October 20, 2004
Interview 2
Ethnographic Interviewing
Yongho Kim
Y: and have had a hard time listening to it. [laugh]
D: you can’t hear it?
Y: nope, well I could hear it. I just like, specially folk terms, I couldn’t because I didn’t know, but the notes helped me a lot
D: ok, I you should hear really clearly.. where’s that mic? (it’s there) ok, we’ll do that. can we hear you? [laugh] (I’ll remember mine) ok.
Y: so, umm, could you tell me about what happens on Friday rallies?
D: ok, what we started on.. I get there on Thursday? Well, it depends on what’s been set up and we’re doing the tri-state rally, basically. So starting from 9 to 5, the vendors, “vendor” [laugh] you justy ask me, if you don’t know the word, you can stop, that’s what cI would do in India when I couldn’t hear because I wouldn’t know the words there. There’s the people selling the stuff there. Ok? They, open up so some.. actually, before you do anything, get up and you often go to breakfast either at the motel, or some place close and you look for people to go to bhreakfast. And I’m forever looking for people I know and then we go up for breakfast together. Or you just go and see, you go with somebody yoy know. It’s p[rettyu socialble. And, uh, eat your breakfast and find out what they are doing. After getting dressed, of course, and it’s figure out what the day is gonna be like, and it’s usually fairly hot, we all of us would put on shirts. That usually t-shirts or variouys kinds of shirts. Each chapter, many chaptrers have their own shirt, with their chapter logo on it. I have one. Then you get a t-shirt on every rally, and they make a special rally for that rally. And it has the date, and place, and it has the design on it, and so, like I’ve been going to ralluies in 1979. so I usually put on really old ones, to show’em how long I’ve been… [laugh] a member. But I’ll put one of those on.. I’ll puit on vests.. you know what a vest is, it’s a vest. (Is it like a jacket?) well, no sleeves, though, it’s just and they are either made out of leather or denim like the blue jeans, an those, you have a big back batch and what state you are and what chapter you are, and if you hold office, like I’m the district editor, so I have a district editor patch on the back mine, most people have a map of the united states somewhere on their vests with the s5tates they’ve ridden to, filled-in, [laugh] you know, you color them in, some peope have a Minnesota map, with all the counties.. that they have been to in there, on the front, there is a… usually on the one side you have the national patch and on the other you have a chapter, you have a special chapter, they are called patches. And uh.. then there’s other things you have on there. You have pints from rallies, you get pins at rallis, as I told you before. You get hangers that go with pins and connect them on the bottom. I’ll show you those later so you can see. Anyway! A lot of people wear those around, I always wear a hat, as I’m losing my hair, and there’s a number of hats, but most of them are called motorcycle hats of various sorts. They’re Honda hats, gold wing road rider hats, and they are like baseball caps most of the time. But some people have, there really is a whole area of hats to personalize themselves, people will wear, I don’t even have names for some of the hats people where, but they, it’s usually a couple coming in and they both have the same, and they do everything the same, except their vests’ up, so the patches and pins are in the same place, and they wear either a t-shirt, you know, a t-shirt like I told you about, or they may wear various longer-sleeves shirts that match. Some people wear crazy pants, they are very brightly colored and there’s several kinds of that. And the common one is one that has red, white or red white and blue stripes on it like the American flag, very bright. And there are those.. umm.. and the women women wear often wear a special gold wing road rider jewelry little brime stones and the stuff on their vests things like that. I usually, it’s gonna be a hot day, and usually it’s just things like that. anyway, just gonna be a hot day, I don’t put a vest on, [ircg:052] [gist explanation that it was going to be too hot for clothes] but a lot of people still wear’em. Anyway, you go to breakfast and you see a lot of people, and then there’s a number of things you can do. There’s a self-guided ride, you can pick up at the registration table. There’s a sheet there that gives you a tour, a ride, it’s called a ride, to go out with places to go and how to go sort of route map. You can go by yourself, or you can get some other people. Most people go in groups, if they wanna do that. Sometimes, there’s something called a poker run. Yeah. Poker. And poker runs ARE Essentially the same thing they’re rides but they have “check points” and some volunteer from the association is at a check point, and you get a plain card out of it.. or a deck of cards. I don’t know I’ve never done this. But that’s basically what’s.. and.. you go.. you have to go to all these places to get your cards. And you have to pay to do this. You always have to pay a bit to raise money, and you pay to do this, and you go on the poker run, and you try to get the highest poker hand, I don’t play poker so I’m not even sure and there’s usually a price for the highest poker, the best poker hand, and the next best , and they would the top three hands. And then there would be a worst hand. There’s usually a price for that. and you know, you come back and you get your stuff. And you know who won that, and you hand in your stuff, you get money out of that. they divide the money of those paid in out, and usually about half of it is paid for prizes, and half Is kept by the organization. Because, one of the reasons you have a rally is to raise money for the organization. Ok, what else do we do?
