Walmart rendezvous at 0700. It was the Monday of a 3-day Labor Day weekend and warm weather. Robin and I live less than an hour away and we arrived early but there were already hundreds of bikes.

This would be a somber event, but we had not arrived at the event yet – we were at the Walmart. There were many smiles of recognition. Maybe we were just glad to be alive.

Hundreds.  And more kept coming.

Region One (Cook and surrounding counties) has gone through some incompetent leadership that aggravated an already complicated relationship with the rest of the state. That has changed.

Effective mission leadership does not come from inspiring speeches nor meticulous policy statements nor forceful personality. It comes from tactical nimbleness. It is necessary for ride captains to become fully informed and keep fully informed only so that they can tell us exactly what we need to know exactly when we need to know it.

When you ride a motorcycle, you can lean back, take in the view and strike a pose. And then you crash. The better way to ride a motorcycle is to keep alert and constantly react. Al and Dave keep their egos in check and always place mission first. They run the mission the way you ride a bike.

It would be useful for school children to see us say the Pledge. It is good that they say it each morning (I'm assuming they still do) but it is not just for kids. The words are an actual promise – one that adults understand better than children.

If a child will not pledge, he is rambunctious. An adult who will not pledge is a traitor.

Of the 455 photos posted here, my wife Robin took 136.

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