Westfield owners welcome?

[seven11]

I see that this site is named "California Caterham Club" but are Westfield owners welcomed here? I think I met some of you at the Village Coffee shop car show in Calabasas.

-S

[Doug Liedblad]

Yes Westfields are welcome.

We have several Birkin owners too.

Not enough of us to be too snobby.

All you need is the membership fee.

Doug

[seven11]

Membership fee??? I looked around but could not find anything pertaining to a fee. What are the benefits for such a fee?
-S

[soareyes]

I believe the only fee is buying the webmaster a beer now and then. If there is a fee, I owe somebody back dues!

Stan

[mopho]

Is yours the BRG one I saw at the French/Italian show on Sunday?

[JohnCh]

I own a Westfield and haven't lived in CA since '94, yet I've been allowed to hang out here for a number of years. Sounds like I owe Magnus a few six-packs in back dues though.

-John

[seven11]

Wow if the fee is beer then I'm in!
Mopho- I met you at the Village Coffee Shop. I had just bought a 98 Westfield that is light yellow. You had just gotten your Caterham and we had 5 sevens in 3 parking spots!
-S

[magnusfeuer]

Each beer owed can be translated into one hour of baby sitting.

I realised that I forgot to announce that I am now a father since Oct 15. Sorry about that.

Our daughter Freya is doing fine and is currently busy feeding, pooping and screaming. She has not yet learned to drive my Seven, but I plan to change that within the next couple of weeks.

And just to derail the entire site for a day or two, I'll copy my facebook post on the birth here:

-----
Uncomplicated delivery + 4 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. That will be $75000, please pay up front. Yep, I think it is time for a health care overhaul in the US. (Yes we do have insurance)

I checked what a Swedish hospital's cost of a delivery, which is $3550. Miwako's delivery cost at Cedars-Sinai was $24000. Bizarre.

By the way, the infant mortality rate in Sweden is half of the States'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...mortality_rate
-----

Let the political flamewar commence.

[mopho]

^^ Announcement deserves its own thread, no?

[Elv15]

Magnus,

Congratulations!!

<rant>
The mortality rates are not new. They were the same when my kids were born ~15 years ago. The thing that is new is the cost. The cost of medical care is totally out of control.
</rant>

[GWise]

Congratulations!

From your pictures, it looks like she was on oxygen in the NICU? I work as a R&D engineer and I happen to work on respiratory products for infants, though I tend to focus on technologies for premature babies. Pardon my asking, but why did she have to stay over in the NICU?

Cedars is not a cheap place for anything. As far as the mortality rate - there are a lot of things that can factor into that. I would say that hospital care only results in a small portion of that statistic. Probably the biggest is smoking/drinking while pregnant.

[magnusfeuer]

She ingested faeces into her lungs during the delivery. This resulted in inflamed lungs with rapid breathing (75-80 bpm) and poor blood oxygination (92-93 whatever units of measurements is used). She was indeed on oxygen for 48 hours while getting antibiotics.
Total stay was 72 hours and $50000.

The good thing with spending time in the NICU was that she was in full debug mode with a ton of monitors hooked up to her. Every time we picked her up, wires, tubes and all, and she produced a rattle indicating imminent death, we just checked heart rate, breathing etc, and saw that she would indeed live for at least another 60 seconds.

/Magnus F.