Y: you mentioned, you mentioned last time that some people had jewels in the united states maps, and this one..
D: oh, that’s on the motorcycle. You put a map on the motorcycle. I don’t have one, but some people put it in the motorcycle same thing as younger vests, they glue little. Yeah, you just glue little glass jewels.
Y: oh that also applies to the vests?
D: no, for the vest, you use.. either a marking pen, color, or even.. I bought a little salad of fabric colors. You know, you can just paint them on there…
Y: you kept mentioning that couples do this and couples do that. Is there a term for people who aren’t couples, or who are couples? ( who aren’t?) yeah. Actually, are couples members?
D: Couples.. yeah, yeah they are. I mean, unless they haven’t joined yet. But.. the couple, the term couples is a big term. Most, most people who belong together. It’s something they do together. Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t really enjoy this much. She’s been to three rallies but she really doesn’t go for it for that much, since I am in the state staff, being district editor, I am really busy most of the time, I take photographs, and little things. So I wouldn’t have much time so she doesn’t go. So there’s.. this is my term, I talk about the “rogue males” [laugh] they’re.. they’re usually a group of men, whose wives are not there. And there’s few women who are not attached to anybody. Umm, they ride their own motorcycles and they come. There aren’t many, but there are a few. So couples by, you know, they.. I told you before, we chapters pick couples of the year. And it’s spelled C.O.Y. in capitals, COY they call that. (Does COY mean anything?) COY means, couple of the year. C.O.Y (So does the word mean anything?) No, the word is made up. It’s an acronym made of that to shorten it. Because Couple of the Year takes a long time to say, and so you say “does your chapter have a coy”, “yeah,” and “who’s the district coy, and “who’s the region coy”, this region, from our state, the region coy, the region is made up of about 7 states, region “E”, is where we belong to, so they were chosen “region coy” and they’ll go to the national rally next year and compete for “couple of the year” for the united states, actually for the whole organization. So, you’ll see. I met the national COY, they’re called this year they have showed up at our.. at our.. affair, and they’re pretty funny, how they show up for us, and they [laugh] ok, anyways, we’re still on Friday.. so..
Y: so, so, …did the.. you said that the “rogue males” bring their own motorcycles
D: yeah, I mean, most, most of the men. Virtually all of the men and ride..motorcycles. (Is it different for the couples?) Yeah, because.. maybe.. 85% to 90% of the women ride on the motorcycles with the men. (hmm) the Honda Gold wing is a big motorcycle and it has a place for 2 people to sit on it, and it’s plenty powerful, and that’s why there’s such an emphasis on couples, I suspect because it is a motorcycle made for 2 people. So way back in 1976, when it first came out, pretty soon.. couples were riding on this motorcycle, powerful enough to tour together. Recently more women, have been riding their own motorcycles with their husbands. Maybe 10 to 15% of them do now. And they also have been riding trikes. Trikes are motorcycles that have been converted to tricycles with two wheels, ever seen those around?
Y: I think I’ve seen the one with four wheels.. (well, that’s a car.. [laigh]) they have four wheels..
