On Friday the 18th around 1 p.m., Terry Collins, Jay, a friend of Terry’s, Danny Hudson, Pete DiOrio and myself left Denny’s on Hwy. 6 at Hwy. 10 for Hondo and the 17th St. Valentines Day Massacre motorcycle rally. We had a good ride and pulled into Hondo just as it was getting dark. We checked in to a motel called the Whitetail Lodge. That night we all put on the feed bag at a restaurant named Hermon’s. Man, was it some great food. Most of us ordered a steak. I think Terry ordered ribs and Pete ordered a steak for 2. It was, I believe 22 ounces. He finished it before any of us were halfway through.

We then went to the rally and registered. To our surprise, there were several other High Rollers from the other Chapters and a couple of Nationals. One High Roller in particular stood out like a sore thumb. He was wearing some kind of road kill for a hat.

Pete wanted to shoot some pool and it sounded like a good idea to me, so we went back to town. Pete needed gas and his bike has a special cam and carburetor and can only use 93 octane. All the stations that sold 93 were closed. After several stops we finally found some octane enhancer and he filled up. There was a bunch of young girls in several cars circling the filing station. They were gawking and hollering about the Harleys. We asked them where we could shoot some pool and they said there were only about two places. Both were cowboy joints. One was in town and they said it was really packed and required shirts with collars. We decided against that one. They said there was another the other way and volunteered to show us.

We followed them out of town, down some old farm to market roads for several miles. I was starting to wonder if we were going to be set up. Finally we came to this place out in the middle of nowhere. It took a while but we finally found a place we could park our bikes in safety. When we went in the place was packed with half grown ups and half kids, all country and western. There was two pool tables. We bought a beer and placed our money on one of the tables. While we were waiting, Pete went to make a phone call and a couple of young girls came over and wanted to know if it would be all right to sit on the Harleys. I told them I didn’t care but they better check with Pete before they set on his. Out the door they went with several other girls. When Pete came back to the table, I told him he better go outside and check on our bikes. He never came back in so I went outside. There he was, surrounded by the girls. We got to play two games then lost. There was so many people waiting to play we decided to go back to town.

The next day, Pete and I entered our bikes in the bike show. Stock Harley class. Pete just knew he was going to win the $500 prize. I didn’t really think I had a chance but entered anyway. About two weeks after I bought my bike back in September 93, On a dare I entered it in the bike show at the AMA motorcycle races in College Station at the Texas World Speedway. It still had the dealers paper tags on it. To my surprise, I won and they gave me a plaque, so I figured why not enter this one. You never know. Pete also wanted to enter the tug a war contest. He thought it was one man against another, but it turned out to be five against five and we were too late to register.

Terry and Jay wanted to go to Fort Worth for another rally that was being held Sunday. They left after 3 p.m. and we wanted to go but Pete was not going to leave until he found out who won the $500. Can't really blame him. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t able to find out the winner until around 11 p.m.

While we were at the rally we ran into another brother of ours, Greg Goodin. He wanted to go to Fort Worth, so we all took off around 11:30 or midnight. After stopping in San Antonio to eat we hit patches of light rain. We pulled into Waco around 6:30 p.m. and found out there were no rooms available. Seems they were having some big concert and everything was booked. After calling several motels we found one called the Red Carpet Inn.