Tired of "belonging"

[Old Ryder]

"Are any of them Harley riders?"
"No. Most of my buddies enjoy riding motorcycles."

Best line I've heard all day. (and you can believe I've heard some lines today.)

One of the benefits of being a teacher. Free entertainment. (Anybody who works in the public school system has my respect-----and condolences at the same time)

[vstar09]

I ride alone or with my S/O alot....have 2 buddies I ride with almost every Sunday....we bring wives or S/O along if they want to go...if not we just ride a few hundred mles and call it a day....stop for lunch and a beer and on the rode again....best thing...no one cares who leads or where we go...just friends out for a ride..!

[VStarRider]

One of the benefits of being a teacher. Free entertainment. (Anybody who works in the public school system has my respect-----and condolences at the same time)

This is soooo true. I do not work in the classroom anymore, but I spent 12 years as a 5th grade teacher, and I have heard some doozies that I still talk about today. Here are my top three:

1st place: A 2nd grade girl..."Good morning Mr. Bruyns!" Me: "Kendra (not her real name), my name is not Mr. Bruyns. My last name starts with an 'N'." 2nd grade girl: "Oh. Well, good morning Mr. Nuyns!" (Mr. Bruyns is a real person who no longer works in our school district)

2nd place: 5th grade boy, coming out of the bathroom: " You DO NOT want to go in there!" (Class starts laughing) "What is so funny? There's a mosquito in there!"

3rd place: "Mr. *****, is passing above a 65, or below a 65???"

As for the thread:

This has been one of the most interesting threads I have read on this forum since joining five months ago. Like many others, I ride alone 99.9999% of the time. In fact, I have only ridden ONCE with another person in my five years of riding - my father - back in October 2014, on a 60 mile round trip along the Lake Ontario State Parkway. I took my wife a couple of times years ago, but after my accident in 2012, she has been slow to get back on. Hard to blame her.

I started riding as a commuter, when gas was $4/gallon. I purchased a 1982 Suzuki GS650 for $475 and put 11,000 miles on it while regularly achieving 48 mpg. It took a year or two before I actually rode a motorcycle for pleasure. Last year, I rode 7,000 miles, with half of it from commuting, and half from riding for fun. Therefore, I know little about the culture of motorcycling. I mean, I see the groups of Harleys roaring by, and the groups of sport bike riders, but until today, I did not realize there were so many who do not ride in groups and didn't realize how complex of a social structure many formal MC's have! I never once thought about joining a club to ride with. Never even passed on my radar.

I am also a snowmobiler, with double the miles on sleds as I have on bikes (not for long). It is a completely different structure than motorcycle clubs, at least as featured in this thread. We have 200+ snowmobile clubs in New York, with about 125,000 registered snowmobiles. I think we are 4th in this number in the US, behind Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan...anyway...Club activities include trail signing, brushing, bushwhacking new trails, grooming in the winter with $200,000 machines, etc. Most clubs have one, maybe two "club rides" per year and they tend to be very family oriented. If you are an active member of a snowmobile club, you probably aren't riding a sled all that often. Completely the opposite as motorcycling.