D: oh, those are off-road.. off-road coasters. No, but the motorcycles don’t come this way, but they are not at least 10 manufacturers that build trikes. And a lot of older people convert their motorcycles and call them “trikes” for short, tricycles, meaning three wheels, three wheelers, ok? And you know, they cost about $10,000 to do this. You spend a lot of money in this business. Women like this, because then they don’t have to worry about reaching the ground with their legs. A problem that short people and women have is that motorcycles are too tall, and it’s hard for them to reach the ground. And after taking a short women and short men, but more women are short, like that, and old people. I’ll have to consider it in a few years. My wife wants me to consider it now, to trike my bike outside so I don’t fall over [ smirk] the other thing you can do is to put a side-card on the bike. Quite a few people do that. I have a side-car on. Um… so! You wanna go back to Friday again? (sure, let’s go back to Friday) something else you can do is to go to seminars. Seminars start Friday morning, and I don’t know if we have talked about seminars.
Y: A little bit, you told me the kinds.. that there are seminars in safety, and how to pull a trailer, and co-riders
D: oh, ok. Thjose are the most common seminars. Sometimes, for a while we had a guy from the national office. Phoenix, that’s the.. we have paid people there. To come and give seminars.. But it was largely on this.. he would give a breakfast, on a morning, Friday morning, we would go to breakfast with Pete. Maybe it was Saturday morning, maybe, but he’s well known he writes columns for the national magazine, and he’s very funny, and he shows slides and does all sorts of things, all these topics, basically. There’s also we have had a seminar on self development. [laugh] by our district trainer, we had the term “trainer” there, and she talks about social relationships and things like this. Throughout this is a big emphasis on safety. Just a real emphasis on the whole organization. And the reason for this is that motorcycling is fairly dangerous. Humph! So, we also on Friday, would probably have, we probably have a CPR course. That’s course in, in.. resuscitation, and first aid, and you can take that.. it’s a certified course, you can learn to give mouth to mouth, it’s all that stuff, but also held on Friday. We also have a.. an advanced writing writer training course experience actually, ERC Experienced Rider Course. I don’t think I got it right before… anyway that’s a, that’ a old course. It starts four hours into the classroom, four hours outside to learn to do stuff. And it’s very good course. I’ve taken it once, and I should do it every year, actually. (What kind of stuff do you do?) Well, the classroom stuff is about all sorts of things. About traction. When you corner a certain amount of traction in the tires, the ability to stick is used up because you’re leaning into the thing. So if you have to put your breaks on there, you’ve already used some of your tire traction. They’ll tell you that. Talk about cornering is a big thing in motorcycling. Have a corner is an actual root you train people then you talk about situations in which where you have to watch out for what cars are going to do. And then.. it’s been a long time since I took this course so I can’t tell you exactly, but.. you talk about the most common kinds of accidents that occur have arrived on freeways, and keep out of everybody’s ways, how to be seen, colorful clothing and stuff (oh, by cars) yeah! No I mean It’;s a real problem. Cars don’t see.. they tend to see these big motorcycles better. I used to ride a small motorcycle. They, so it’s like riding a bycicle out here. People pull out right in front of you because they don’t perceive as a vehicle. So these are all problems that motorcyclists faces, and when we get into an accident we get hurt, more likely to get hurt badly. Talk about even the kinds of clothing to wear, and that’s important. The course itself is largely given to.. how to break, they’ll tell you about breaking suddenly. How to counter-steer. Which is the salvation for me of motorcycling. It’s so wonderful technique. After you turn the wheel in the opposite direction you wanna go, slightly. If you wanna go right, you actually turn slightly left. It drops your motorcycle right. Very hard to imagine, but once you learn how to do it, typically what you do is to lean, using your body, and it’s much harder to gage how far to do that, and