Peoria IL area meet...

So, I know we have been talking about a Midwest meet.. I don't mean to mess with that, I think it's s great idea!!!

I have been keeping up with that thread, and I see that the Peoria area has quite a few speedsters... I think we Peoria area guys should meet up for lunch or dinner somewhere once a month... Obviously, people from coast to coast would be invited, but it would give us local guys a chance to hang out and share stories!

Anyone interested?

You are in luck, Tom.

One Cory Drake, esquire, will be passing through in "the hoopty" on his way from Maryland to St. Louis in June. He's requested a tourist visa for a few nights in the People's Republic of Stanistan (my place in Tremont) along the way.

We're planning a speedsterowners' get-together on Thursday June 21st. The tentative schedule will include meeting up at my place (I've got a big grassy yard with a lot of space for pictures), leaving from there for a decent drive (tour-de-corn), then dinner at someplace in the tri-county area.

Who knows? Maybe we'll all like each other enough to get it together and do some Starved Rock runs or something on a (semi)- regular basis.

I know it's a Thursday and all, but Mrs. Galat and I have to leave town on Friday the 22nd for a wedding in Madison, WI- so Thursday's the only day that works with Cory and me. You'll want to meet the legendary Cory Drake, and hear his tales of derring-do.

So... Tom, Steve, Rich, Bob, and any other Central Illinois misfits: are you with us, or aggin' us? We'd love to have you!

Barring any 24-36 hour predicted tornado or hail storm bouts, I plan to attend. On Friday, Stan, I could be your official Wisconsin tour guide and lead you towards Madison. It's north from you where the terrain starts to roll a bit.

Tom-

I just looked at your picture. Is that Brad Grimm's old CMC?

Stan:

Very kind of you to offer your place to meet and to organize the Tour de Corn. I will be there. What can I do to help?

Bob

I'll give you a call, Bob. We'll get a cupa' sometime very soon.

You name it. I'm pretty open. Tons of "chores", reroute a fence, gut our kitchen for remodel, Board of Trustee stuff. None of which gets in the way of getting together.

My family is leaving tomorrow for MO., so I am on my own until Monday.
Let me know what works.

Bob

Tom:

I owe you a call. My bad... I'll call before the week is out.

Bob

May I remind the Distinguished Gentleman from Wisconsin that his car came equipped with a roof? Whereas mine has none, and that I shall be in the middle of a 2,000-mile trek?

There is an update on the Sloppy Jalopy, since I had to make some modifications to the body anyway. I have a taller windshield to install now, and I have decided to go ahead with a complete repair job on the fiberglass shell. Any cracking, crazing or holes in it -- stem to stern -- are being repaired the right way as I type this.

The man doing the work is using a boat-hull approach, grinding out the cracks, channel-cutting them and laying in patches instead of hair filler. He's following that up with GelCoat, then another layer of some kind of polyester primer ...

Then paint. 1956 Porsche Racing Silver with orange darts coming backward from the headlights -- done by the time I start that drive. You hip cats will be seeing the finished car before my fellow Baltimorons. Cool, huh?

Stan, thanks for the lodging and camaraderie. This is going to be GREAT!

The "Distinguished Gentleman from Wisconsin" just doesn't dig tornadoes.
But, the weather is gonna be perfect anyway! Corn should be almost knee high. Should we be assembling a list of attendees like they do on the east and west coast...you know, all official-like. Anything big going on that Thursday (besides us) in the Peoria area that would cause all the Motel 6's to be booked up?

"Corn should be almost knee high", the distinguished gentlemen says.

Yes, if it were 1912 that would be true. However, now that we grow a corn-like plant that makes 250 bushel/acre- that corn will be darned near tasseled out by late June. We don't grow puny little organic corn like you do up in rolly-rocky, brown-dirt cheese-head land, Rich. This is honest-injun', GMO, flat-black corn country. We grow beans too, sometimes, and pumpkins if somebody gets a wild hair.

As far as big-doings in the Peoria area: not that I know of. But it's not like my finger is on the pulse of all the exciting things going on in the tri-county area. Bloomington/Normal is actually probably better for you, as you'll be traveling down on 39. There's about a million hotels there as well. Pekin is about 10 miles up the road (in the opposite direction, and has a newer Holiday Inn Express right on the (right) edge of town (closest to Stanistan). Places to stay shouldn't be an issue.

I'm looking forward to meeting you.

Yes, I bought it from brad, it's an amazing car!!! I fell in love with it like ten years ago!!! I also just bought another speedster! It's an older IM! It's a stock looking car, done in red...

Thanks for the invite to your place in tremont! I will be there!!!

And Bob, no worries! We are all busy! We will get in touch at some point I'm sure!

Stan, how's the Soylent Green crop this year?

Stan, where are my cashmere gloves going to sleep?

Rich-

Soylant green is people (!)

The GMO, 250 bbl/acre mutant corn-like plants are about knee high right now, and lookin' good with the 2 inches of (2% chance-of) rain we got this morning. Two more good rains and we can store it on the ground again this September.

OK, so it's me, Cory, Bob, Tom, Marty's gloves, and the distinguished gentleman from the great white north. That's a quorum, so we'll plan something fun(ish). Maybe I'll even have the car back together by then. Who knows?

Steve? We're just a skip down 39, and over a half hour from Bloomington. Marty? You in? I'm sure there's someplace your gloves will be safe.

Still planning on participating. The timing of this get together is probably the most critical part for me right now.

Soylent Green sucked on a thousand levels. My opinion? Thanks for asking!

I didn't like the dark nature of the production, the grim outlook on the future or the extraordinarily low value society placed on human beings throughout the film.

A society that can't feed itself is going to be a dense one, so New York was a great choice of settings. There is already a one-day addition to the process of getting food into the city, and it's easy to imagine that that delay will get longer and longer as the city continues to build upward

Off your meds, bud? ;)

It's the big line from the movie: "SOYLANT GEREN IS PEOPLE!!!!" Campy. Ridiculous. A perfectly angst-ridden movie, capturing all the hand-wringing anxiety of it's time.

That show and A Clockwork Orange both left me with nagging doubts about my fellow people as a kid. Can you tell? ;)

With regard to the THREAD, however, I'm heading out thataway not later than the afternoon of the 19th, taking my time and not pushing the car, so I should be in Stanistan by the evening of the 20th. Assuming, of course, that the chariot appreciates all the attention it's getting from the body shop.

BUMP for Cory.....

Lunch @ 1:00 tomorrow ad Cyd's restaurant in Junction City shopping center on Knoxville in Peoria. The owner of the shopping center is a friend of mine and may come by with something interesting from his stable of cars. I'm thinking our all german air cooled party may be invaded by an Italian vehicle with a horsie on it's emblem.