I spent much of the day yesterday with a lot of other ABATE of Colorado members handing out free food to needy families. At least some of them were needy.

This event arose out of something my ABATE chapter, District 10, did back in December. Working with an organization called Feed the Children, as well as several other groups and agencies, we distributed a semi-load of food packages to needy families at Christmas time. The Feed the Children people felt we did such a good job that they came back and asked if we’d now like to do eight truckloads.

That’s a much bigger job to organize so the job was taken on by the state organization, ABATE of Colorado, along with the Motorcycle Roadracing Association and the Colorado Sportsbike Club and various social services agencies. And yesterday was the day.

Working through the agencies, 3,200 vouchers had been handed out to families and they were responsible for coming to pick up the goods. We had been alerted to expect perhaps 20 percent no-shows, but yesterday’s weather was pretty crappy so that number was much higher. After an initial flurry of activity things died down and there were a whole bunch of us sitting around with a heck of a lot of food waiting to be claimed.

I don’t want to make unfounded assumptions about some of the people who were given vouchers, I’m sure many had perfectly valid reasons they couldn’t show up. But I have to believe that for many of them, if they couldn’t be bothered to come get free food, they must really not be all that needy.

So what ended up happening is, they put out an announcement over several radio stations that there was free food waiting for anyone who was in need who wanted to come get some. After awhile there was a lot of traffic again, but looking at some of these cars you had to wonder. Yes, most of them were beaters, and those people really seemed like they could use a helping hand. And then there were the ones in cars way more expensive than what I drive.

And while most of the people who answered to radio announcement came and got their food and left, there were some who obviously figured this was worth a scam. We were particularly amused by the two young guys in a nice car who came through the line and when we asked them to pop the trunk, there were food boxes already in there. They had apparently just gone through a different line than ours, went around again, and came back through again. We gave them one more box and sent them on their way, but somehow I don’t think they were particularly needy.

The bottom line to it all is that yes, we did help out some folks who could use some help. And a few scammers got some free food. In the meantime, there were a whole bunch of ABATE members who gave freely of their time, many taking time off work to do so, to help other people they don’t even know.

These are some good people.

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I spent most of my money on beer, bikes, and bait. The rest I wasted!

It was just a year ago when I went on my first ever poker run, except no one rode motorcycles. It was the ABATE District 10 Coffee Run and the weather was miserable. Well, the Coffee Run for 2010 was held this past weekend and this time the weather cooperated. We rode bikes.

There was a lot of interest for me in this run because of all that has happened in the past year. A year ago I was a new ABATE member and when I showed up at this run I didn’t know anybody. I’m not an overly gregarious person and it can be hard for me to mix comfortably with strangers. But I learned long ago as a newspaper reporter that as long as I assume a role I can play that role instead of being simply me. So I shifted into reporter mode and talked to a bunch of people, got a lot of good story ideas, and felt pretty good about it all.

This year was so different. I walked into a crowd of people I knew, greeted and was greeted, and was happy to see some folks I hadn’t seen in quite awhile. Folks I met last year at the Coffee Run, as a matter of fact. I didn’t have to play a role, I could just be me. And of course, as I always do, I did come up with some good contacts for some story ideas. Any journey starts with the first step. It can be hard to take that step but once you do you’re on your way and from then on it just gets easier.

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ABATE of Colorado needs volunteers to staff a huge food giveaway on May 12. Working with the Feed the Children organization, ABATE will be distributing eight truckloads of food to needy families. That’s going to be require a lot of bodies to unload the trucks, manage traffic, and pass out the food boxes, and just generally do whatever is necessary.

Distribution will take place in the parking lot of Invesco Field at Mile High. Anyone interested in helping out can contact ABATE at abatecoevents@yahoo.com.

ABATE District 10 did a similar food distribution back in December, distributing just one truckload of food. Feed the Children was very pleased with the organization and execution of that effort so they contacted ABATE to do it again, in a much bigger manner.

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Why? Because dinner always tastes better with helmet hair.

OK, this is just a fun story I want to pass along. Thanks go to Mike Landon, who sent the link to me.