there’s a delay, once you learn to counter-steer, you can pop that bike, all of the racing guys know how to do this, and nobody else did, 15, 20 years ago it became common knowledge. I started practicing and then.. how to avoid, how to avoid stuff on the road, oh, that’s another stuff they talk about a lot, it’s road conditions, motorcycle. You hit gravel, you know what gravel is, little stones, (no) you know, just.. dirt, on the road that’s bad for traction, if you go lean way over going over the corner shaft it’s really easy to pull out and so you talk about that rail on the road, what’s called “edge traps”, “edge traps” are where two pavements meet and there’s one higher than the other, maybe, or there’s a construction project and they’ve ground down one lane, and the other lane is higher, catch your motorcycle really easy, and flip your wheel out. Take your sometimes you just get knocked down. Or railroad tracks, like the light rail railroad tracks, it’s very hard, if you’re going right next to them, you can get thrown. Those are called edge traps and you really have to worry about that. How to ride across a bridge, with grading. You know can actually see the metal, it’s made out of steel, sort of like a, you can see through it it’s like a screen that is heavy so you can see through it but it’s just, you’re riding, your tires are catching and we call it it’s a metal grading, and there aren’t too many of those but there are some. And it’s a shock when you get there. [laugh ]because your bike is going like this [trembling] all the time. However do all of those things Or what you do in a year-seqeunce. What else do we do. We have a trailering course, how to tow a trailer outside, you actually go learrnin and so forth… uhm.. what else. There might be, if we had a dealer, as in a vendor, motorcycle dealer comes over and brings bikes. There might be demo rides – demonstration rides – and they’ll bring over the newest Honda Goldwings 1800’s and they can let you ride em and take you somewhere – usually take you in groups – they wanna sell you, so they do that. That’s something you can do on Friday and Saturday both. What else could you do?
Y: so that’s all things you have learned in ERC?
D: No, ER.. “Demo” rides are just things I do at the rally. Demos and trailer.. ERCs doesn’t do trailer.
Y: so that’s what we do, after crossing bridges?
D: yeah they might tell you about that, the trailering is a separate course, to learn more about how.. how to tow the trailer with a motorcycle (it’s one of the seminars?) well, yeah.. ah,, I would call it a course, not a seminar. Seminars are inside, in classroom setting where in a motel, you set up chairs. The courses are outside, you ride, part of it at least like the ERC. Some of it is outside, and some of it is inside, but some of it is outside. You ride with.. cones.. to see how tight you can do that. Okay what else would you do on Friday. You may participate on on-bike the on-bike competition.and they have the competition is constructed.. there are several things you do. You come up, they have to be wearing your protective clothing, which means, long-sleeves arm, usually a jacket and a helmet, yours boots covering your ankles, and that has to be very thick so you don’t get hurt. There are several things that go on on an on-bike competition. One is, the slow race. Or the slow ride, it’s the same thing. And they, they lay out a tape cord, it’s about 16 inches wide. And I can’t remember how long it is. It’s about probably 35 feet long, and the idea is to ride your motorcycle up to this and ride as slowly as you can without going outside the lines. And see how long it can take. The best, the best times were running around 18 or 20 seconds. It’s very hard to do, because you got to barely move and you got this huge motorcycle and all would fall over. And that’s one part of the on-bike competition. Then you have a slalom. S-l-a-l-o-m I don’t know how you would spell slalom. It’s the same as in skiing. There you set cones out, and while you set them out in a line, and the idea would be riders to ride as fast as you can, weaving back and forth between the cones, and come out of the other end, without hitting them and without missing them, that is without being able to go around without one. So it’s a speed, that’s hard, that’s one of the hard ones. Another is, I don’t really know how they are called.
Y: Is that how you call it? Weaving back and forth (weaving) yes, but is that how you talk about it with the other riders? Members?
