the track, but had a court battle over her PINKPSY license plate with the Commonwealth of Virginia.  (Governor Warner visited during the Easter Party, but Bella's attempted bite of him was purely a coincidence!)

Work has been busy in this challenging business environment, but eVisory has outpaced the industry with Bobbie as the CEO and Dan handling some of the projects.  It meant a lot of west coast travel and some ISO work in Paris and London.  2003 will see some real changes as we bet the company with our new partnership with the National Institute for the Severely Handicapped.

The London travel gave us a chance to catch up and Bobbie's self-made hat was the hit of Ascot.  For Dan's birthday a group of us went to New Orleans for the food, gambling, and an alligator tour.  As usual, Bobbie played bunko with the girls and Dan tried to get a little bit better at poker with the boys.  New friends like Ray, Linda, Laurie and Leslee came into our life even as we became closer to friends like the Marcuses and Cobettos.

Friends and family also got married.  Cousin Richard married his childhood sweetheart Becky while Daniel performed the wedding for Coby and Germaine.  Brandon graduated and moved to Richmond with Heather.

Many will remember 2002 as the year after 9-11 or as the year of a difficult economy.  It would be unfair to overlook those, but for the Elams, 2002 will go down as a year as a year of fast paced transition and we enter 2003 with optimism and full of energy!