Monday, June 25, 2007

Its a brotherhood

Tonight was a dinner and the "Rider's Meeting".

Cool stuff. Basically HD does a really good job of combining with HOG and making you feel like "part of the family". The company is into "riding with the customers". So lots of reps on the ride. People from HD put the event on, etc. A National "Road Rally" like this is very cool. Its not the "stay in one place and party" type of rally as much as a "lets go ride" type of rally. Not guide, but "Here is where we are stopping and here is a general direction - but do what you want." For instance, being a ride leader for a small group and from here - we've decided to go off map a bit and take some better roads (to suite our needs) and take a few side trips (to see some cool stuff). And that is all encourage. So cool.

But the whole "family" thing was very cool too. They went through the crowd (1045 people) and found
  • youngest - 10 (and there was an 11 and 12 year old too)
  • oldest - 79 and there were quite a few over 65 as well.
  • representation - Australia, Mexico, Canada, 45 states and DC.

There was someone who had been on the very first HOG road rally - 15 years ago - which was in CO. Yup, CO was one of the stops on the first road rally ever.

Really makes me want to do some of the other rides.

Other interesting things:
  • How many people 35 or under... probably 20 or so. Yeah - most are our age or older
  • How many first time road rally - over 1/2.


Big plans for next year... HD 105 year anniversary and HOG 25. Big party in Milwaukee... Ted and Christie - our new friends, really want to go. If Tina can get the time off, it would be a blast. And its *so* close to MI. We could take the ferry across the lake and go see Pat and Ward. Big Trip, Big Celebration, Part of the family. Its cool.

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