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The Hill Gang Rookies Saddle Up
Paul Hastings Reporting from the Winthrop Inn
It was like all your best Christmases wrapped up in one, with the build up of anticipation and then finding your dreamed for present under the tree.
Those same feelings were felt by Glen Dickenson, Pete Paine and Stu Shelton, the three newest members of the International Leadership Development Hill Gang as the expectancy of their first motorcycle trip was coming true.
The long-awaited day/hour/minute couldn’t arrive soon enough for them, or the other 16 qualifiers on the 2001 Camp Daughery Rolling Rally, which left Spokane and traveled 230 miles on its first leg yesterday.
“It was like when I was 11 years old and went on my first fishing trip,” Shelton, an attorney from Olympia, WA., said. “You get up every hour, making sure you don’t oversleep and always checking your rod and reel.”
Shelton was sleepless in anticipation, as was Dickenson and Paine
The clock couldn’t move fast enough toward the 9:30 a.m. departure from the Daughery Compound for Dickenson. He was up by 6 a.m. and ready to go 30 minutes later. Most of the remaining three hours were spent pacing between the breakfast/board room and his motorcycle parked outside. He also was trying to talk everyone into leaving earlier.
But the wait was worth it, especially on the gas station breaks to refuel the motorcycles and the riders’ bodies. “To have an experience like David Humphrey coming up to you and saying he’s proud of you,” Dickenson said. “The same thing happened over and over.
“That’s the stuff I got out of today,” the California resident who’s a sales manager said. “Sure a ride’s a ride, but this association thing really comes alive.”
Paine, a pastor who lives in Illinois, also had trouble going to sleep. “There’s a feeling of excitement of seeing a dream being fulfilled,” he said, “knowing that it’s going to be better then you can possibly anticipate.”
Under a clear blue Washington sky, 17 motorcycles and two chase vehicles left the home of Double Diamonds Jack and Rita Daughery and traveled north and west through countryside varying from farmland to lumberyards to river gorges to mountain sides.
The Bad Boys wove through many small towns, attracting attention by riding approximately $500,000 worth of “scooters.” Three men blacktopping a driveway outside Tonasket stopped working and stared as long as possible at the group riding in staggered formation.
Young boys cheered and jumped for joy in Chewelah and three “more mature” ladies in another town watched, then smiled and pointed at a Suburban pulling a new Harley Deuce on its trailer and mouthed that’s what they would ride in.
The Hill Gang ended up in Winthrop, a small-mountain community of less than 500 people but the town’s main street has an authentic Old West look and atmosphere.
After dinner and a short walk around town, the Bad Boys also ended with their first campfire of the trip, during which Dickenson, Paine and Shelton were asked to express their reasons for qualifying.
For all the riders it was an unbelievable day. 
“Wow,” Shelton, who rode as Daughery’s wingman for the first day, said. “Looking back and seeing all these bikes behind you – it was a rush.”
“If there wasn’t anything more than this and I had to go home right now, it would be worth everything I did to get here,” Paine said. “But I’m looking forward to the whole trip.”
Today the Rolling Rally heads toward Lake Chelan and Wenatchee before finishing at the Enzian, a Bavarian-themed motor inn in Leavenworth. Leavenworth also is Jack Daughery’s birthplace.
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 Quote of the Day: “It doesn’t get any better than this, but it will get this good again. And that’s our hope, isn’t it!”
--Executive Diamond Jeff Moore
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