August 22, 2009
Lets start by giving credit where credit is due, and that my friends goes out to you all of the Redwood Rider Member's, friends & families. If it were not for those of you who worked so hard to put such a large event together it wouldn't have been possible, so thank you to all of you. After weeks & months of preparation the big day had finally arrived, the volunteers were informed that they needed to be at Northbay Motorsport at 08:00AM, & when we arrived & pulled in to the parking lot there were already members their getting things set up & you can't start any event without morning goodies, so a huge thank you to Doc & Helen for making sure that we all had something sweet to munch on while in the set up mode. It took a solid 1 & ½ hours to get everything set up & ready for the people that would be showing up. I thought that it was a good thing that we actually had some people there at 09:30AM & wanting to get registered, we accommodated them ASAP & continued to wait for more & hopefully much more people. It really wasn't to long before we had all the vendors that were going to be there all here & getting set up. It sure was cool having the vendors that we did have, and a big thank you goes to Rodney Frost and the whole Northbay family, they who were responsible for the vendors, radio advertising & of course the bike give away and the use of their facility, so a big thank you also must go to Rodney & the entire Northbay Family for helping us have a great event and mostly thank you for helping us help the kids.
At the time of this recap we still haven't heard the final numbers on what we brought in but here some numbers that you can be proud of it seems that they were doing a non scientific tracking of people coming & going through out the day & I was told that the total attendance for the day was some where between 800 to 1000 that's how many people we had visit us. I think that is absolutely awesome, for our first attempt at a major event those are very exciting numbers. As the day went on we had lots of people including kids take advantage of all that was going on from the Jumpy Jump to the cotton candy machine to the pop corn machine not counting other fun & exciting games for the little ones. For us a little older kids we had a great bike show with some very different types & class's of motorcycle's that was very cool, I think there were a lot of people that were surprised how organized we were & that my friends is the key to having a successful event is being professional & organized. Getting back to the vendors we had R.E.A.C.H from Sonoma County also a very cool knife vendor plus a great live band now those guy's really rocked in fact it sure would be nice if we do a major event in the future and have them back. We also must mention that we had for the first time a live radio remote we had 101.7 the Fox who did a great job of getting their listeners down to the event in fact they really came in handy when it came time to do the awards for the bike & the 50/50 raffle, we gave them the info & they made what announcements that we needed & they did a great job of it so thanks to the 101.7 The Fox for all the help.
Most of you know that you also need a prize raffle at a motorcycle event and thanks to Rosy & Shae and the rest of the members that went way beyond the call of duty & went around to various shops in at least 5 counties to procure raffle goodies, we must have had at least 75 or more raffle prizes that were given away & in today's economy that was no easy task. I don't know how many of you may have noticed that at motorcycle events lately that clubs & other organizations that put on motorcycle events how the raffle prize donation across the board has gone way down. But that didn't detour our members & staff from generating with some serious foot work tables full of raffle prizes, so a huge thank you to those members mentioned & those that were not if it weren't for you the raffle would not have been the big success that it was, in fact I believe that we generated more money from that & the 50/50 than any thing else. The day went actually very smooth; there were no major issues that I was made aware of just the minor stuff that you would see at any big event.
As you know we had our very first bike show ever open to the public that is & although the numbers were not as big as we would have liked, it to was a success, I say that because the only thing we have to compare it too was the Michael's event the weekend before, If I remember correctly at the Michael's event they had approx. 11 bikes entered in to their bike show, and to enter theirs there was no charge & we had approx. 15 that paid at least $10.00 for the first category and additional $5.00 for each additional. I remember that someone had told me getting back to our prize raffle that we had doubled what was at the Michael's event, this was not brought up to dis anyone but as I said their event is the closest thing that we have to compare it to. So the point is that for a small independent motorcycle club we did just fine. The day went on without a hitch, guest really enjoyed the Scavenger hunt that we had prepared, I heard that some guest said that it was nice doing something other than a poker run, and that the route was a real pleasure to ride & a big thank you goes to Jeremy & Shae for planning the route & coming up with the questions they did a great job!!
One of the neat things that this run brought to the people, was the mix of company's that were represented, we had Michael's Harley Davidson right next to Santa Rosa Vee-Twin/Victory Motorcycle's now how cool was that & to my knowledge they have never had booths at the same local event, also how many of you got to sample ice cream from Stone Cold Creamery? We also had a leather company there which had some great deals on leather products not counting that Northbay Motorsport had made coupon books for the days event with some really huge discounts, did any of you really take a look at those coupon books they looked like they were professionally made but no they were made in house, great job guy's. I almost forgot to mention that we had 3 very important members walking around almost all day selling 50/50 & prize raffle tickets so a big thank you must go out to Will & Denise Brodt & Becky Mouzakis those three plus those directly involved are responsible for the majority of the money raised at the event. I hope many of you got to sample the BBQ vendor now yes I was really hungry by the time I got to eat now was it me or was that food really really good? I think so I enjoyed it & I hope the rest of you did as well. The day went on by really quick and as we got closer to the end of the day the most anticipated parts of the day was the awards for the Scavenger Hunt, bike Show & raffle prizes & of course that all important 50/50 raffle, and of course the winner of that brand new Kawasaki Ninja Motorcycle.
I would like to congratulate all the winners that participated in the prize raffle of which I was one of them also we would like to say congrats to the gent that won the 50/50 & his take was $263.00,we also had a couple of club members take home awards from the bike show one of which was Mark Exter who if I'm not mistaken took 2ND Place in the Custom Division & Brent Mouzakis who took First Place in the Foreign Division, if I left any other members out that won in the bike show I apologize. As we got closer & closer to the 4:00PM hour we had a huge crowd now of course they were there for the bike give away but until that moment we had a captive audience & I noticed a lot of people mingling around checking out vendors & all the hap's. One last thing before I mention about the bike give away is that we had a table set up with RRMC club information about joining our wonderful club and we did in fact get approx. 5 or more new members out of just having our information available. Now that time has come I know a lot of people including members would not have mined winning that bike even if was just to turn around and sell it, but non of us locally won the guy that won lives in Fairfield and had found out about are event just day's before he just happen to walk in Napa Yamaha saw a flier & thought he would check it out, in filled out one ticket to try to win the bike & the very lucky guy from Fairfield won & he stated that he was giving the bike to his daughter so that she can ride with him from time to time, now I think that's great. In closing once again thank you to all of you who worked so hard on this event, thank you to all of our sponsors & a huge thank you to Rodney Frost & Jaime from Northbay Motorsport if it weren't for these guy's this would not have been the event that it was, so thanks again we had a blast.
Tours & Events Director / Information Officer
Redwood Riders M.C
24hr HOT LINE 707-568-7745