President’s Corner July 2011

We had another good meeting with an excellent program by Bob Howard.  Bob explained how he was able to obtain a racing motorcycle, not intended for street use, and modified it to make it street legal.  His Aprilia 125 is a work of art.  Everything about it reflects precision craftsmanship and a passion for detail.  Bob had to do the obvious things like adding mirrors and turn signals.  He also had to develop a completely new wiring harness.  There was a lot more, but you had to be there to appreciate all his fine work.

At this point I would like to express appreciation for those of you who have given programs and those of you working on future presentations.  We have Neville’s program on Bert Monroe in September and Joe Brinkman is putting together a program on board track racers.  Until I talked to Joe I had no idea that St. Louis had its own board track.  Anyway, his program will be sometime this fall or winter.  For next month there are several possibilities.  I’ll let you know before the next meeting what will be on offer.

Elsewhere in the newsletter is the first installment of Kris Tucker-Lowe’s article on the restoration of his Bultaco.  As always Kris puts together some very interesting reading and he has included accompanying pictures.  On the subject of restoration, our own Eric Miller is restoring a Matchless that will be the feature for a future meeting.  Right now Eric is figuring out how to balance the crankshaft himself since he couldn’t find anyone to do it for him.  He has taken photos as the restoration progresses.  Of course, being an aircraft mechanic with machinist skills helps a lot.  There are others in the club completing similar projects so I would encourage you to takes some pictures and make some notes.  I think our members would be very interested to know about what you’re working on.

Now, as a favor to Gene Ronchetto, I would like to ask those of you who visit our blog and/or our Facebook page to let me know which you refer to on a regular basis.  Of the twenty three at the meeting, sixteen go to the blog for info and three to Facebook.  If you were at the meeting, there is no need to respond but I’d like to hear from the rest of you.  Gene also wants to know what, if anything, you want included that he is not providing.  Also, he would like to know why those of you who don’t refer to either the blog or Facebook don’t take advantage of this source of information.  While on this subject, we all owe Gene a big thank you for his work in this regard.

It was brought to the club’s attention that we haven’t had any club shirts made for a while.  Mark Bosworth has volunteered to do some checking on prices for short sleeved shirts with and without pockets and long sleeved shirts as well.  Some requested that we go for grey shirts again.  What are your thoughts?  We’ll need your input at the next meeting.

Next month our meeting will take place in the dealership showroom instead of the Moto Museum.  I’ll send you a reminder prior to the next meeting so none of us intrudes on the event taking place in the museum.

Finally, I want to remind you that dues are due.  So far we only have thirty three members, out of eighty four, paid up for the 2011-2012 year.  If you’re not going to be at the next meeting please send your dues for twenty dollars payable to the Euro Motor Union to:

          Mark Bosworth

          7233 Crystal Lake Court

          St. Louis, MO 63129

In the meantime, ride safe and hope to see you next month.

Harlan Hock, President