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October 11th 2003 - W3SI Rural Cruise - Recap and Review

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The rural cruise through the Kettle Moraine area turned out even better than expected. When the crew finally arrived back at our original location, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in the group who wasn't grinning from ear to ear. The rural cruise seemed to shatter expectations and had people wanting to go back for more. More to come about that later...

The event started out at the Village Park in Eagle, WI around 12:30pm and members started filtering in up until about 1:30pm. Several groups caravanned in together from the Green Bay and Madison area. W3SI was happy to see some new faces in the crowd as well. Jason Romaker from Sun Prairie and Eric Bennethum from Oconomowoc recently joined W3SI this week and attended their first gatherings. Members hung out and spent a good deal of time checking out each others rides and getting reacquainted with old friends. Greg Ellingson's car drew some special attention, as many people were waiting for him to arrive so they could see his new 1995 Stealth RT/TT which was built by Dynamic Racing. Needless to say, when it arrived, it drew a large crowd - deservedly so. Around 2:00pm we departed the Village Park to head out on the first leg our our trip.

The rural cruise took us through some of the most scenery filled areas in Southern Wisconsin. The Kettle Moraine Forest was just in the throws of the season change. Leaves were colored, scattered on the roads, and the views couldn't have been more beautiful. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, the scenery went by blazingly fast in certain areas of the journey as speedometers doubled and more than tripled the speed limits in certain areas. On the way to Jefferson, we drove many roads that twisted, turned, went up and down like roller coasters, and heard comments on the FRS radios such as, "Damn, I hit my head on the roof going over that one...". The crew did take it cautiously through certain areas when necessary to avoid any accidents or oncoming motorists and kept the pace reasonable on the main highways. After about 45 minutes of hair-raising driving, we arrived at Jim's Burger Corner in Jefferson.

Jim's Burger Corner allowed us to grab a bite to eat and chit chat for awhile. The group talked with a few of the other customers attending the burger joint as they checked out our cars and we learned a bit about Jefferson Raceway and some other 3/S cars that lived in the town. Hopefully we'll hear from the owners of the 3/S's soon as we passed out a few business cards on request to the patrons of the burger stand. Our group of cars was very visible from the main street in Jefferson. After awhile, we started noticing one, two, and three Jefferson County sheriffs circling around the block every few minutes. In addition to that, we saw two additional undercover vehicles as well that kept scoping us out. We imagined getting out of town without being followed was going to be extremely difficult but eventually we cleared out of town without being followed.

The ride back was highlighted by two events. About halfway back we stopped along the roads in the countryside for pictures of our cars lined up together. While taking pictures, we noticed a driveway leading to a farm house. There was a halloween decoration in Farmer Joe's (for lack of remembering his real name) driveway which featured a scary looking man riding a bike carrying pumpkins. However, the real treat was the fact that Farmer Joe's neighbors, as a rib, decided to dress the halloween scene in a slightly improper fashion by adding a bra and other miscellaneous things to the setup (see link below for pictures). Farmer Joe was kind enough to talk with us for awhile, showing us his ducks and other assorted creatures around his farm. Eventually we headed back on our way and after about 50 minutes of driving made it to, what was likely, everyone's favorite part of the rural cruise. We navigated a road that was designated as a 35mph road with hills, dips, and turns enough to get car-sick from. However, there were several members (ahem), that found their speedometers in the triple digits going through this area... Stay tuned, there may be some videos to come. On that last part of the trip We also heard comments on the FRS radios such as, "I just caught air!". The only minor hiccup along the way was that Dave Lange had his Y-pipe blow off about a mile away from our destination, a small snag along the way, but no harm done.

The event was fantabulous and the excitement level was buzzing strong when we arrived back in Eagle. For those that missed it, I'm sure those that attended will be rubbing it in your face for some time to come for missing such an awesome day. After hearing the feedback from everyone that attended, it's almost a lock that W3SI will run another rural cruise just like this in the future.

After the event concluded around 5:00pm, about 10 of the members headed over to Jesse Rink's house which was right down the road to work on/fix three of the cars, have some beers, eat some burgers, socialize, and hang out until roughly 1:30am in the morning.

W3SI would like to send out a gigantic thank-you to all the members, friends, and families, that participated in this event and made it far exceed any expectations. W3SI would not be the same without YOU. It takes enthusiastic and dedicated members to make W3SI and it's events successful, and we're happy to announce we have exactly those kind of members.

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