The Steering Column
From your Co-chairmen

John Schroeder's Left Hand Drive
John - flobearsmgcomcast.net

Greetings everyone! The past few weeks have been fantastic for driving our cars. I hope you have had a chance to enjoy the warm weather. The top is down on FLOBEAR now and I try to get some driving time in every day. The daily driver has been replaced for MG season. I can't understand what the kids mean when they say I am obsessed.
Kim Tonry and I finished third in the Missouri Endurance Rally out of 14 teams that participated in the full rally. There were also 16 teams in the mini rally. We had dinner Friday night with Paul and Jason Urquhart and with Robert Rushing (the rallymaster). Dinner was at the Growler Pub, so Kim felt at home even though his GROWLER was back in Downers Grove. The weather Saturday was beautiful! Temperatures were in the 80's and the sunshine was really welcome. We had twelve stops in the eastern half of Missouri. We finished our last checkpoint and headed back to the hotel and end point. We had traveled just a few miles when the rain came down in buckets. At least we had visited all the checkpoints and completed our verifications before it rained.
Don't forget to come to the Spring Tune Up on May 7th. We will have lunch at the nearby Kerry Piper Pub after.
Wade has a Road America Tour and barbeque for May 20.
Plans are coming together for the September Wine, Cheese, and Beer tour. I have hotel information and some ideas for the places we will visit. Ann and I will be checking the roads and stops out soon. I also have to make a stop at New Glarus to re-supply my garage refrigerator with Fat Squirrel Ale.
Dan Herman has information for the August tour in Jo-Davies County elsewhere in this issue. He is planning a tour of less traveled roads and locations. You can do the tour in one day or spend the night and have a second day of fun on Sunday. This promises to be a really fun driving season. Hope you can join us often.
It is now less than two months until we leave for MG2006. The first emails have gone out. We have the rail tour set up and 34 riders so far. I have a few spots left so if you missed the deposit deadline, I will still be able to get you tickets. There are 23 cars represented on my email list for MG2006. I have planned the route down. I am expecting two relatively easy days of traveling on a mix of interstate and scenic highways. We have enough people going to break up into smaller groups. Any one who wants to take more or less time going down can probably join one of the groups. I will provide directions to everyone and we will be using two way radios and cell phones to stay in touch. I have learned the limitations of cell phones over the last few years. If you have radios, let me know as we will need quite a few of them.
I am so glad Spring is here. The sun and warm weather is especially welcome when you have cars like ours. Enjoy your cars! See you on the road! - John - flobearsmgcomcast.net