D: Yeah, you, you do in fact that’s also a common term in the motor-era period.. motorcyclist even race car drivers when they are trying to break their tires in “weave” [makes dialectical motion a la thesis-antithesis with both hands and makes a “shooo” sound with mouth] comes out of the notion of weaving a thread. Back and forth as you weave cloth. Anyway, you weave in the slalom back and forth until you get out on the other side, and you try to do it as fast as you can. The slower you do it, the easier it is, but it’s hard. There’s also often a, a, I just don’t remember what they call it. The idea is to ride as tightly circled as you can. Ride around in a circle, and so you’ll just have to describe that. I don’t have a term for.. and they, they said, post other things on the outside. So you know where to go. And there are levels, they’ll start fairly wide, and then they keep moving it in, and moving it in, and I can’t remember how tight you can get, 12 feet riding around in a circle.. it’s very hard to do. You know, you’ve got to do it slowly, you can’t fall over [laugh], it’s happened, so that’s one. Then, there are there’s usually… [sigh] what do you call it… two or three other ones after the one I described. Oh that’s the other one. This is the “one up” bike games. One/up games. One person is on the motorcycle. There is two/up games, meaning [gist: there are two people on there]. There’s a number of ways to do this, but the way we have been doing it recently is, you go, you have these traffic cones, that equip tennis balls on top of these things, often like 6 or 7 of them, and your passenger will ride by, and the passenger tries to pick the balls off the cones, as he goes by and puts them on the bucket on his lap. Then you turn around, and your passenger tries to put them all back on, it’s quite hard to do! (wow) we had a guy and his kids, kids riding passenger, and they did it great! he’s a good rider so he goes slow enough. he does times as well. There’s time, and the number of balls you can get in there. Another, another thing we did this time was to slow a bean bag, do you know what that is? It’s a.. cloth bag with beans, you know, into a bunch of buckets, plastic buckets set up and the idea was, the passenger, as you go by, tries to throw the bean-bag into the bucket and I think there has to be six feet away or something like that. So, they did that, and I can’t remember what else they did, actually. I’ve pictures of all this stuff. Don’t ya? I saw one once, where, the passenger has a.. a waterfield balloon. [storng laugh] and you go under a string, that’s on top of you, two posts up there, and you ride your motorcycle under it. The passenger thwos the water balloon over the top and then catches it on the other sides, without breaking it. If it breaks, of course, everybody gets wet. Uh.. I haven’t seen that one recently, but I saw it years ago. So! this is sort of the idea, and that’s the tour on bike games. in another words, one out of two,and stop. There are off-bike games. [laugh] usually inside. and I don’t watch those too much. they usually have to do with throwing a little bean bag in.. there will be a target up there with you, know, it’s a gord that tries to hit stuff, but I don’t know, anyway, little kid.. anybody.. can do that. and you get awards and prizes for that. so that’s something you can do on friday. There.. in the afternoon, a lot of people do this all day. They don’t do the on-bike games all day, but they just schedule for a certain time. I can’t rememebr if there was anything major scheduled.. there were seminars on the afternoon friday, less usual. I think a lot of people go riding on friday afternoon (uhuh) they’ll take one of these rides, to do that, uhm a lot of time, that this is going on, people are… there are three staff members that are selling 50/50 tickets they are called. And what it is is a kind of raffle, you know that word, where you buy tickets. And then, you know, there are two strings and you split them, and you divide and put them in a.. in a bucket or something. And they’re all mixed up and there will be a drawing at the end of the day, they’ll pull a ticket out and announce a number and in 50/50 what they do, is to divide half of the money you paid for the tickets and give half in prizes, and give half to the association. So they’re always hanging around and selling these damn things. I usually, I never win. I only won once after 20 years of this. [laugh] I won a third level, I must have gotten $40 that’s probably crossed $200 or $300 over the years.
Y: but. who…? I mean you should assign like 1% of the.. [laugh] (what’s that?) I thought you usually assign only like 1% of the..
