Riding with Purpose: Groups, Charity, and Community

Niels: 0:03

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. Welcome to the Throttle and Roast Podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, I'll be looking into riding with a purpose. For many of us, riding is an escape from the everyday challenges, an opportunity to clear our and smell the freshly cut grass. While this solo approach has value, humans are social creatures. And riding with others brings its own value. I'll look at how you can participate in group rides, both small and large, and share a common purpose during a ride. Finally, I'll look at charity rides where the purpose is to support those who aren't even on the bikes with us. So I want to start with the opening gambit being riding doesn't have to be a solo endeavor. Getting out on the bike with others can help improve your riding. You'll learn how to ride in formation, how to keep everyone on the same path, waiting for others at turns or at lights. And if you're not leading the ride. It can even lead you to discovering new to you roads that could become favorites. You might observe some of the riders in front of you and see, Oh, this is how I can take that set myself up better for it. So let's begin with what I think is probably the best ride group to get started with. And this is really small group rides. Now we covered a bit of this in our essential tips for planning your perfect group ride episode, but small groups are more manageable both during the ride and if you have a destination in If you're heading to a you've got to think about, do we have enough space all the riders? If you've got 50, 60, 70 bikes, and you're trying to get into a restaurant, is there enough parking spaces for all of those bikes? Is there enough room for you to have tables for all of the riders just on demand in that moment? This is a much harder logistical nightmare when you're dealing with a large group. But if you've got a small group, three, five, maybe even seven that's going to be much easier to Most anywhere is going to have space for three to five bikes without blinking an eye. That's really that's two parking spaces at the end of the day for normal cars. If you have to pull into a gas station, for example, when you're pulling in three, four or five bikes, each of you may even be able to pull up to a pump right there and not have to wait in a queue. If you have 50, 60, 70 bikes, it's a very different endeavor. And that one fuel stop could take an hour just for all of the bikes to get And this is why I tend to think small group rides can work a little bit better. The other thing that you'll find is that with a smaller group of the likelihood that you're going to find those who ride more similarly to you in terms of the pace that you want to do, the type of roads that you want to ride on. It's much more likely that you're going to find that and you'll have people that you just gel and around quite well. Same thing if you stop for a meal. These are people you want to actually hang out. If you've got a very large generally got to go for the lowest common denominator. So it might be a really agonizingly slow pace for you, or it might be on really boring straight roads and you don't want to do that. And that's the problem with a larger group and that's why I think smaller group rides tend to work better for the vast majority of riders. Now, if you do want to get into a larger group ride, and if you've ever wanted to have a show of force from a large group of riders, these can be a great way to do it. And they are an experience. I'm not saying that they are my personal favorite experience. And they may not be the favorite experience for a lot of people, but I do think that they are worthwhile to experience until you've actually done it yourself. You don't know what you like or don't like. You don't know what you like. You don't know what you like. You don't know what you like. You don't know what you like or don't like. And I really want to try to encourage everyone here to have the biggest breadth of experiences with riding so you can see what you like and what you don't like. If you've never done it and you have a preconceived notion of what want to do, You don't know that for a fact. It may be something that you've assumed one way or the other. Likewise, there may be a lot of riders who have only done large group rides. Maybe they only do these large organized events and they haven't thought of the idea of having it with just some local Now, I would say if you are going to join one of these larger group rides, as I mentioned before, the logistics increase dramatically. So I would really encourage you, certainly for your first few times, be a joiner rather than a leader for that ride just as you're getting And as I mentioned, because of having to accommodate the lowest common denominator, some of these rides may not be the most exciting ride. So if you're in for the thrill of the ride itself, that may not be the draw for you in the larger group rides. But sometimes the presence of dozens, if not hundreds of other bikes can be an experience in and of itself, and therefore it can be worth doing. And the purpose of what you're doing for this ride, it might be you're riding for some support of something, or maybe you're riding just for a poker run, and maybe you're not riding with everyone altogether. Maybe it's just an organization of where everyone's coming together. They're starting and then going out on your own. So you can come sometimes have mixture of it doesn't have to be a large organized ride, but it's a large organized event where riding is part of it. So there can be a few variations into this. And I do encourage you each to give it a try. Now, another way that we can think of riding with purpose is using your bike to support a charity. Now, here in North America, there are a number of charity rides that work on sort of a national level. couple of good examples of these would be like Kyle Petty's charity ride across America. This started back in 1995, and this ride literally crosses the United States. And this year, it begins in Sonoma, California on May 1st and ends May 9th in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, the beneficiary of the money raised is to help children with camping experiences, especially those children who have chronic illnesses. So it really does have a good cause behind it. Now, joining the ride as a participant does involve an application process, and it has certain requirements for riding proficiency as well as the range of the bike between fuel refills. You're trying to cross the entire country in effectively eight days. So you're not going to