The August 10th Wagner Rotary Club was called to order by Vice President Becky Brunsing. There were several guests present: Bill Frei brought Mike Johnson of Current Solutions; Gerrit Juffer brought Roger Blaha and Kevin Janouseck. His program guests were Kathy and John Divine and their son Andy Divine.

VP Brunsing asked Pastor Bill Heermann to offer a prayer. We gave thanks for our time together, our food which gives us the energy to go about working in our community.

Rotarian Song Leader Gerrit Juffer announced that we would sing “My Wild Irish Rose.” We are still finding our way when it comes to singing without piano accompaniment. Our singing can only be described as lacking in pitch, tone, and timing.

Rotarian Ken Cotton gave his Membership Minute on the importance of regular attendance. Regular attendance is essential to a strong and active Rotary club. The emphasis on attendance is traced back to 1922 when Rotary International announced a worldwide attendance contest which motivated thousands of Rotarians to achieve a 100 percent attendance year after year. Rotary stresses regular attendance because each member represents his own business or profession. There are no exceptions for missing a meeting. There is a website on the internet where Rotarians can “make up” a meeting by reading several articles about other Rotary clubs and their projects worldwide.

A round of applause was given to Rotarian Kathe Henke who has 27 years of perfect attendance in Rotary. Well done, Kathe!

Rotarian Jamie Soukup was filling in for Sergeant at Arms Jordan Weber and he was very lenient to all: $1 to Jeff Doom for one of the Welcome to Wagner signs having a letter upside down; $1 each to Becky Brunsing and to Jamie for having to fill in for Jordan and Rachel; $1 to each member present for the poor singing; $2 to Gerrit for picking a hard song; $1 to Jerry Weber and Ken Cotton for bothering the Sergeant for change for the drawing; $1 to Bryan Slaba for confusing the Sergeant when weighing in at the clinic; and $5 to Jerry Weber for being famous and being mentioned on RFD TV by the “Cow Guy”.

There were only two Happy Fines of $5 each to Bill and Patty Frei who have been married for 26 years!

Guest Mike Johnson held the winning ticket for a chance at drawing the Queen of Hearts. It got noticeably quiet as Mike carefully drew a card from the small number of cards left. A sign of relief went up when he drew the Ace of Diamonds.

Secretary Craig Krsnak announced that the Queen of Hearts has $719.00 total. The attendance teams of Jamie Soukup and Jordan Weber had one miss on each team for the day with Jordan’s team having a total of eight misses and Jamie’s team a total of six misses.

Gerrit Juffer introduced his program, Andy Devine who is an antique motorcycle runner. Andy participated in the 2020 Motorcycle Cannonball Run. (Go to www. motorcyclecannonball.com to get a complete explanation and understanding of this event.)

Andy warned the club that he wasn’t a born speaker, but he proved himself wrong by entertaining the members with his story about acquiring an antique motorcycle and refurbishing it to participate in the 2021 Cannonball Run. His parents Kathy and John Divine were his support team that followed him through the whole race.

Andy became interested in antique motorcycles when he had knee surgery in 2015. He started reading more about it and started looking for an antique motorcycle in 2018 so that he could run in the 2019 race. Covid came along and delayed his plans until he participated in the 2021 race.

The route is 3,000 miles and a round trip is 5,000 miles. The route changes from year to year. There were five women racing, eighty-eight people started and only sixty-six finished the race. The run is strictly managed and organized. Only vintage motorcycles are allowed. Support vehicles and personnel follow their riders with food, drink, and above all the necessary parts and repair equipment. The support vehicles cannot be on the same road as the motorcycle route. You are on your own riding until the scheduled stop at night in another town. Motel reservations and stops at Harley Davidsons shops are included in the route.

The riders do not have a GPS or any other maps. They are each given a scrolling machine which tells them in detail about each mile, each turn, each stop. Try scrolling a machine and driving at the same time! Participants are up at 6:00 am and leaving at 7:30 each morning. Points are earned for every mile and points are deducted for making wrong turns, not arriving on time etc.

After the meeting Rotarians gathered outside the building to look at Andy’s motorcycle. This was such an entertaining and informative program. If you are a motorcycle enthusiast, contact Andy for more information on this race. He was so entertaining that we ran over our meeting time by 20 minutes.