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 July has definitely been a more active riding month. It started out with our breakfast meeting at Brighton General Store. Those of us who rode up early had a great ride. Those who planned to get there just on time, didn’t. We managed to schedule the meeting again on the same day as a bicycle race up the canyon. I heard of some members who got frustrated riding in first gear and turned around. Still, we had a fair turnout for a summer event and a super breakfast.
Next was the BMW MOA rally in Redmond, Oregon. That was my first time in Redmond, and I was quite impressed with the scenery and local rides. I didn’t stay for the entire rally, but I was there long enough to run into quite a few club members. I heard there were 6,000 to 7,000 attendees at the rally. Pretty good for a rally out west. These usually are less well attended because people from the east coast have to take at least an extra two days vacation to make it to the rally and back. The weather was a little warm, but otherwise nice for the rally.
Bruce Kaplan and I attended “Beemer U” on Wednesday before the rally. This was a day-long session for club officers and was devoted to improving the communication between the national organization and information on what makes some clubs more successful than others. We learned that the MOA is the largest brand-specific motorcycle club in the US which isn’t owned by the marque. There were sessions on recruiting and keeping volunteers, using the new motorcycle simulator at club events, best practicies of successful clubs, and hints on holding a rally. The main message I got was that like people, no two clubs are alike and what works for one club won’t necessarily work for another. There were a few ideas I noted that we might try. Such as:
- · have non-motorcycle activites for significant others who don’t ride
- · ask significant others what would be of interest to them
- · create a ride committee
- · get more members involved with planning meetings
- · improve communication with club members. (such as a Yahoo group)
- · have a designated “dealer liason”
- · make a personal “welcome” call to all new members· the club can get a list of MOA members by ZIP code for recruiting
- · more club sponsored tech sessions
- · don’t worry about membership club numbers. 50 active members is better than 200 inactive members.
- · frequently evaluate by survey what is working and what isn’t
The next club event was our annual Victor, Idaho, campout. We had a good turnout with about twenty people eventually showing up. Except for a couple of hours of rain on Friday evening, the weather was quite nice. We did anxiously watch three or four storms just miss us on Saturday night. I rode up with Marie M., a guest and potential new member, on Friday n ight. We rode our F650’s and got into Jackson late for dinner. While we were eating, it started to rain. We rode the rest of the way over  Teton Pass in near dark, rain, and wind. Fortunately, the rain stopped when we got to Victor and we just had to set up our tents in the dark. On the way home, Marie, Will, Claude, and I were trying to outrun a rain squal a couple of miles outside Randolph, Utah. We didn’t put on our rain gear because we thought we’d make it. However, the highway kept turning more towards the storm until we met it just outside of town. It was raining hard enough that I couldn’t see Marie’s headlight behind me. Luckily, we ducked under a Zion’s Bank drive through just before the rain turned into a tremendous hail storm. One very elderly lady who live there said she’d never seen hail like that before. It was impressive. Still, we had a fabulous ride home over lots of wonderfully curvy roads.
The quote of the month is from Albert Einstein: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow.” I guess he was a pretty sharp guy. We can all learn from yesterday. Like putting on rain gear instead of hoping you won’t ride into a storm. I’m sure you all have examples of things you might wish you could do over, but still learn from them.
Our next club meeting will be at the Golden Corral in Logan on Saturday, August 14th at 9:30. I’m pretty sure some of the Logan and Idaho members said they’d come if we had a meeting in Logan. Well, we’ll be watching for you. After the breakfast, I’ll probably ride with anyone who is interested up Logan Canyon, past Bear Lake, and back to the valley via Monte Cristo. If you want, you can continue on over East Canyon to Salt Lake City. Dave Ganansky is going to lead a group down to Monte on the dirt road that goes by Hardware Ranch. So, there should be something for everyone. I hope to see all of you there.
As always, ride safely.
Al Wagnon
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