D: it’s called 50/50 because they split it 50/50 (right, right…) and there are other things, always things going on, these fundraising acitvities, is what they are, ways to raise moiney, and I think there’s a formal term for that, that’s just one of the way, another way is that people bring prizes in and there are other raffles going on. There’s a desk, where the vendors are, usually, there’s a rider education booth. It’s called the booth cuz it’s like the display booth. They have a number of prizes in there, and you can buy raffle tickes to get those. there’ll be a table, so there’s a rider education raffles. So there’s some really nice things sometimes. They get dealers to donate tires.. it’s good stuff. Somebody makes a quilt every year, people make really nice stuff.. 5, 4, 5 years ago somebody…made a hand-cart motorcycle rocking horse. You know what a rocking horse is? It”s like, you know what a rocking chair is? (no…) it rocks back and forth. it has, like this, you know, you can rock back and forth, you made a motorcycle, rocking horse, he made a motorcycle and raffled that off. You know, it was art, sort of. And that was in the.. in the educator booth. Then there’s the table, people bring in, baskets. They are called the raffle off- they put all sorts of stuff called “goodies” in there and goodies can be.. any set of prizes like, you know, most chapters put one of those together, to raffle off, and people can buy tickets and raffle. All to raise money, and there’s a fee to go to one of these, you register.. to go to this district rally and meet and when you get there.. you have to register, I have $30 dollars. So they make money off that, and then… I haven’t told you this before, but you gotta, oh maybe? I did get a colored-band on your head so they know, there are areas that are off-limits to the public during one of these things, so, one of the jobs people have fill is that they have to be door-guards. They sit and make sure you got, everyone has an arm-band. They are called wrist-bands, I think we do call them wrist-bands. on.
Y: what’s, what’s your plate, the horrible plate that you got..
D: oh, that was a door prize. (oh that was a doorprize) yes. door prizes are also donated by, thjat’s something you get just for registering. they give you a ticket. when you check in in the registrar, you get a little hanger, and a pin and it would get your door prize ticket. so you can put it in a bucket, and you have the number of your door prize numbers in there..
[another professor comes in]
Y: umm.. so you said that there is the.. there is the 50/50 ticket raffles, the basket raffles to raffle off, in which there are goodies, and other kinds of prizes where people raffle off things to do fundraising (yeah, uhmm) are all those a specific kind of activity?
D: well, uhh we actually switched here.. to ways to raise money. and they are activity.. I wouldn’t call it an activity but something you can do is to buy raffle tickets, okay? that’s something you can do.
Y: so are these some specific kind of to raise money or are they just random ways to raise money? So, uh, I’ll stay 50/50 tickets, the raffling baskets, and the.. (goodies, yes) and the wristband door prizes,.. are these (no, wristband door prizes, well, they really aren’t a way to raise money) but are these two, 50/50 tickets and baskets (baskets) a specific way of raising money?
D: they are each different. (they are each different) yeah. so, so is the education booth raffle. those are all different.
Y: are there other ways to raise money?
D: umm.. let me think..[silence] I don’t think so. no. oh, no! a poker runs are a way to raise money. they are also a thing you do, but poker runs are a way to raise money.
Y: yeah.. I was wondering.. for the officers if it was different from the 50/50 and the baskets raffling were different from the pocker runs?
