Our November Member Spotlight is Sunshine Bimmers Club Member, Michael Calkins who is 72 years young. Mike has been married to his partner of almost 20 years, Keith Proud since July 2014, when same-sex marriage finally became legal. He has 2 children, 6 grandchildren and is soon to have his first great-granddaughter.

Mike retired in 2011, but he has been quite the Entrepreneur. He owned a chimney sweep business, 2 restaurants & a catering business. Most of his career was in the trucking industry as Director of Transportation for two different foodservice distributors. His last position was at the Council of Aging running the Meals on Wheels in Daytona Beach & Ormond Beach.

He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and moved to Florida 1982.
His first BMW was a 1999 Z3 Roadster, but he has owned ten in total. He currently has a 2007 M Roadster with 23K miles (shown below) as well as a 2014 535d with the M Sport Package. Vroom! Vroom!

Mike joined Sunshine Bimmers in 1999 and attended M driving school at the BMW Performance Driving School in Greer, South Carolina and is an avid clock collector with over 80 total in his vast collection which includes a pre-Civil War, 30 hour OG.

Don has been a member of the club since July 2010 and lives in Orlando with his wife Linda who is also a native Floridian, born in Tampa. Don recently celebrated a milestone birthday. Happy belated birthday, Don!

Don serves as the Director of Engineering, Programs, Quality at L3 Technologies Security & Detection Systems. They make the body scanners at the airport checkpoints, the X-ray machines that scan your checked luggage, handheld mine & IED detectors, handheld sense through the wall radars.

His 1st BMW was a 1996 E36 328i Cabrio and his current BMW is a 2006 Z4 E85 3.0si Roadster and a 2011 E88 128i Cabrio. Don has owned four BMW’s over the years and has taken the opportunity to test them out at several track events (Daytona School Course (6x) and full IMSA course (4x), Sebring Club Course (2x) and 12 Hour course (4x), autocross with SCCA, PCA, BMWCCA, FAST, Martin Sports Car Club)!

In his “spare” time, if he isn’t doing something related to his BMW’s, Don likes to run and his Personal Motto is “Be outstanding in what you attempt”!

This is a photo of one of Don’s BMW’s and if you check the photos on our Social Media pages, you’ll see him at a few of our Teutonic Tuesdays! (Speaking of Social Media, have you asked to be included in the official Sunshine Bimmers FB group?)