What's Been "H"appening 01/27/02
by Dick Scalpone, AGWA-Illinois Chapter H
     Hi everyone, what a beautiful day it was today.  The morning was a little crisp and cool, but the weather man promised us sunny and considerably warmer weather by this afternoon.  The temps were suppose to reach 60 degrees today.  It just does not get any better than this. What a great day for a Sunday morning breakfast ride.  There were eleven of us that showed  up today.  Bruce Hirsch, Fritz Goins, ole Joel Gyurnek, Lucky Larry Greco, Sergeant Russ Prichard, "jumpin" Joe Hughes, Les Chapman, Lloyd and Leona Tatman, our guest Bob Sample, and of course, yours truly.
  Our assistant chapter rep, Lloyd Tatman suggested that we take a long ride to Waterman, Ill, where the "Tempo" restaurant is located, at routes U.S. 30 and Illinois route 23.  There we all sat down and had a room for ourselves and socialized until our hearty, tummy filling food arrived, to which we all devoured.  Everyone one has heard of the flick made many years ago called "The Dirty Dozen", well we were known as the Dirty Dozen-----less one, the brave eleven.
Bruce was in his four wheeler (his pony is in storage), so he decided to go home and spent some time with his mom.  Les, also departed so he could spend some quality time with his son.  The rest of us ventured on.  Lloyd wanted to visit his mom for a few minutes so we all tagged along to her farm house in West Brooklyn, Illinois.  After we arrived, Lloyd naturally had to show us his vintage cars that he is storing there in his mom's barn.  He sure has his work cut out for him if he is going to restore these vintage relics.  After spending 40 or so minutes there, we decided to depart for some ole fashion country riding on our ponies.  We headed out to Amboy, Ill and joined U.S. 52 and headed west towards Dixon, Ill.  Once in town "jumpin" Joe Hughes, sergeant Russ Prichard, and Lloyd and Leona Tatman decided to separate from the rest of us and head north on Illinois route 2 and ride along the "Rock River" and eventually head on back towards their homes.  The remaining five of us, continued out of town on U.S. 52 towards Freeport, Ill.  After joining Ill route 64 west bound we headed north on Ill route 73 to Lena, Ill and eventually east bound on U.S. 20 towards Freeport and through Rockford, Ill.  Having stopped for fuel and refreshments only once (no ice cream this time) we took all the back roads home.  As I took the lead, we were zigging and zagging throughout all of the small untraveled back roads and eventually all of us headed homeward bound.
  Today, we racked up on or about 250 safe and joyous miles of great traveling and site seeing, and socializing enrooted all the way.  The remaining five of us, Joel, Larry, Fritz, Bob (our guest) and yours truly, had one heck of a great ride.  Incidentally, unlike last week, Joel and Bob did in fact behave themselves.  Those two were absolute gentlemen, thanks to my supervision and a fore warning from their wives.
  Until next time, happy motorcycling to one and all.
 

Dick Scalpone
AGWA-IL Chapter H