Bikers Inside the Beltway 2019

By Dave Dwyer

  Our 2019 Bikers Inside the Beltway event kicked off at 7 pm on Monday, May 20th with close to 150 Biker Lobbyists meeting for our pre-action briefing in a hotel conference room in Arlington Virginia. Tiffany and Rocky, MRF Lobbyists, led the discussion of the talking points on the issues we would be bringing to Congress the next day. All the topics were thoroughly covered along with tips and suggestions on how to be most effective presenting our issues to our Legislators and their staff.

  Tuesday morning started with all the riders lined up in the hotel parking lot for our group ride into Washington D.C. As has become the norm, Seven and I were designated to lead the ride. I took point and Seven positioned himself halfway back to be in a position to lead those who would inevitably be cut off by the last traffic light before the ramp to the freeway. At 6:45 am it was kickstands up and we rolled out. At 7:15 we pulled up at our designated parking on 3rd Street, just down the hill from the US Capitol. To those who have not been “blessed” with navigating in DC traffic this might seem like we left way too early. For comparison, the 2 who stayed in Maryland, about the same distance away as we were in Virginia, left at 7:15 and it took them 2 hours to get to the parking area. Traffic just plain gets crazy.

  When we got inside the Rayburn House Office Building, Steve Panten split our group up to cover all of our appointments, many of which were grouped together time wise. We were fortunate to have as large a group of ABATE Members as we did. My first appointment was with Rep. Grothman, my Congressman. He met us in a side meeting room of the Committee Hearing he was attending. He had signed on as a cosponsor to H. Res. 255 so that part was a simple thank you.

  Our next discussion topic was about the definition of a motorcycle. With more vehicles entering the market under a motorcycle classification that are clearly not motorcycles, it is past time for the Feds to update their definition of a motorcycle and add a new vehicle type to address these newer styles. From there we moved on to the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology. These vehicles are coming, and we need to make sure that the technology they use will recognize all roadway users and take appropriate action. Clearly, that is not the case so far. There is no current legislation to address this. We asked that when legislation is introduced that it use the language from the Senate bill last year that specified Motorcycles must be taken into account or be amended to account for Motorcycles. Our last topic was H.R. 1024, Consumer Education of Ethanol. This would require that all gas pumps that dispense E-15 to have an information label that outlines the dangers that E-15 poses to Motorcycles, boat motors, snowmobiles, lawn mowers and other engines not designed to use higher than 10% ethanol. Now that President Trump has lifted the restrictions on when E-15 can be sold this is more important than ever.

  For my next meeting I joined Bob Aprill to meet with Rep. Gallagher. We covered all the same items. I thought the meeting went well, but apparently; we were not as persuasive as I thought because he has not signed on to anything we requested he sign on to. Bob will be following up with his staff to see why not.

I joined with Joe Stanek to sit down with Rep. Pocan’s staff. He was one of the original cosponsors of the Profiling Resolution. We thanked them for that and then covered the rest of our agenda.

  From there it was over to the Hart Senate Office building to meet with Sen. Johnson and Sen. Baldwin. Both are in agreement with us on our issues and will work for us when anything is introduced.

  The last meeting was at 4:45 so we had to deal with full congestion on our ride back to Arlington for the after-action debriefing. That took better than one hour. Traffic out there just plain sucks at that time.

Dave Dwyer