Leadership & Group Riding

When I lived in Arizona I was part of the Black Mountain Motorcycle Club, a group of folks dedicated to having fun and riding safely. Group rides were always well organized, planned, and carried out with maximum fun and participation the goal. Ride Captains had scouted the routes prior to our group ride, rally points were established to make sure that if someone fell behind they were not lost, and if the group consisted of a large number of bikes (which was often the case)you were assigned to a smaller, more manageable group of ten-twelve riders.

Having relocated up here to the Seattle area some nine months ago, I have really missed the camaraderie of a club. Plus since I really don't know the area at all, I thought it would be great to connect with other riders who could show me around.

I looked around for a club and the one that caught my eye was affiliated with a local moto-store; although the store sells just one brand of bike, they are smart marketers and have a group which is open to everyone who is interested. They of course offer regular test rides of their bikes in hopes that you will eventually buy their brand, which is actually kind of fun.

I kept waiting for good weather to sign up for a ride, but finally decided that if I continued to wait for good weather then I would never ride with the group, so I signed up and headed out last weekend.

The weather wasn't bad, the scenery was lovely, the people were nice, but the group riding discipline was AWFUL! Probably 2/3 of the bikes were high-end sport tourers (that BMW K1600 GTL is absolutely gorgeous and transcends the mere sobriquet 'motorcycle' as it is something else ... but I guess it should be at $30,000+), with a couple of bigger cruisers (my VN 1600 and a dude on a Honda Rune ... a beautiful, funky bike with a wheel base about as long as my chevy), and a couple of smaller bikes - a V-Star and a V-Strom (both 650 cc's).

Anyway, all 17 of us gathered at the store, we were handed a sheet with directions, and then it was basically every man for himself. No real ride captain, no sweep, no smaller groups, and no rally points along the way. The leader pulled out of the parking lot and the friggin' race was on. I got cut off at a stop light with about half the pack behind me (figures the AZ guy with no GPS and no clue where he is going gets put in lead) but once we got through the city and on to the highway another guy whizzed past me (for which act I was actually quite grateful, as he had GPS and I was glancing down at poorly written directions in small font) and seemed to know where he was going, so I just twisted the throttle and kept up.

I don't know if these guys have ever had any group ride training; no hand signals, the leaders just zipped out or around other vehicles with no thought to the folks behind them, no use of good intervals or staggering, poor use of lanes, and many took curves at VERY high rates of speed. I can carve as good as the next guy on a cruiser, but there is no way on God's green earth I could keep up with the speed the sport touring bikes were holding through those blind and unfamilier curves. I've had enough pucker moments in my life, thank you very much! So I had to use every bit of track day training & technique I have ever learned and a lot of straight-away throttle just to keep up ... and you can imagine what it was like for those poor guys on the smaller bikes, as well as others with little or no training.

We went to this one beautiful spot overlooking Skagit Bay (the road up the mountain was narrow and pretty hairy, with tight switchbacks and decreasing radius turns - a neat technical piece of riding) and after parking all spread out kind of looking around when suddenly the "leader" (an employee of the store) and a few guys mounted up with no warning and headed down the mountain and on to the resturant! So the rest of us hopped on our bikes and headed down as well ... hoping for the best.

This was not a group ride; this was a pack headed in the same direction. There is a great difference in life between the two assemblies and I think we have forgotten that reality in America. We have confused individuality with autonomy, and thus lost the ability to self-differentiate which often leads to a herd mentality. At first I tried to keep up with the "leaders" but quickly realized that so doing would probably get me hurt. I decided that they could call me a punk if they so desired, but I was not going to get killed just for bragging rights while doing something stupid. Looking at the faces of some other folks I had to wonder if they had not succumbed to the herd mentality and survived mostly through luck and superior machinery that kept them from killing themselves.

Leaders have a moral obligation to act in the best interests of the whole; ripping out ahead of others because you like to do it or just for fun is irresponsible and thoughtless. While leaders in every endeavor in life must be out in front, blazing the trail and establishing new goals, they must never get so far ahead of the community that by so doing they endanger others. True leaders move forward in the manner best suited for the whole; true leaders share expectations with others. If a ride is not really a group ride but the chance to show off one's ability, then say so in order for others to make free choices about participation. There is nothing inherently wrong in going fast and pushing your limits; it only becomes wrong when you do not allow others to make informed choices on their own.

Leaders don't show off nor do they lead others into blind and unfamiliar territory for which they are unprepared. Leaders are not leaders when those behind them do not trust that choices made are in the best interests of the whole. Morality dictates not in constraining oneself to the least common denominator, but nurturing and protecting the most vulnerable. A group - any group of any size, whether a moto-club or nation - that neglects that rule has by definition become immoral.

Guess I'll be looking for another riding group ....