Compiling Life
In May we have the Silver Anniversary Ride of my motorcycle club. I founded the group with four others and we have had about sixty rides over those twenty-five years. Not everyone has made every ride, and members have come and gone, but there is a core group that still rides and a few others that no longer ride, but like to gather with us nonetheless. By my count we have had 80 members, defined as people who have done at least two rides with us. Of those, about thirty still actively ride with us and another eight who used to ride come along now and then. And then there are four crew members to boot. Of those who are no longer riding with us, some have just faded away quietly, some have stopped riding altogether, and some have more dramatically exited. Several have gone on to that better place, but are fondly remembered.
As the primary organizer of most of the rides, I tend to act as Tourmaster, Treasurer and Recording Secretary. All of the members have added to the membership roster to varying degrees, but you don’t go from five to eighty without doing something right. I like to think that we found an appealing formula and it’s worked well for all these years. We started out with two primary venues of Utah and Vermont. They are polar opposite states, but they share a commonality of having great riding and member residences. So elements number one and two are having the right venue and someone in the group having a clubhouse from which to base operations. Being the owner of the Utah clubhouse for many of the years, I’ve always thought that Utah was the group’s spiritual center.
The next few things that helped keep the organization going have been a combination of commitment, seriousness and a strong desire for continuity. On our second ride, we established some playful yet genuine credos that spoke to the reasons why we wanted to ride together. Like most social gathering conversations, these credos would have floated off into the ozone had we not committed them to writing. My storytelling tendencies became a central part of the glue that built and kept the organization going. I believe it helped others with similar tendencies (whether with the written word or in photographs) to jump in and contribute. If you look at our website (another sign of commitment to continuity), you would see a list of members and the rides they have attended, and you would see a list of rides, many of which have both photographic files and stories (sometimes more than one) attached. There is also some humorous organizational history.
That is the next element essential to success. The group doesn’t take itself too seriously even though it is a serious riding group. A sense of humor is essential, and there is a common thread of that running through the membership. And then there’s the ephemeral quality that cannot be predicted and depends heavily on interpersonal dynamics. We care about one another. I am of the opinion that these people are as good friends as I have in the world. We may only see one another a few times per year at most, but the bond from those five or six days spent together on our rides is as strong as it comes. We all know each other’s flat sides all too well and have chosen to ignore them or at least set them aside for the sake of the group and the ride.
As we approach our Silver Anniversary, I have decided to do something special to mark the occasion. Every ride starts with the handing out os a ride T-shirt or some such piece of apparel. We’ve even had commemorative handkerchieves issued to all with maps and legends of the ride. The occasion of this special milestone seemed to require a more meaningful gesture. Being the storyteller and archivist of the group, I have decided to publish the definitive history of the American Flyers Motorcycle Club. This is an anthology of ride stories organized in a way to reflect our history of riding in both the U.S. and overseas. But it is also more, it describes the way the club came into existence and how it has navigated the organizational shoals that are encountered by the nature of any gathering of like-minded people. And the people themselves get profiled in several ways that display the proudest tradition of the AFMC, its diversity of membership.
I have about 330 pages compiled so far and with the help of a fellow member who is also a writer, I have organized it and had it copy-edited to a point where it is ready for prime time. The hardest part for me is now to figure out how to include the right amount and selection of pictures. We are going black and white in this printing (color costs 3X and never seems worthwhile for a private project). I have compiled 125 photographs and converted them to B/W. I think the photographs in this sort of “yearbook” are generally expected to be somewhat random and somewhat governed by the editor. Nevertheless, I do not want to forget anyone or any favorite images. I’ve alerted the membership of the project and have received a few photos, but not too many. So, at this point I think I’m more or less in possession of the work product I will have available.
I have self-published several books in the last few years, so I’m familiar with the process and am almost ready to roll. After placing the pictures into the document, I will create the final PDF and off she goes to get a first copy printed for review before I put my order in for the full batch. I find the process of creation to be very energizing. While it takes effort and has certain frustrations, overall, these sorts of projects are the things I care most about in life. They are personal, professional, creative and I am doing it for people I care about. I know some will toss the book in a corner somewhere and never look at it again. I know it will not likely get read by too many people outside our group. None of that matters to me. I have an AFMC tattoo on my left arm and I’ve never regretted it. The club means something to me and this book means something to me in the same way. I think it’s important to memorialize the important things in your life, regardless of how many others pay notice. When all is said and done, it is unlikely that anyone will record what matters to you if you don’t do it. If anyone does care, I want to be sure that they have my compilation of the story from which to work.