Thanks to Dale Buehner

[Bill Campbell]

My wife Grace & I would like to thank Dale for standing in for Al when we visited the shop on Friday. Being weary travellers we arrived around lunchtime thinking we would stay a short while and look around some. Not so. Dale gave us the Grand Tour of the operations right down to the decal apron! Then he said we had to have lunch at Hansa's. He had never been there but he said it was a great connection with past. As you can imagine Dale went for the sausages while I had a veal schnitzel and Grace some beautiful fish. Then it was walk around the immediate area to show us local Cleveland. Not finished with that he then drove around half of the rest of Cleveland to show off his city.  We finally got back to our hotel room around 8 pm having our minds filled with some fantastic images. Love the one about the Cuyahoga fire. Many thanks to you Dale for a wonderful afternoon. It was a pity we couldn't catch up with the Penton fraternity but we definitely enjoyed our time with Dale. Ps we spent heaps of time at the RnR HoF Dale that by the time we finished I guess you had left the shop we I gave it a ring.  Next time. Cheers Bill & Grace

[ALB]

Hi Bill,
I am happy to hear that you had a wonderful time in my beautiful city of Cleveland and my brother was able to give you the nickle tour in my place.
I am glad that my brother chose to take you to lunch at Hansa's Import house. There is a Penton connection to the history of this place. This business was started by Fritz Dengle who had KTM build some street motorcycles branded as "Hansa" (sounding similar to Honda) that he brought over to Cleveland to sell. He contacted John Penton in the hopes of John buying these bikes to sell and then Fritz would be the middle man. Fritz offered one of the bikes to try out with John, who reluctantly agreed to test it out. Jack was the test pilot and it wound up breaking in half. [:0] That killed the Hansa deal however it brought attention to KTM's name for John to eventually contact for building the Penton motorcycles.

The Hansa Import House is still in business under new ownership. The restaurant was added on last year to take advantage of the area going upscale and being one of the tourist destinations in Cleveland.

The next time you come to Cleveland I will be happy to show you some more of the history of my city including the John D. Rockefeller and Elliott Ness connection.

Alan Buehner