Minutes.

Robbo has very kindly sent us this report, with Brendan providing the photos;

A very happy dozen member attended the most convivial, if informal, meeting at the Bowls club last Wednesday.  We all understand the reticence of some members to attend at present, but as president Tony said in the last bulletin, there are many who are very keen to meet in person.

Just to give you a flavour of things, those present last Wednesday  were this correspondent, Stu Bethune, Sam Baulch, Paul Reilly, Brendan O’Neill, Peter Hayes, Greg Allison, Boré

 Hoekstra, Lew Officer Malcolm McPherson, John Hutson and Lindsay Bullivant. 

Given we weren’t meeting en masse, we were able to simply order meals from the menu.  These were very reasonably priced and excellent quality!  A really happy change.

For the second time in two weeks I had stupidly attended an appointment with The President to have a filling done, with the result that I was dribbling and chewing my bottom lip till it bled.  Bullivant shouted me a glass or shiraz which came with a straw.  I could get used to it…

It was great to get together, and given that we may be having to meet in this more limited and informal fashion for a little while, I am keen to share with all members the very pleasant experience which we enjoyed.  As Membership Director I had been thinking that it really wasn’t appropriate to be trying to introduce potential new members at the moment, but after last Wednesday’s meeting I’ve taken a different view.  I think anyone looking to introduce potential new members to the club would do well to get them along to a meeting like last Wednesdays where they can get a real and immediate feel for our group.    In short, I wouldn’t hesitate to bring along a potential member, and I am to do so myself in the next week or two.  Can you all have a think along the same lines.

The meeting concluded with departing guests finding a telephone left on the table.  Close examination revealed it was Peter Hayes’, and as Riley grabbed the phone and started ashing out to the car park to catch Peter, Lew Officer told him to relax and that instead Lew would ring Haysey to tell him we had the phone…

Twelve was a good number, and it would be delightful if we could increase that significantly this week.  Air-conditioned comfort, good company and good, reasonably priced food.  A great new venue!

Robbo enjoyed a lovely Shiraz that was perfectly matched with chicken and 2% lignocaine hydrochloride with adrenaline. 

 

...Pip did it for me, even before he saw the photo.

Pip Ritchie sent me the following contribution some time ago.  I delayed sharing it with you because I wanted to tell more of the story.

 

In 1903 a man with the excellent name of Horatio Nelson Jackson accepted a $50 wager that he couldn’t drive across the United States in a car.  Jackson was in San Francisco and was planning to return to his home in Vermont.  When he accepted the bet, Horatio did not own a car, did not know how to drive a car, nobody had ever driven a car across the continent, and there were no roads.

Horatio purchased a Winton touring car.  He also had the good sense to hire a local mechanic, Sewall Crocker, to join him on the Journey.  They packed ‘coats, rubber protective suits, sleeping bags, blankets, canteens, a water bag, an axe, a shovel, a telescope, tools, spare parts, a block and tackle, cans for extra gasoline and oil, a Kodak camera, a rifle, a shotgun, and pistols’  They did not take any maps.

Wearing their rubber gimp suits and armed to the teeth, Horatio and Sewall set out in their Winton to cross the continent.  They carried the only spare tire available in San Francisco at the time, and they blew a tire and had to use their spare fifteen miles into the journey.  They had blown all their tires before leaving California and travelled most of the rest of the way with rope tied around their wheels. 

There was no storage compartment built in to the car, and the men lost their cooking equipment, glasses, most of their clothes and most of their money when it progressively fell off the car without them realizing it over the journey. 

Somewhere in Idaho the men purchased a pit bull name Bud, who joined them on the journey.  Bud suffered from conjunctivitis travelling in the open topped car, so the men fitted bud with a pair of goggles, leading to the famous photos of the dog.

As the journey progressed Bud, Horatio and Sewell became famous and they were greeted as celebrities in the towns they passed through.  Sixty three days after they left San Francisco they arrived in New York to a hero’s welcome.  Horatio Nelson Jackson and his two companions had spent hundreds of dollars on fuel and countless more on parts and supplies to collect the $50 wager and become the first to cross the continental United States in a car. 

Later in life Horatio was decorated for service in the first world war, twice ran for governor of Vermont, and once received a speeding ticket for exceeding the 6mph speed limit in his home town of Burlington, Vermont.  His epic journey is commemorated in the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.