Just a short one this month, as the actress said to the bishop, a wee note to see what’s been happening up here in the northern extremity of the Dunedin patch.

May has been an up and down, busy looking forward kind of month. The days are whizzing past at a horrendous rate and rallies and trips abroad are leaping out at us unexpectedly. Most of the members have been making their plans for the various events and weekend and evening ride outs have been started in earnest.

Superb!! 

May Meeting

Wow! A whole car parks worth of scooters this month at The Red Garth with the warmer, drier weather tempting wagonloads of shiny, chromey, noisy beasties out of their various nests.

The meeting was very well attended with most folks bringing their bikes due to the pleasant seeming evening. I counted 13 Harleys that night with a mixture of one and two up so I guess we had around 18- 20 people there.

Three new faces to me with Dave and his wife Irene appearing for the first time on his black TC88 Wide-glide. One other guy appeared and I never got his name but he appeared with a nice, if unfinished (I think) FXR, with a cool looking, long stretched tank and probably the widest handlebars I’ve seen yet.

Hank soon had us wound up for a ride and after a rush of apathy we decided on a quick blast to The Union Hotel in Turriff. The road is nothing special, just a main road from Aberdeen to the small market town on the way to Banff but we had a leisurely cruise up in the fine weather. The sight of a baker’s dozen of HDs parked in the main street looked good and we also managed to bump into our old friend Dave Cay who was out for a blast on his Honda.

The staff of the Union coped with the rush of shandies and cokes pretty well and after a blether it was back to Aberdeen for some and further north for others. It was now starting to get dark and cold and I’ll admit it was a bit nippy by the time we got back down the road despite me setting a brisk pace to get home quicker. Role on an evening cruise in Spain is all I say.

Ride Reports

Once again I’m grateful to Big Eddie (and he is big) for his report on the ride to Applecross which I missed last month. If there are any budding scribes in the north who want to send me reports on rides which I miss either while out of the country or just plain not there I’ll be pleased to include them in my submission to the newsletter. Just E-mail it to me and I’ll paste it into the letter. If you have any other bits you want to include let me know because this is our update not just mine. This is not the usual plea to get stuff to fill it because quite frankly once I start writing I forget to stop.

Wallace Rally

Unluckily The Wallace Rally is hard up the backside of the travel arrangements for Barcelona so quite a few won’t be making it this year. However quite a few will. Off the top of my head I reckon at least 7 bikes and 10 people will be going from this patch and despite panics on my behalf about being too near the Barcelona thing I think I’ll be there.

Hopefully the weather will be better than was reported last year and I’m sure all will have a great time. Our Yankee mate, Ron Balliet is back in the UK from Nigeria and he’ll be making the run before packing his tent to head off for Spain.

Barcelona

By the time you read my bit you’ll probably have spotted that there’s a trip to Barcelona on the go. I’ll not dwell on this too much but for those not going ……..I hope you’re really jealous because it’s going to be great. For those of you bored by the mention of the B word I’ll write quietly so you don’t hear us.

Ferries are booked, tickets have arrived and raiding parties set up with travel plans. My own travel party will be setting off early on Tuesday to arrive by Thursday afternoon hoping to meet up with the rest of the north crew at the site to pitch up together if we can.

Extra space has been allowed for in the luggage for the kilts so we can carry the flags of our fine land and make sure that any cool breezes available can circulate freely to all temperature sensitive areas.

Sturgis 2000 

It seems as time goes on the representation on this tour from the north gets one more. Following Mr Natrass’s addition last month Russ Alminde has decided to join us too. Russ is returning to Florida this month anyway so he’ll be in the states and he’s managed to wangle some leave just at the right time. One more native won’t go wrong on the trip and it’ll be interesting to see if Russ tries to spread his recently acquired knowledge of "proper" English words to his native land.

Monthly Meeting

Finally the usual reminder that we have our monthly meeting on the first Wednesday of every month at The Redgarth Hotel, Kirkbrae, Olmeldrum, Aberdeenshire at around 7.00pm. All welcome whether owners or potential owners. I’ll not be there of course so I hope someone else takes notes.

See ya in Spain.

S'later