Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by John Reblin

The weather is starting to turn, the news is giving frost warnings, and people are starting to talk the deer gun season. The clocks are rolling back, and darkness is arriving as many are driving home from work. It seems that fall is turning to winter, and the end of another year is close by. Where did the year go to already? I know it seemed to drag on for what seems like an eternity when you were young, waiting for Christmas or your birthday, but now phew, it is flying by.

Hopefully, you all made it through the State Meeting safely. I enjoyed swapping stories, meeting up with friends, old and new, at these events. Sometimes it is a little sad when a familiar face is not there, maybe due to illness or passing, but I try to cherish the memories and create new ones.

With the start of the new year of this ABATE of Wisconsin board, I look forward to hitting the ground running. We have a lot of things to plan and do in the next few months with Officer Training in February, planning and setting up a lobby day and of course, the Hummer is in full planning mode.

The committee chairs are also doing their thing, Jen is working hard raising awareness of the great things the MRF is doing nationally. Their legislative agenda was set at the Meeting of the Minds and will be shared in the next newsletter.

Why am I bringing this up? We need help to be successful. We need all of you, your friends, and others that have an interest in helping preserve our freedoms to ride our motorcycles without worries. Worries like getting a safe and legal fuel to put in the tank, the ability to do the repairs we want to do to our bikes without having to go to a dealer, or to make a modification to the engine to perform better.

We need your help to end profiling of us when riding that motorcycle that we enjoy being on. And not worrying that if we stop at the bar for a beer or a soft drink, you are allowed in. Or being pulled over or questioned by police for no apparent reason.

We need all of your help to make sure that when we ride on the road we will be “seen” by that vehicle that is in “autonomous” mode or in the case of the vehicles being used now on the road, “semi-autonomous” mode. That we will be able to travel on our roads that we helped pay for and not worry about a machine or computer deciding that my life is less important than a pedestrian or the driver of the autonomous vehicle.

These are just some of the issues we will be looking at. But whatever the issue is, we will need all of your help. What do you need to do? You need to make those phone calls or send the letters to our lawmakers either on the state or federal level and make sure they understand what we are looking for and how they need to help us.

We need all of you to watch out for the other riders, to help them make sure they get home safely. To mentor the new riders, to get the rider that over indulged to take a safe ride home, or to make sure they take a rider education course to improve their riding skills. It is that important. Because if we cannot lower the crashes, by using common sense ideas to educate riders to make it to their destination safely, the government is going to step in and help. And I don’t want to answer that call, how did President Reagan put it? Hi, I am from the government, and I am here to help you. It usually does not end well. It starts with laws that will not address the issue, there will not be a reduction of crashes, injuries and fatalities. But the laws will be in place and more laws will be added to add another layer creating a vicious cycle with laws that are never repealed.

So, what can you do? Go to ABATEWIS.org and sign up for the legislative alerts. Go to your regional meetings and pay attention, ask questions and read your newsletter. No meeting in your area, go visit another region. Maybe call up or email your District Director and ask questions about what you can do, how you can help. When Lobby Day is announced, plan on taking the day off of work, get on a bus and help us protect your rights as a motorcyclist. Talk to other people, maybe they are not interested in motorcycles, but they are into boating, old cars or off-road adventures. They need good fuel also, right? Ask for their support. Ask your friends about profiling and if they have been, have them fill out our survey. It is going to take those phone calls, letters and visits to push back and create good legislation to protect our rights to be on the road legally and safe.

Ride Your Own Ride.

John