Bike Night Meet & Greet

Last Wednesday evening I organized a "bike night" through my motorcycle meetup group. The meetup group is an Internet-based calendar where I post rides to the public and invite them to ride with our riding club and get to know the kind of riding we like to do. The ultimate goal is to find that one rider out of twenty who fits in with the characteristics of our club.

The "bike night" is more like a meet & greet, to encourage people to join us at a local bar, hang out, get to know us, and feel good about riding along with us on an upcoming ride.

I do these about once a month, and there's always an interesting mix of newcomers that show up.

So last night, Stacey shows up on his Yamaha Raider. He does most of his riding commuting to San Diego Navy Base, about a 150 mile commute roundtrip. I'm not sure he really has much time for joy riding.

Daniel, a retiree from Seattle, showed up with his Sportster. He just moved here, seemed very friendly. He's been staying with his daughter who had already lived here. He said his daughter finally got tired of him staying indoors all day long, and told him to go out and find friends. That's how he found us.

Tony says he finally "ditched the bitch" and bought himself a brand new Softail Custom. He says he wished he had waited and studied all of Harley's bikes first, because now he realized he should have gotten the Street Glide. He seemed bummed out about it now. He left our bike night early and headed over to another bar where they have cuter bartenders.

Diane seemed quite shy, she rode in on some kind of Kawasaki, small displacement cruiser. She says she's tired of riding by herself. She didn't say a whole lot.

Lou is fairly new to our group, though he's already ridden with us a couple of times. Lately, he's been bringing his ukelele on rides. When we stop some place to eat, he pulls it out and sings songs for us. He serenaded us at the bike night too.

Michelle has ridden with us once so far. She has a job detailing bikes around town. She's mostly here to promote her business, and wanted me to promote it on my meetup group website. She gave me a link from her business website, so I returned the favor. She's been very professional and discreet about it.

Mike's been riding with us quite a bit though he's not a part of our club. He seems to enjoy hanging around. He has a great attitude, appreciates our kind of riding, fits in really well with our group. He spent some time talking about prostatitis, and how awful it is, the symptoms, the recovery. I'm not sure where he was going with that.

Jack and his wife Melanie have ridden with us several times as well and seem to enjoy riding with us through the meetup group, though they have no desire to join our riding club. He's a very skilled rider, and very independent minded. They ride on a Goldwing, and she has her own saddlebag on one side, and he has the other. Kinda like his and hers bathroom sinks.

The rest of the folks there were members of our riding club, though not all of our members showed up. Even if none of the meetup group people had shown up, this is still a way for our club members to forge friendships.

Here's some photos...