It seems there were these folks living in this Chicago-area nursing home who regularly passed a biker bar. They grew interested in the bar and decided to pay it a visit. But they didn’t just drop in. First, they did themselves up with tattoos and biker costumes, and rolled in as a “biker gang.”

They were welcomed and members of the local Latino American Motorcycle Association and ABATE chapters have agreed to take them all for rides on their bikes.

It’s a really fun story. Worth your time to read it here.

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Motorcycle groups are known for their generosity, especially around Christmas time. Toys for Tots rides are common as well as a variety of other similar events.

I spent a good part of my afternoon today with other members of my ABATE District 10 as well as members from other districts and other organizations unloading a truck with food enough to feed 400 families for a week. The $11,000 to pay for it all came from ABATE fundraisers as well as events put on by the Frontier Club, VFW Post 3631, and the Friends of ABATE.

The event is officially the ABATE District 10 Erica Reyes Kids Without a Christmas. This is the second year D-10 has done this. The Aurora Police Department and the Aurora Fire Department will handle selecting the needy families and distributing the goods. In addition to food, this year there were two pallets of winter coats donated and Avon donated a large quantity of their products.

ABATE D-10 also shared some of the food with D-5 to help them out in their own charitable efforts. Altogether, approximately 40 people from D-10, D-5, the APD, the AFD, and the local Star motorcycles owners’ group gathered to greet and unload the truck.

Randy Savely, D-10 Representative, said, “It’s been great. We enjoy it. We’re letting them know we’re not all bad guys out here.”

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How hard is it to go on after losing a leg in a crash when all you did wrong was to take your eyes off the oncoming car for an instant to check the cross traffic? That was essentially the question I asked Randy and Joan Savely while speaking with them for the series of articles I just posted on Examiner.com.

What I seem to be doing with some regularity lately is working on a story for Examiner and then giving you the background here. That’s definitely the case now.

I met Randy when I joined ABATE earlier this year. I’m in District 10 and Randy is the district rep, which is to say, he runs the meetings. It didn’t take me long to notice that Randy was missing his left leg from the knee down.

One reason I like going on poker runs, going to ABATE meetings, and getting involved in other motorcycle-related activities is that every time I go somewhere I come home with new story ideas. That’s a good thing considering that I write a minimum of five articles every week, frequently more. I smelled a story in Randy.

First, let me make it clear that this is definitely their story, Randy and Joan’s, not just his. When I first proposed the story idea it was Joan who replied that the two of them would be happy to speak with me. Up until then I had been thinking solely of Randy, but it soon became very clear to me that this was indeed their story.

What I hadn’t counted on was how powerfully their story would hit me. I met with them two weeks ago today, expecting to spend less than an hour in the interview. Going on two hours I finally said we ought to stop because there was only so much that a reader will read.

The next day Judy and I left on vacation for a week and on the drive to Utah it was practically the only thing I could speak of. And this was after spending hours telling her about it the night before. The lead sentences quickly formed in my mind and they made it into the story unaltered, even though I never wrote the rest of it until 10 days later:

When everything finally came to a stop, Randy Savely sat up, thinking, “Well, I’m alive.”
A couple moments later he noticed his boot laying in the middle of the intersection.
“That boot don’t come off,” he thought. Then he turned to the driver who had hit him and asked for his belt to use as a tourniquet on his leg.

For two weeks now this story has haunted me (not in a bad way) and has been in my mind almost constantly. Not out of some fear that it could happen to me, that’s not it at all. Probably a lot of it is Randy. Can you imagine having your leg removed by a car and having the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on yourself?

A funny thing there: I asked Randy if he was wearing a helmet and whether he had any head injuries. No and no. But he told me that he really believes in chaps more than helmets because it was the fact that he was wearing chaps that enabled him to tend to his own needs. They covered up the fact that his foot was gone, whereas seeing a bloody stump may well have shaken him up enough to go into shock.

I could go on and on. As I said, this story has haunted me for two weeks. But I won’t. Go read it yourself. It’s not that I’m such a great writer, it’s that their story is an incredible story. I just can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have had the opportunity to tell it.

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Live every day as though it was your last, but ride to make sure it’s not!

The first ever motorcycle roadracing event was held at the brand new High Plains Raceway Saturday and I was there. The weather cooperated and it was a good day to be out having fun.