D: for officers? (yeah, for officers) no. in fact, officers are often expected to buy more tickets than what other people do [laugh] it’s too bad. I’m kind of … not a great gambler. But I do expected to spend $20-$30 on these things every time I go. (I see) Another thing you do durin g the day, if you want to go back there, is.. uh.. go to lunch, and you usually do that with people if you can find them. I tend to hang out, they are on friday…afternoon, there is a COY reception. Just for invited people. Not for everybody. I go to that for photographing. There are chapter COYs and so chapter directors and so forth all show up to that. And they have a cake. And something to drink. And they, it’s a way of recognizing them. And let’s see.. what else would go on.. mostly people, people stand around a lot and talk to each other. And they look at each others’ motorcycles a lot. Oh! One thing you during the day often is polish your motorcycle. Wash it, and polish it. Everybody is very, they just love to polish their motorcycles. And uh… the.. usually the motel that is hosting is usually set up a washing area with hose, and donate some cloths, and things and buckets so that you can wash your motorcycle. And so everybody is.. is.. in there. A lot of people do.. I usually spend some time polishing my motorcycle. We love our motorcycles in here. Beautiful ones. You might also, friday, take your motorcycle in to the vendor area, to have it “pin-striped” or to have it “mural-painted” or something like that. And you know, people spend a lot of time, part of the reason to go to a rally is to buy things. There really is a trade show going on there that vendors, selling you things. And I almost on everything from clothing, and there will be people there will lightning, jackets, all sorts of things, and it’s as easy to buy that stuff there, a lot of people come from parts of the state where there aren’t any dealers. and it’s all.. they may spend two or three hours wandering around, talking to vendors, one vendor usually there’s one or two of them with “camping trailers” you know, that you can make into tents. They are called campers. So if you are thinking about that, you can look at those. There are.. there are maybe some vendors who are selling jewelry and things like that they sell pretty good. There’s usually cleaning, special cleaning materials. There are vendors that, we have talked about this before, that sell accesories and accents. And you know, one of the running jokes as you go, everyone starts thining about the acceseories that they could put on their motorcycles. The absolute top of this is together at the national rally where there’s usually 70 or 80 vendors. Just with every possible thing there. But sometimes there will be a dealer with stuff on the area to put new ties on your bike, or install accesories, they are taking your bike apart, and that’s almost going on on one of these things. So, one of the things they do is just take your bike and be “accesorized” to have stuff put on it. Uhh.. people.. and sort of wander around there, by about 4:30, you start supper rides, or dinner rides. They’re called either, usually dinner rides by cyclub. Now, they’ll leave at different times, one leaving at 4:30, and one leaving at 5:00, one leaving at 5:30. What they do is take a ride, and end up at an restaurant somewhere out around, where it is. They may ride per 75-80 miles. So it’s a guided tour, actually. And then eat and come back. On friday night, you have the.. talent show, and you also have the best dressed chapter competition. The best dressed couple competition. And any other competitions, I cannot think of anything.. there usually are several “acts” in the talent show, I happened to be one of them, come out of my banjo, and make them all sing. Done that twice now. And, er, there used to be a competition, I actually won first place in the talent show there, was very good, people really enjoy that. We had a big turnout, and a lot of it is very funny, and chapters think really crazy things to do. It’s a good thing. Actually people, I always go to the bar to drink. [laugh] about that time. So that’s friday. And saturday is, many of the same things go on saturday. The special things like off-bike games and on-bike games. Sometimes they’ll mix this up, but I was thinking was the last event.. (the tri-state jamboree?) At the tri-state jamboreee. And saturday they always have the bike show, and the bike judging. Which means that people enter their motorcycles and they are beauty contests, basically, but we don’t call them that. And there are anumber of different categories in which you bike in. “Stock” meaning, you haven’t nmodified your bike in a significant way, there’s a “open class” which means you can do anything you want to your motorcycle, it’s painted and it’s got extra lights everywhere. (That’s what the bikers call it “open class”?) Yeah, “open” well.. let’s think. Yeah, I think it is. Sometimes there is a middle class where you can have some, I have never figured out their rules on this. I have my side car, on my side car once, but there’s only one or two, they are second place, but they are side cars. I should have entered my bike, I was doing an Iowa rally years ago, they had a stock class, and nobody entered it. I put one in, in that one. Because my bike is pretty plain, it doesn’t look very neat. Uhh.. but a lot of people watched, liked to look at the bikes then. And