Beginnings Everybody had a place to meet. From Hog Chapters to BMWMOA. But the Italian bike community had nothing! So I started thinking about a monthly meeting. Not a club, but just a get together. I talked to Steve Miyagawa who was the president of the Wisconsin Moto Guzzi Riders and he thought it was a good idea. So with that…I started plotting. We figured a brunch would be best. I started collecting dates. It would have to be on the weekend. We looked at all the events in the area. Sunday is packed…so it was going to be a Saturday. The first Saturday of the month was out because of the holiday weekends and the AMA Superbike races are the first weekend in June. So the second Saturday of the month was chosen. The place. Where would people come to ride? Where are most of the bikes? I got in contact with Steve again and Gene Rankin (DOCC) and Dave Cavil(WADE) and we talked about a place. There’s a little town called Rome in Wisconsin, that should have been perfect. When we got there we realized there was not a restaurant in the area. So that didn’t work. We broke out the map and drew and “X” from Chicago to Madison and Milwaukee to Rockford. The “X” landed very close Elkhorn Wisconsin. So we headed there, and on the square in this cool little town was the Elk Restaurant. The menu looked good and Gene had some knowledge of the place. It was really the perfect place to have the brunch. Its just south of the Kettle Moraine where there is some great roads and just north of Lake Geneva. There’s plenty of roads headed into this town as well. We have had as many as 65 bikes show for brunch and just about every Italian motorcycle you can think of. That’s how it got started and it spread by word of mouth. We had a couple from Iowa show up. We have had a trio of riders from Minneapolis come visit. It is worth a trip to the country. Riding, sharing pictures and stories is a lot of fun. Of course the foods good! Come on out. Eric Todd Trosper