The Best Parts Weren't on the Itinerary: The 2026 NWACA Summer Retreat

We packed our bags and headed to the Clearwater Casino Resort in Suquamish. We still are not sure whether that technically counts as Bainbridge Island or Poulsbo. We do know it is not actually Bainbridge, but it is no more than six minutes away, so we are calling it close enough.

The Northwest Auto Care Alliance runs events all year, and part of the rhythm is two retreats a year. This year, in 2026, the summer retreat landed at Clearwater.

Yes, there was a class. Shout out to Adam Robertson for his diagnostics class. We did not sit in on it, honestly because it would have been way over our heads. But we know the shop owners in the room really appreciate the depth of what he teaches.

Here is the thing though. It was not the things on the agenda that left the biggest impression on us. It was the times in between. And if we are being honest, that is the reason we keep coming back every year.

The magic happens in between the itinerary items.

Why we’re even writing this

We have only been part of the Northwest Auto Care Alliance for a couple of years. One thing we noticed early is how much history and institutional knowledge lives inside this organization, and how little of it the newer people ever get to hear.

So we figured, why not write some of it down. Who was there, who showed up, what actually happened. Because eventually someone new joins, and one day they might wonder who came before them and built the thing they just walked into. This post is partly for that person.

So we are not going to march you through the whole itinerary. There were games. People brought their families. There were a few dinners. All of it happened, and all of it was good. But there were four moments that stuck with us, and not one of them was something you would have found on the registration page.

The lobby was where the real stuff happened

The first was the shop owner roundtable. The hot topics were about what you would expect, the things that have been squeezing this industry for a while now, rising gas prices, rising oil prices. But the thing that actually caught our attention was Bryan Kelley across the room, locked into his laptop. He was listening, but he was clearly deep in something else too.

So when the roundtable wrapped, we walked over and asked him. Bryan, what are you working on. You are obviously building something. Turns out Bryan owns multiple shops, and yes, he was. He walked us through a whole set of internal tools and applications he had built for his shops. The one that stuck with us was basically an invoice reconciliation tool, something that took a recurring headache his team dealt with every time they closed out invoices and just made it disappear.

We were huddled in the lobby talking about it when we looked over and saw another shop owner in the exact same position, zoned into his computer. So we went over. Thomas Richardson, who owns Master Tech Automotive over in the Tri-Cities. Same question. What are you working on. He showed us two things. The one that got us was a project he has been building called Diagflow. The simple version is that it is an app that makes sure technicians actually follow every step of due diligence when they run diagnostics, and as they work through it, it guides them toward the problem. We are probably oversimplifying it, Thomas, so forgive us.

Here is why those two moments mattered to us. Most people do not put automotive and innovation in the same sentence. But this was two shop owners, guys who look just like you, who got tired of subpar tools and decided to build their own, using AI, to solve real problems in their own shops. That was not on the itinerary. That was just what happened in the lobby.

A room full of the same faces

The next was a leadership meeting. Mark Simons put together a workshop with the leaders of the organization, basically to ask what could be done better. And when we looked around the room, it was a lot of the same faces. People who already put in long hours at their own shops, and then put in more hours after that to figure out how to bring value to everyone else.

The question we kept circling back to was simple to ask and hard to answer. How do we make this more valuable for the members we already have, and attract new ones. If you have ever been part of any organization, anywhere, you know that struggle. It takes real time and energy to actually listen to your peers, to hear both what they say they need and the things they never say out loud, and then figure out what would make showing up worth it for them.

If you work in a shop or own one in the Northwest, this is the part where we tell you to reach out to us. We are happy to make an introduction to the organization.

The troll

The last one was a troll. On Bainbridge Island. The Andersons, Jeremiah and Mieke, who run B&B Auto in Bremerton, put together an impromptu trip, and a handful of us went to go see it. Turns out the Andersons are seriously into trolls. They travel all over the country to visit them. Apparently a single artist builds these things and installs them in random spots around the world.

Seeing the troll was cool. But the cooler part was a family of shop owners letting us into a piece of their life that has nothing to do with cars. That is just their thing. Them sharing it with us is the kind of thing you do not get from a session or a booth. For us, that was one of the most valuable parts of being in this organization at all.

Everybody takes home something different

Look, some of you were at the same retreat and got completely different things out of it. Maybe your highlight was the social stuff, the party, a good run at the tables, whatever it was. No judgment. But for us, it was these in between moments that made the whole thing worth it.

Before we go, we owe some thank yous. To the people who put the event together, Joanna, Brenda, and JT Tenney at the Northwest Auto Care Alliance. And to the leaders who keep this thing running: Mark Simons of Rolf’s Import Auto Services in Pierce County, Kandie Jennings of Tom’s Automotive in West Seattle, Todd Ainsworth of Swedish Automotive in West Seattle, and Mike Hall of Motoring Services in the Tri-Cities. And to Micah Strom and the Strom family of Modern Collision and Rebuild on Bainbridge Island.

If we forgot anyone, come find us. We owe you a steak.

Until next time.