Denny Villhauer, Dave Lau and I celebrated Father’s Day the right way on Sunday. That is, we rode our motorcycles. This wasn’t a long, multi-state trip like we did in April when we rode to Texas. No, this was a short hop down to Parkville, Mo., to let the wind blow past our faces and find some great lunch.

That’s one of the advantages of living in St. Joseph. We don’t have majestic mountains, stark deserts or the ocean. But we do have some interesting destinations for day trips.

Sunday, we left Denny’s at around 10:30 and headed south on state Highway 45. We invited the girls along for this trip, my wife Chris, Denny’s wife Melissa and Dave’s girlfriend, Nichi Yeager.

I say “invited” but the girls are usually included in our bike plans. In fact, Melissa passed the motorcycle safety course last fall and bought herself a sweet Honda VTX 1300 this spring. My wife is signed up to take the course in September. So with Mrs. Villhauer and Mrs. Booher riding their own machines, I assume there will come a day when the girls take off on a ride and the boys won’t be invited.

I just hope they behave themselves.

Anyway, we left Denny’s around 10:30 and headed the back way down to Parkville. Highway 45 is actually a fun road to ride. It’s not exactly the Tail of the Dragon but it does have some hills and fun curves.

An hour later, we pulled into downtown Parkville to look for a nice Father’s Day lunch. We found the Stone Canyon Pizza restaurant and ate some pretty good slices.

We came back on U.S. Highway 169 through Smithville and Gower and arrived back in town around mid-afternoon.

All in all, it was a nice relaxing, four-hour day trip. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The fact that it was Father’s Day made it even sweeter.