Feburary Tour to Tommy Ring’s Rat Rods

If you weren’t some of the 44 members that showed up this past Saturday, then you missed another great day, road trip, lunch & tour !
Most of us met and left from Loafer’s Glory, after a little coffee & donuts, but some joined us along the way. The weather started off cool, but it got better, and overall it was great day for a ride.

Russ & Pat found a great route, that tuned out to be one of the most trouble-free, directionally un-challenged drives we’ve ever had. We managed to keep together and make the best speeds we’ve done before, on some great roads, and I hope all of you enjoyed it as much as Cindy & I did !

We arrived at Farmers Restaurant in Columbia with-in 15 minutes of our plans, and they were ready for us with plenty of help and so much food ! We proceeded to get our money’s worth of lunch and left there pretty much on time for our short drive to our destination.

Once again, we found that where we went, looked from the front, nothing like what we found in the rear. And in the rear was Ring’s Rat Rods, where “Rat Rods Are Born”. Tommy Ring & one young grandson were there waiting for us.

The shop isn’t very big, and all the rods in it, belong to Tommy and his family. He admits now days, he spends most of his time as a writer for a couple of Rat Rod Magazines and renting out his music recording studio in the basement of his home. After some time looking and talking, we learned more about his musical background and we were invited to see his studio space; so off we went.

Tommy was gracious enough to let all of us, traipse thru his home and down the stairs to the studio, where we were greeted by a beautiful black grand piano. Since Tommy sat down at the piano and started telling us about it, it didn’t take much to get him to play & sing. As I said at the time, our club just celebrated twenty-one years of age, (thanks founders!) and we had been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, but never had we been serenaded !

After that, we thanked our host and most people started leaving on their own. We made it home safe and hope everyone else did also.

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