Well !  Calvin do you want to supply me with 50 battery boxes at sixty quid a piece or not ?  Err! Yeah Yeah I'll do it John .

And it was then that Calvin started to realise something was up !

As the dream faded it became all to obvious to him that he had dropped off somewhere along the way at the general meeting.  Maybe lying on John's camp bed hadn't been the best idea but now he was awake and realising he'd just volanteered in his sleep for some thing, but the question was what?

And so it happened that at the Billing rally the presidentship of the Indian Owners Club passed into Jess' hands and Calvin put himself up for vice president, which means in 2 years He'll be pres and will have to figure out a way to Faithfullyreproduce the club as he manages to do with many other Indian bits, it should be fun to watch as Cal struggles with cloning etc .

Anyway the Billing rally at the American-Auto Club Summer nationals If you were there you can skip this bit, and if not why not ?

The weather wasn't too bad, the odd shower and fluctuation in temperature, so that we never knew what to wear and it was a grin watching Anita dashing around changing from jumper to leather to sweatshirt and back to teeshirt all in about an hour . If you had come south to the rally as did John and Phil Wright the you'd have ridden through a rain storm for a lot of the way but for the weedy southeners you'd have been ok

Jess was camped out on site from Thursday to keep Mr & Mrs Pelder company and the rest of us started wandering in on Friday morning to indulge in the favorite game of erecting gazebo's and this time the new game of shoving up the club tent which was to say the least entertaining as none of  us had a clue how it should go or what it should look like when its up ,how many walls should there be ? can anyone remember and where does the gutter strip go ? well I tell you ...back in the ruddy bag  But we got it all up in the end and wandered off round the show to see what had turned up ,

As the day wore on more folks turned up and it started to look as if we might have a rally with the arrival of John Wright and his son Philip who sadly it seems had contracted a nasty case of poultry flu on his way down so bad in fact by the end of the show he was talking fluent chicken ( which has to be better than Geordie ) and by looking at the photo you can see it had just about taken him over completely by the prize-giving.   Philip also achieved an amazing trick of springing a leak in the petrol tank but not till he arrived on site and could drain the main tank although this meant a ride home on just the reserve and lots of gas stops .

Jess came up with a small motorbike that we all had a ride on then he sets off with the idea of raffling it of at a tenner a go against the lottery bonus ball so he needs up to 49 people so he's off to the show organisers and its game on ( these pikey's don't miss a trick )

I pass the time by haggling with Pete over a pair of Lambretta seats I brought for him ,I think I was robbed but I'll not know till I see his old ones on E-Bay.  If you've got any old Lambretta bits clogging up the garage this could be just the man your looking for Mr and the by now Mrs Chaterton arrived (Congratulations from us all)

Andy Donald arrived complete with the club regalia ( including if you want some ,a stock of past rally badges so if your collection is missing any give him a ring ) and we all wandered around tracking down food.  Anita and Pete dragged me of to the Billing Mill pub just to prove how noisy it was and they  were right, but not until Andy had sat down to eat , then out came the big speakers and the prelim to the kareoke was standard club music which in the end was enough to drive us back onto the site and into the beer tent where the music was even louder

So Friday ended with a coffee while trying to knock birds out of the trees with one of the worlds most powerful torches , Phil disappearing with 2 girls in a Ford Mustang ( neat trick )  and the sound of Anita hunting around for a chicken & mushroom pie for as she will tell you insistently after a drop of JD ,

"12.18 am is the very best time to eat a C& M pie ".

Saturday

Up and about ,the weather looks good and the great joy of Billing there's plenty of hot water in the loos to wash with .

We sit around drinking coffee and waking up and it all clouds over and sets the pattern for the whole day   "Bet that's going to rain later" it did !  On and off during the day but in between we got on with the serious job of rallying

I found my bike would cut out at low speed and tick over and after 20 minutes of messing with the fuel  filter pot  Pete remembers that my brake light goes out when the revs go down and pronounces a flat battery  he was right of course but he could have said before I found that petrol always runs up your sleeve defying gravity

We had 10 bikes on the stand during the day and attracted a lot of interest ,some of it not over welcome as somebodies snotty brat left John Chats ignition on so he joined the elite ranks of non electric Indians

John Wright had set up a place to go for a ride out but nobody was over enthused about going , as usual there's a lot to look at in the showground and that's where most people ended up, then Anita announced that it doesn't feel like a rally unless she has a ride out on her bike and forced Pete, Frank Nuber and myself to go with her.  So off we go in between showers with Frank leading and no particular destination , But he managed to meander us around the local countryside and find a nice pub for a break ( I don't know if we got lost only that we didn't have to back track ) and back to the site in one piece and without finding the storm that was also meandering around the area

That done it was back to rally stuff and John called the AGM for the owners club.  This is where you should have been there! I won't go into this as its probably reported elsewhere except to say this is where Calvin made his fatal mistake.

Then we were off to meet with the official security state trooper (sic ) to learn the plan for the Indian ride in to the arena

Its not just a case of riding your bike in you know ? it has to be precisely planned and you must be proceeded by a U.S. patrol car at a designated speed around the preplanned route and followed by another patrol car to stop Jess disappearing and it must be at exactly 8.30 and precisely 10 mins behind the Dayvan display .

Guess what ! the dayvans never were ready cause it wasn't dark enough for their flash lighting , so we were off on our own at around 9 twice round the site pressing the police car to speed up and into the arena , make loads of noise ,shut down and bugger off for something to eat , that'll do me !

Then a few beers ,listen to the imported singer and away to bed

Oh yeah ! Jesses raffle  bike went , funnily enough to the Biggest bloke on the whole site and also he has the ruddy great v8 bike

Sunday

Up and about, the weather looks good.  We sit around drinking coffee and waking up and it all clouds over and sets the pattern for the whole day   "Bet that's going to rain later" it did !

This looks familiar don't it

A nearly normal sunday morning ,the longest travelled folks start to look to heading home ,But this show is a proper 2 day event for the rest, so Sunday is the main day and a lot more cars and bikes turn up

Jess runs around to get the Indian prize-giving done early so that the Wrights can carry off a slew of trophies and still get home before dark, this done it was goodbye to most of the members ,

But Pete has to hang around as he won 2nd best bike in show beaten only by the V8.  I think it was a sympathy vote as he had the smallest Harley there!  Ahhhh and yeah He's won it before, But this time he stood in the pouring rain to get it.  Tee Hee

Anyway that was about it

A good weekend with loads to see and all told, a good laugh

So usual thing:    If you were there "It was good to see you "    and if you weren't "Tough" 

Hopefully  we'll see you at the International.

  Keith