Today is our 30th Toy Run in Grande Prairie.
How many of you attend toy runs? Why are they important to you?
For me it is a pay it forward thing. 21 years ago my daughter had a Christmas thanks to the motorcycle community and I have done my best to pay it forward every year.
I hope that you will share in the good feelings going on a toy run parade fill you with.
In the news today there is more death and more injury in our community. It breaks my heart. Two accidents in the mainstream news feeds from BC - one rider dead another in hospital. Also from the main stream news feeds a rider in New Brunswick was sent to hospital.
The Hells Angel have been making the headlines in BC again. It appears that they are now being linked to a whole host of puppet clubs and a murder on the lower mainland.
I am starting a new contest:
I want you to submit an original video - 30 seconds long on the following topics:
- Rider Training and why it is important.
- Driver Awareness
- Sharing the road with motorcycles.
The winning videos will be played on every web site we can get to play them.
Including but not limited to the AIM-Can's National site, Belt Drive Betty dot Com, Peace Country Chapter of AIM-Can....
We will also be submitting them as commercials known as Public Service Announcements for the 2010 riding season to every TV station - we'll see who takes them seriously.
I have created new play lists in our video section on www.beltdrivebetty.com
You can either load them to you tubs and then submit the link right on our site or you can upload them to our site directly.
This contest will officially begin today and run until January 31st, 2010.
We will let everyone vote on them and the ones with the most votes will be submitted for air time with full credits to the producers.
If you are riding today, please ride like everyone around you is blind and can't see you.
Belt Drive Betty
National VP - AIM-Can
Alliance for Injured Motorcyclists
www.beltdrivebetty.com
Although I have been working on the internet for a while now, I am learning new stuff every day.
The power of jokes - I guess it shouldn't surprise me how popular jokes are, with the economy and everything else weighing so heavily on people, humor really is a good medicine. Mark Meyer had sent in a joke about funny restaurant names. Ali shared it with Reddit and I shared it on Facebook and DIggit - I have no idea why that joke caught fire the way it did. It's a great joke - Over 105,000 people have visited our web site to read it, consequently, new people found our site and some are riders who decided to join us as members.
So for all of you small business people who have a web site to promote your business, you riding club groups who want to attract new members - remember to inject some humor into your site, and share it. That's what social networks are all about.
The other thing I am learning is about the difference a good web host and server can make. When you have a good web host who provides your web site with a good environment to run in (server), well, everything runs the way it is supposed to. Ali and I now know, without a doubt that GoDaddy was not kind to us. Our site on their server would never have handled the traffic we are getting now. Not in a million years!
The internet is a hard place to get noticed on. It takes a lot of work and a lot of patience, learning and willingness to learn with a whole lot of tenacity thrown in - to succeed. Networking, sharing - that is what Facebook, Diggit, Reddit, Furl, Windows Live and all of those groups/social networks are all about.
Belt Drive Betty dot com is all about networking for motorcyclists, I hope you'll join our network and share. We'd love to see you there!
In the news today, Triumph set some world land speed records at Bonneville, the RCMP are labelling motorcycling groups like the Handsome Bastards as Hells Angels puppet clubs and we have more riders who have had accidents again.
Click on the News Link and then choose your province to see what is happening in your region either from the main stream news feeds or through member submissions.
If you know of something you think the rest of the community should know about - log in and submit it.
Here in Grande Prairie we now have 2 motorcycle officers.
Our Toy Run is tomorrow - hoping for good weather and a record number of bikes! It is our 30th Annual this year!
Our AIM-Can Chapter (Scroll to the bottom for all of the event info) is hosting a Fall Social & Membership Drive on October 22nd. The event is sponsored by BJ's Q Club and is Free - Buffet dinner, entertainment...starts at 6:30 PM - hope to see some you Grande Prairie and area riders come and join us!
If you are fortunate enough to be riding today, please ride like everyone around you is blind and can not see you!
Belt Drive Betty
National VP - AIM-Can
Alliance for Injured Motorcyclists
www.beltdrivebetty.com
Well, business partners, riding club groups....
We are getting some huge traffic from our SEO efforts and our submissions to Digg and Reddit.
In the last 24 hours we have seen the traffic on www.beltdrivebetty.com skyrocket!
I encourage you to log in, get your riding club events for 2010 into our calendars!
Our Cook Book is starting to get some new recipes in it and if you are looking for a great chocolate chip cookie - well you just HAVE to check out Cookie Chick's recipe.
I would like to encourage all members to get their 2010 events added to our calendars.
If you have bikes or other items for sale - ON LINE classifieds are FREE to members.
We are working on cleaning up and updating ALL of our riding club links.
Our On Line auctions could use your support!
Our small business partners who have inventory but no cash flow would like to advertise with us and these auctions will help them to be able to support all of the wonderful sharing tools we now have!
Please log in and go to the forums link to see them.
Just like Facebook, you can now request friend connection and share what's going on in your life and riding club on www.beltdrivebetty.com
Check out the MY Community Link - search the members list and start hooking up with others of like mind and your riding buddies!
Don't forget, classified ads are FREE to our members, log in to sell your "Stuff" today!
Hope you will all ride like everyone around you is blind and can not see you today, the news feeds have enough death and carnage in them.
click on News and choose your province to see what might be going on in your province.
Belt Drive Betty
National VP AIM-Can
Alliance for Injured Motorcyclists
www.beltdrivebetty.com
In the last 24 hours we have had over 20,000 visitors to our web site!
