Today was the day of reunion. Back in 1996 I asked my friend Frank O’Connell, who sat on the Cornell business school advisory council with me if you would like to go with me on a motorcycle ride through southern Utah. Frank had been a long time motorcycle enthusiast, and at the time he was in between CEO gigs so he said he would like to do that. We tried the same thing the year before, but his schedule didn’t allow him to go when I went, so I wasn’t entirely sure if a motorcycle ride was good in concept, but not so much in reality. It turned out that he not only did go on that fateful five day ride, but that ride started a 30 year friendship not just with Frank. What were the whole coterie of like-minded people who wanted an excuse to regularly go on motorcycle trips. I had asked my colleague Larry and my old boss Andy to join as well. Andy asked his neighbor from Katona, Arthur Einstein to join us. I’ve always had a view of travel that felt the more the merrier, so we were set as a group of five who would embark from my home in Park city and ride the roads of southern Utah in the perfect month of May.
One of the thing that I took the liberty of doing was to invite my Park city massage therapist Deb Wells as our wrangler, chase vehicle driver and massage therapist. Deb was anxious to make the trip and she brought the added advantage of wealth of knowledge about southern Utah. What this configuration kicked off was a motorcycle club that has span the last 30 years and taken somewhere around 75 trips around the US and internationally. The array of people that have been members of our club number somewhere between 40 and 50 and I am in touch with many of them. We have written certainly every road in Utah, but most other roads in the western United States as well. We’ve also ridden many of the roads of New England, and even some in the middle of America ranging from Ohio down to as far as Georgia. Internationally we have traveled to Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Italy (including Sicily), Spain, Portugal, Andora, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro. I’m not sure how many miles we’ve traveled together but since our average trip was perhaps 1200 miles, we may have ridden 90,000 to 100,000 miles over the years.
On our second ride in October 1996 in Vermont, we agreed to name the organization, the American Flyers Motorcycle Club (AFMC). We named Chairman. (Walt), and I took the role of Treasurer and Ridemaster, positions which I have maintained for the entire 30 years. Unfortunately, our Chairman passed away a few years ago, and we have retired the title out of respect. Over the years various people have tried to assume the mantle of responsibility for the group and organize rides. The pattern has generally been for them to organize one ride and find that they wanted it to be one and done. That is meant that I have been the point of continuity for the organization for all this time. I suppose it’s appropriate since I chose the logo for the group and even had that logo tattooed on my upper left arm. That logo has appeared on every ride T-shirt we ever produced over the years.
On the occasion of our 25th anniversary, given the members were starting to age out, I suggested that it might be time to put a neat bow on our club and call it a day. It turned out that I was the only member who felt this way so we just kept the group alive. Since we were choosing not to end the organization, I decided to put together the definitive book on our club and published a 400 page compendium of many of our ride stories, the vast majority of which were written by me. I included many pictures from our rides and most of the great sayings and quotations that it come up over the years during one wacky moment or another.
This trip to Florida that we are just wrapping up was organized specifically to see some of my old AFMC gang that now reside in Florida. Our oldest member, Arthur, who turned 94 years old this year lives here in Stuart. He recently lost his wife Mimi and it occurred to me that this would be a good time to come for a visit. We are staying with Frank and Barbara O’Connell, who were nice enough to organize a small reunion party at their condo today. We managed to get a total of eight of us together expense several hours doing what old pals always do which is reminisce to tell fall tales of past adventures, there were no shortage of fun stories of rides gone by and silly things, but various members had perpetrated over the years. Andy brought an old photo album. Frank wore an old team T-shirt one of our rides. Arthur brought his indomitable spirit, fully living up to his famous tagline, “ not such a bad guy once you know him.”
It is occurred to me on many occasions that this group of friends are some of my best friends at this point in life. It’s funny because we’ve probably spent less time with one another than with many of our other friends, but there’s something intense about the experiences we’ve had over the years that is made our friendship, particularly tight and warm. When we see one another, it’s as though we saw each other just yesterday and when we say goodbye, we always think that we will see one another on our next ride. At this point in our life cycle that may or may not be the case, but it never stops us from hoping that there is another ride together in our future.
The average age of the eight of us that got together today is approximately 75 years old with Arthur being the old man of the group. Of the eight of us, only three of us still ride regularly with another three who ride once in a while. I don’t know how many more years I will be riding, but I will ride as long as I can, and as long as I feel competent to do so. I also know that I will stay in touch with all of my AFMC pals for as long as I can send emails or make phone calls. My old pals may be getting old, but they are my best pals in our shared memories bind us forever. That’s what old pals do.