Mind you, I’m not a big race fan. I think this was only the third racing event I’ve ever been to. Judy and I went to the Super Bike races at Pikes Peak Raceway some years ago, and then we went to the ice races down by Woodland Park earlier this year. And then High Plains on Saturday.

It was fun, and I’m sure I’ll go again, but what I’m saying is, don’t expect me to talk about this like an expert because I’m not. But I’m going to offer you my novice observations on what it was like.

First off, I went because it was the inaugural motorcycle event and that seemed worthy of coverage, which I posted on Examiner.com.

Secondly, I wanted to meet and speak with a racer who is being sponsored by ABATE of Colorado, Jonathan Kuo. As Jon put it, ABATE is generally perceived among young sportbike riders as being a bunch of grey-hairs who ride Harleys. Sponsoring Jon is an outreach effort to try to change that perception and bring more of the motorcycle community into the organization. I’ll be doing a separate story on Jon later.

So anyway, one of the fun things about High Plains Raceway is that everybody gets a pit pass. That is, the parking and spectator area and the pit area are all one space, so you can walk around and talk with the racers, look at their bikes, and just mix freely. And if, like me, you’re pretty new to this sort of thing, it’s interesting some of the things you notice.

For example, it seems like everyone has a scooter or pocket bike or at least a bicycle. Getting around in the pit area can entail quite a bit of walking, so it’s completely normal to see some really big name racers like Jason DiSalvo and Matt Lynn, both of whom were there Saturday, riding around on little 50cc scoots. Small electric bikes are particularly popular, it seems.

Also, it’s a real family scene, right down to the critters. Hey, if you’re going out for the weekend you’re going to take the dog along, right? In many cases, at least, the answer is “Hell yes!”

From what the racers say, the track itself is a very good one. I was told it has some challenging turns, some fun and exciting elevation changes, and once they finish putting in the amenities it should be worthy of hosting Super Bike racing.

Of course it was fun to watch Jon Kuo race, in the way it’s always more fun when you actually know one of the guys out there on the track. Jon’s only in Novice class as yet but there’s no question he’s one of the good ones. I watched him run two races and he placed second behind the same guy each time. The two of them were smoking the rest of the field. You could see in the curves how they would swoop down and through, while everyone else had nowhere near the lean and often were way off the line.

So I enjoyed myself. And hey, it was historic in at least a small way. First time for the new track. And I looked in the Denver Post and they said nothing about it at all in the sports section. Too busy with the Nuggets, I guess.

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When you’re riding lead, don’t spit.

Judy and I wondered if we’d be seen as losers for not showing up at the ABATE of Colorado District 10 Corned Beef Bash Saturday night on a bike. This is my local ABATE chapter and this was our first time at one of their social events since I joined. We weren’t sure what to expect.

We weren’t sure how long we would be there, but we knew it would be getting dark, so the options were to wear a lot of gear and warm clothes or just drive. It occurred to me as we were getting ready that it would have been a really nice day to go for a ride and end up at the bash at dinner time. I wondered if that might be what a lot of people would do. But we drove.

Turns out, so did most everyone else. Sure there were about 15 to 20 bikes in the parking lot but the rest of the lot was overflowing with cars. We felt reassured. Nobody wants to make their first appearance at a new scene looking like a dope.

Walking in, we stood and looked around, not quite sure what the protocol was. Happily, Randy Savely, the District 10 Coordinator, who I had met when I attended my first meeting, came over to welcome us and point out where to pay, where to find the food, and just generally put us at ease. That was really nice and we appreciated it.

So we got some food (good corned beef!) and found a place to sit and took it all in while we ate. And you know what? It was not a whole lot different than any other St. Pat’s Day gathering you’re likely to see. There were kids running around having fun, lots of people talking and eating and drinking, a lot of silly green hats and various other green paraphenalia, and a lot of corned beef and cabbage. They were drawing numbers for door prizes, but although the numbers hit right next to each of ours, we didn’t win anything. And gosh, we didn’t win the 50-50 either.

But we talked a little with the folks at our table and we started getting acclimated. I look forward to being able to walk into this place and say hello to a bunch of folks I know. Not there yet, but you have to start somewhere.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride safe, ride often