be riding a very slow pace each day. details in the show notes if you do want to take a look at it or even not ride in it, but at least support the effort. Another one that you might take a look at would be the Veterans Charity Ride. And this is really meant to use motorcycle therapy to help wounded veterans. and most of the bikes that are being used have sidecars so that they can carry veterans who may be unable to ride on a regular bike due to injuries that they may have sustained. now there's all sorts of different ways that you can contribute to this. You could contribute as being someone who's going to ride. You could donate a bike. You could donate other aspects to support this endeavor, and I'll add in a link in the show notes if you want to learn more details. big one that you'll see, at least nationally here in the United States, is the Pediatric Brain Tumor, the Ride for Kids event. And this does rides located all over the United States, so you can participate in one that is local to you and support the cause. I'll put in a link into the show notes if you want to learn some more details. And the last one I'd say is really look for charity rides around you. While those ones that I just highlighted tend to be more of the national level, the big, big events, there can be a lot type of events that you could participate in that may be local. They may be a local event that's helping support maybe a fellow rider who had an accident, and you're there to support them as they need to get through any sort salary replacement because they're unable to work while they're recovering from their injuries, help them with hospital fees. There's all sorts of ways in which you can help. And help you with something that is much closer to home. Now, as we move our lens beyond the United States and North America, I think it's worthwhile for us to start to look at some European rides as well as some global charity rides that are out there. And one that I do want point out is the Two Wheels for Life. This ride aims to support healthcare in Africa, and your donations can help support health workers with courier bags, protective clothing, toolkits, rider training, and of course, motorcycles to be used by the health workers in And each year, there's a big ride in the UK offering a treasure hunt and several other events throughout the And I'll put a link for this into the show notes as well if you want to learn some more details about this ride and this charity. And the last one that I want to finish up with is probably one that one of the known, at least globally, rides that are out there, and this is the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride. This ride really focuses on men's health, and it supports both prostate cancer as well as mental health. And it was inspired in many ways by Mad Men, the TV show that ran for a number of years that was focused on the advertising agencies in the 60s the imagery of having someone dressed fully in a three-piece suit and riding a classic motorcycle from that era is really the image that the Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride is trying to capture. So you will be asked to ride Dapper or dress Dapper even, oftentimes, many of the riders will be in three-piece suits as they're riding a vintage-looking motorcycle. Now, some of the bikes are actually vintage. I participated for many years with a 1972 BMW R75/5. So my bike was over 50 years old and was riding along, and there was a lot of other really old bikes. But of course, being supported by Triumph, the modern retro style, so any of the Triumph Bonneville line is going to really still looking in that retro style and ones that they will be up at the front of the line. It runs in May at locations all across the globe. So there is likely an event that is happening at least somewhat close to where you and I'll put a link for that into the show notes as well. And finally, if you have been hearing about all these other type of charity events, you've been saying, "Yes, but I haven't found one that supports this cause that's very close to my heart." You can always create your own charity the first thing you need to do, of course, is find your cause. What is it that you really want to help support? And then try to find some others who can help you organize. The logistics of putting together a charity ride are pretty intense. you'll need to then really handle some of the legal requirements for setting up a charity organization, including registration as a nonprofit, any sort of liability insurance that you may need for some of the events that you're putting together. So there's a lot of logistics that are involved in you putting this together. And you really want to have that support structure of some other people. While you may be the one who is the most impassioned, figuring out all the other details, especially when you're not an expert in all of them, it's good to lean on a larger group of people who help support you in that. When is the event going to be? Where is the event going to be? What are the dynamics about it? You know, are you riding just as an event and gathering? Are you contributions based upon distance? Are you having some other mechanism that you're doing for this? Think about what are the details for And finally, you really need to start to promote the event. This isn't Field of Dreams. Just you making a charity event doesn't make everyone all of a sudden show up. You really do need to promote the event and get riders to want to participate or people to even donate to the cause. And this is where really trying to figure out how you can work with some sponsors who can help get a marketing message out in front of a larger audience can really help accentuate and grow the number of people who will even be aware that the ride is occurring. And then there's gonna be a smaller subset who will actually participate. Now I will put a link in the show notes because Revzilla has a really good article about how to set up your own charity event with a lot of the details of some of the elements that I just discussed. So please take a look at that into the show notes. let's wrap up. We looked at how to develop a purpose in your riding, whether it starts with just riding with a small group or even participating in one of the many motorcycle charity rides around the globe. And finally, we looked at how you could start your own motorcycle charity event. So my question for you is, do you have a purpose in mind when you ride? Share your thoughts through the text of the show link in the show notes or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com/voicemail. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.