19 July 2009
First & upmost I would like to thank all the members that came & participated in the ride & bike show for the seniors, we had a huge turn out which made me even more proud of this club if that's possible. We had a lot of members who did the ride prior to going to the senior center & even more that showed up at the ending location. This was however one of our shortest rides in club history, why? Well it's like this the plan was to do a 2&1/2 hour ride & end at the senior center, get the bikes lined up & show them off. But before I go any further you must hear how all this came about. We were contacted by Julia a rep. from the Healdsburg Senior Center about a month ago & asked if we would be interested in coming to their facility & displaying our bikes & be willing to talk with some of the residents re: our club & our bikes. Julia stated that they wanted a local motorcycle club & she did some research and asked us if we would be interested I informed her that I felt the club member would love to.
Once we got the date set this rest as they say was history, we met up at our normal meeting location at about 09:30Am & departed at 10:00AM. The route was to be a simple one but still a very nice ride, we opted to head out Hwy 12 west to Fulton Rd. we then got on to Occidental Rd and followed that all the way to the town of Occidental. We then head down the hill to Monte Rio, which is also where we took about a 10-minute break. Once we got the break out of the way we then headed up River Rd to Wholer Rd then followed that all the way through Windsor then in to Healdsburg, but we still had to kill some time so we jumped on to the freeway and headed north to Asti, then from there it was all frontage roads until we reached our ending destination on Grove St. we got there about 12:00noon about 15 to 20 minutes early.
We got all the bikes parked all nice & neat & waited for the residents to come & inspect our rides. We had almost 20 very nice cleaned & polished machines for them to check out. It wasn't to long before we started to smell that great smell of a BBQ that's right I forgot to mention that there way to thank us for doing this was that they through us a BBQ lunch at it was great I mean really great. The residents came out after their lunch and kept coming almost until it was time for us to leave, but back to the story. We met a lot of great & funny people at this event in fact I think the coolest 2 residents I met had to be Benny & Julie now Julie she actually worked for Harley Davidson in the 1930's she worked in their advertising department, she was a kick. Now Benny on the other hand he was just a real friendly guy who loved motorcycles & he used to ride the same bike that I started our on, so we hit it off right a way. We must have been there for 2 & 1/2 hours talking eating & taking pictures of everyone having a good time.
I don't know about the rest of the crew but I for one really got a kick out of making a bunch of seniors day & you know what they actually made my day, it was so cool to see there faces light up when we would approach them like we had known them for years & just went up & introduced ourselves & just started chatting them up, it made me feel great I was making somebody I didn't even know happy & for a little while they felt important, as they should because they are. I know I have a parent that's a senior & I know that interaction is very important when you’re getting up there in years. I'm sure some older folks feel that they have been forgotten especially if there kids have moved away & there living in a senior community.
Sure they have other residents there as well but a mix of ages always seems to bring out the kid in the older generation as it did this day. We took pics of some of there residents really getting in or should I say on to some of those big iron steeds. It was a blast. I would like to thank Julia for inviting the club to partake in their event, I know when I say on behalf of the Redwood Riders MC that we all had a very nice time & a lot of fun, oh by the way also thanks for the BBQ lunch it was really really good & presented very well, they had quite the spread for us & in RRMC fashion we showed our appreciation by eating all of it. The day ended with handshakes & hugs and a group photo of some of the residents & staff & then a couple were taken of the RRMC members to be emailed to them. In closing a copy of this recap will be sent to Julia & we would like her to know that when you would like us there or at another facility just let us know you got it. Thanks again to Julia, the seniors & of course all of the RRMC Members that participated.
For photos from this awesome event click here!