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By Dave Pratt This has gotten rather uncanny. Hasn’t our club ever heard of April showers? All four previous runnings of the annual AONE South Shore Beach & Waterfront tour have been run in beautiful weather, and this year makes 5 for 5. Event organizer (and AONE President) Tom Lesko was there on the morning of April 30th to greet us at our usual starting spot, a nice, big park alongside Hingham Harbor, with coffee, muffins, and donuts. The Alfas began arriving and one by one lined up in a row. There was quite an assortment of models (see the complete list at the bottom) — Spiders (Giulia, roundtail, and kammtail), a GTV, a Giulia Super, and a Junior Zagato. We were also joined by a Ferrari 308 and a Morgan +4, both driven by AONE members. Special credit goes to Doug Sondak, who brought his ’69 roundtail Spider. If you recall, Doug’s Alfa got hit by a pickup truck improperly exiting a rotary we were going around. The car’s been repaired quite nicely and the experience didn’t dissuade Doug from doing the South Shore event again. If you fall off your horse, get right back on! Before shoving off on the tour, we held a brief drivers meeting and Tom gave us a map of the route he had planned. The map was so good that the meeting wasn’t even necessary! Then we were on our way, with Tom and his Giulia Spider "Grumpy" in the lead. Grumpy is running quite well now, and probably is starting to deserve a better name. The temp was just a wee bit on the cool side, but all of the tops that were capable of being dropped were dropped. We headed out on a scenic itinerary that was similar to that of previous years but with a few extra frills thrown in. Our route took us out to Crow Point and then past the historic Old Ship Church & Meeting House (the oldest in the country, dating to 1681) and the Hingham Cemetery, dating back to 1630 (where several of Abe Lincoln’s and Paul Revere’s relatives are buried). Then we went out past Nantasket and Hull beaches and along Cohasset’s “gold coast”. Some of us made an excursion inland to the scenic Cohasset Common (where the movies "Witches of Eastwick" and "HouseSitter" were filmed). (Others of us missed the turn.) Then it was on to Minot lighthouse and the Minot's Ledge waterfront area (for our seaside Alfa line-up photo-op). We all made an excursion past the Lawson Tower (a unique wooden structure modeled after castle towers in Germany). We then wound our way into Scituate Harbor, which was our destination for lunch, namely the Mill Wharf Restaurant. This is the same spot we’ve dined on each of the prior South Shore tours, on the water overlooking the harbor, with fishing boats, lobster traps, buoys, piers, and seagulls to provide the ambiance. Our gang occupied one lonnnnnng table and we had ourselves a leisurely and enjoyable lunch, primarily seafood-based, of course. One young waiter dumped a full pint glass of ice water on Rick Lesniewicz, but Rick good-naturedly just let it run off his shoulder (so to speak). We never did find out whether he got his lunch for free…
After lunch, we fired up our Alfas and Tom Lesko led most of us back
to where we started, while others headed off in alternative
directions. Thanks again go to Tom for getting our AONE driving
season off on a flying start! Shall we make it 6 for 6 next year? Participants
Tom Lesko & Joe La Rocca – Gray 1965 Spider Veloce
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(Click on the thumbnails below for a larger view, and then
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