Imagine, this little Canadian Web Site - www.beltdrivebetty.com
garnering over 20,000 visitors in 24 hours!
Ali posted a joke that was submitted to our site on Reddit and our stats just took off.
The joke got some hits from Face Book but it went crazy on Reddit!
We have had as many as 900 people on our site and have been averaging around 500.
Now many of you might wonder why I am writing about this this morning.
For me, this was the test of our new server and site and whether or not we could handle the traffic without crashing and guess what - WE CAN!
I am so stoked! Moving from GoDaddy to HostGator was the best thing we have done in a long time. All of the tools that wouldn't function on GoDaddy are working fabulously on HostGator and in all types of web browsers - IE, Google Chrome, Firefox...
Our Face book style wall is in and working (Use the My Community Link) - You must be logged in.
You can search the membership by province to connect with people from your region.
You can share news, events etc with Facebook and Dig It and Reddit...
Ali is finishing our new 2010 motorcycle event calendar layouts today and if all goes well we will be in a position for our members to start adding events to them tomorrow!
I am so very happy with how this is working out now! THANK YOU to ALI for all her hard work on behalf of the Canadian Motorcycle Community - GIRL - YOU ARE FABULOUS!
I hope you will join us on this exciting journey, membership is Free.
You can subscribe to our Community Newspaper - The Busted Knuckle Chronicles for $15 plus GST per year and get a weekly update on what's going on in our communities right across this great country!
If you are lucky enough to be riding today - PLEASE, ride like everyone around you is blind and can not see you.
Belt Drive Betty
National VP AIM-Can
Alliance for Injured Motorcyclists
www.beltdrivebetty.com
My Blog Post yesterday has garnered a number of comments and those comments have left me with yet more questions.
What is the definition of Old School to your way of thinking?
Here are some I have found on the internet:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Old%20School%20Biker
http://bikersmag.com/html/bikers_definitions.html
Mine definition of Old School is:
I ride my bike wherever, whenever I can.
I never trailer my bike unless it is on the way to a repair shop.
I never ride by a fellow rider, regardless of brand or gender of the rider, on the side of the road unless I have checked that they are OK.
I will help my fellow rider in his/her time of need if I am at all capable.
I support my community and it's charitable causes.
So, tell me your definition of Old School...
I am on a mission to understand the different ideas and attitudes of the motorcycle community...
If you are riding today, please ride like everyone around you is blind and can not see you.
Belt Drive Betty
National VP Aim-Can
Alliance for Injured Motorcyclists
www.beltdrivebetty.com
More and more I am hearing disturbing stories of riders being shunned by other riders based on the brand they ride. I am talking about out right discrimination here folks. I am not talking about the good natured type of brand banter here, I am talking hurtful, nasty and in my humble opinion, uncalled for cruelty.
Are you a brand snob? If so, I would be very curious as to why.
It is a concept that I just can not wrap my head around.
I can understand good natured ribbing but some of the stories I hear go far beyond that.
There is one brand of motorcycle, more than any other that seems to be accused of generating brand snobs.
That brand is Harley-Davidson. This brand generates a fierce loyalty. Now "Loyalty" is one thing but when that loyalty turns to virtual hatred towards people who have for whatever reason chosen to ride another brand of machine - well, that's where my understanding goes right out the window.
Maybe I am just the odd man out here, but to me, the bugs hurt and taste the same on my Harley as they did when I rode a Victory or a Suzuki.
The sunshine feels exactly the same, the smells are the same, the dangers are the same and so is the exhilaration. Do I enjoy my H-D Street Glide. Yes, I do. But I also enjoyed my Suzuki and it will always hold a special place in my heart. It was a great bike for the money. It ran well, it looked good and I enjoyed it. Conversely I hated my Sportster. It was not the right bike for me at all.
I enjoyed the engineering and handling of the Victory King Pin I rode, but it lacked the conveniences that I needed like a tour pack that could hold my lap top and I found it expensive when pitted against the Street Glide I now own & the Street Glide has far more standard features than the King Pin. (I am comparing an 05/06 King Pin to an 07 H-D Street Glide here and the pricing and options that were available when I was looking for my next bike)
I ride what I ride because of the job I do. I need to have a rolling office when I go to events. None of the other brands offered a woman my size the kinds of accessories and necessities that the Harley did, at least not in something I could get off the kickstand or handle at low speed.
I would look at any other brand that did if the prices and amenities were comparable.
To me, it's not about what I am riding. It's about the ride. The sights, the smells, the majesty of mother nature and the unfettered view of that majesty offered by my motorcycle.
It is also about the way I am treated when I go to the dealership or shop.
Customer service is what's going to make my happiness with my machine complete.
I just don't get what it is it about a brand name that can make some people down right rude in the way the interact with others. This does not just happen in the motorcycle world. It happens with automobiles too. Chevy lovers can be awful bad. So can Dodge and Ford lovers..I am sure there are many other communities where this is so, but since I am not a part of them I am not privy to the discrimination that could take place with regards to say one brand of hockey stick over another or one brand of ski over another.
I just don't understand how a product that you pay for can generate such hatred. After all, most of the things we purchase are just that - things. How can the ownership of a thing define who you are...
Obviously I am missing something.
Perhaps someone out there would care to enlighten me....
If you are riding today, please ride like everyone around you is blind and can not see you.
Belt Drive Betty
National VP AIM-Can
Alliance for Injured Motorcyclists
www.beltdrivebetty.com
