All the Leaves are Gone, and the Sky is Gray….

Executive Report by John Reblin

I am sitting here getting my thoughts together and trying to come up with a creative way to get everyone ready to come to Officer’s Training the weekend of January 7-8-9 at the Hotel Marshfield. Well, if you are an officer of this organization, involved in this organization, or want to become more involved, this is the beginning of your journey. This is where you will learn the ins and outs of how the organization works and why we are looked at as one of the premier motorcycle rights organizations in the good ol’ USA. You should all be proud of this. We are working hard to get the best information out to you to help you succeed! Any questions? Reach out to your Regional Rep or District Director and they should be able to get you going down the pathway to success.

A few years ago, I decided to redo my round fender, John Deere garden tractor by cleaning it up and removing the rust, overhauling the motor… all that good stuff. I learned a lot in the course of – well in my mind it was a couple years, the “Little Flower” says it was much longer than that – tracking down replacement parts, along with figuring out the best way to repair body damage, and in fixing the motor. I even found a company that could recreate the decals installed by the original seller, a nod to him as he is a friend of mine. It was a lot of fun working on this when I had time, and now as I tackle the mower deck, it should be finished up “soon.”

Earlier in the year, I became involved with an old friend of the family, one that I never heard of until this spring, who redid Walter the 1913 Forecar created by Harley Davidson and according to Jim Cutting who created a documentary of this reconstruction, the last remaining that were built. It is a great documentary and if you get a chance to see it, please do. Seeing this and being involved with motorcycles, I decided my next project was a bike.

I do have a 77 FLH that I bought from my dad 38 years ago that has been neglected for the last few years, parked in the corner of my garage. The time to play with that is now. As I was redoing the brake calipers, along with running a new fuel line, and some other odds and ends, I started to think, what is the future of me being able to find another bike, one that has memories or whatever reason I want to have it, rebuild and repair it, and use it on the road for myself to enjoy, and for others to trip the switch of a memory of having something back in the day. Or something their father had as a mode of transportation. Will I be able to get fuel that is safe and legal to run in it? Will parts, whether aftermarket or OEM, remain available to make it safe and road worthy? Will I be able to get it redone, and be able to enjoy it without having to worry about an official knocking on my door asking me to turn the bike in, to scrap out?

Will I be able to operate it anytime I want to, or will I be regulated only to use it on Sunday afternoons on certain streets? Having to do this so Autonomous vehicles can be aware that unknown or non-prioritized vehicles are being operated at this time. When I think of Mike and his Forecar, or others that came to showings of the Walter movie on classic motorcycles, I wonder what is their future? I asked this question of some of those in attendance and nobody was very sure of what the future holds for these classic bikes, and don’t forget other classic vehicles. Are these vehicles destined to become pictures in a coffee table book as the only way to see them, to have that memory of something long ago?

So, Officer’s Training and Lobby Day is important to me. It is pointing me and others towards what we need to do, so we will be able to carry on our passion, our hobbies, our lives. We must get the word out that we don’t want our motorcycles to become materials to be recycled. That they will continue to fit into the transportation stream safely.

Come to Officer’s Training. Learn what we will be up against, how to fight it, how to spread the word, and then on February 17th, join us at Lobby Day to help save what we feel is important to us and many others. Share your passion with Legislators, urging them to agree with us, and to fight with and for us, to save the future of motorcycles.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Ride Your Own Ride.

John