they wandered around. There was also a mascot competition at the same time. Mascots are stuffed animals [laugh] Do you know what a stuffed animal is, you know, little bears and some things like that. Someone liked them quite a bit. Something like 14 years ago, Golden Riders started putting stuffed animals in their motorcycles. By 8 years ago, virtually everyone – not everybody but at least 80% of them – had stuffed animals in them and they came to be known as mascots. And they were usually attached to the trunk rack, or something they would sit back there, and they would dress them up in little vests, and they put gallons onand everything. [laugh] Okay, so. Because of that, they started a competition for the best mascot. Well, mascots are fading. There aren’t very many of them any more, but they are still having the competition. And I expect a few to go away. We used to have these rallies in state fair.. county fairgrounds. Now a lot of people can’t have them. They come in with their campers in camp, rather than being in a motel. Well, when that was the case, they had competitions on who was the best little camp camper, sort of. So they are always competing. At the same time, you have to be careful about competitions because it hurts peoples’ feeling when they lose! Anyway, those probably aren’t quite as popular altogether. All these competitions don’t seem to be popular as they used to be. Oh! ONe more thing on friday. Friday night, you have the light parade. And the light parade means that everyone wants to put a bike in this thing, that has a lot of lights in there, and a lot of people have a lot of lights in their motorcycles. Bars, it’s part of the accesories that you put on your bike. And so, once it gets dark they either ride around for the motel this year, they got to ride downtown. And 60 motorcycles during this light parade. And some guys really don’t have them. Flashing, they have all sorts of things set up. I saw a light parade guy who had a trailer with a generator on it to all those lights [big laugh] And that was as often we don’t have a competition anymore, but there used to be a best.. the best one. One year the couple sold, there were little light bulbs, they sold them all over, their riding suit. And so they outlined themselves in little lights and they had a separate battery running their seats. But it was quite a sight. I have that on video somewhere. So! Okay, we got the light parade over, on saturday we got the bike show, which sort of goes partly in the morning and partly into the afternoon. At about 5:00 we have the grand parade on saturday.. oh! once in a time we had a “free hot dog feed” and uh, so, some members volunteered to cook hot do
gs and uh, we got hot dogs, and put them in the trips, and it’s a bad meal, of course. And that’s what you get there, and everybody lines up and they get hot dogs, and something to drink, slo forth. So at 5:00 we have the grand parade. And there you try to get with a motorcycle on it. The police show up, and you take a tour, through whatever town it is – 3 or four miles – and everybody runs slowly and they hop their horns at people and hold off traffic [giggle] the National – this format is very like the national rally too, where you have as many as 6,000 motorcycles. But lot of the same thing goes on there as wel.
Y: You said that at the chap.. no.. chap.. chapter? No, region. At the regional rally.. it was the regional rally, right? (no) it was about five min..
D: this is the district, the tri-state rally is actually the district ofthe state. Three states. but really two of them have hardly any members. South, North Dakota. North Dakota has two chapters and South Dakota has one. That’s why they put us together with these kids. They’re too small to have their own district rallies. So we call it the tri-state rally but it’s basically a Minnesota District Rally. The Region, used to have a rally then they cut it out, then this year they had a rally again.. in Illinois. It’s hard to get people to rallies – there are so many rallies now, it’s sort of people to get to do them all. So, I’ve been to a couple of regional rallies in the old days, but I haven’t been recently. The region is Illinois, it has the Dakotas and us, and Wisconsin, Missouri.. you know, I can’t even remember the states but we’re even now.
Y: And we’re region E
D: Region E, yes. We’re “America’s Heartland” as wel.
Y: How many regions are there?
D: You know, that’s a good question. Probably we get about 9 or 10. Umm.. I can go look and count them for you.
Y: Within the region E.. how many districts are there?
D: The districts are the state. So it’s the number of states are the number of regions
Y: Oh, there’s a special case for the state of Minnesota.
D: No, they talk about.. the Dakotas are in their own districts.. but they aren’t really organized. But they are called districts.
Y: And then.. how many chapters are there. So which district are we in?
D: We are in the Minnesota District. Used to be called the “state”. Why do they call it a district now, I don’t know. I got mad at them. Because state seemed so reasonable.. how many chapters there are depends on how many you can get. We have twelve. And one of them is defunct, but we still count it, I think it’s still true.
Y: Wihch are you in?
D: I’m in Chapter G. (Chapter G) The northwest metro, we’re calling ourselves.
Y: So the chapters are alphabetical.
D: Well, yeah, they are, but it’s.. Chapter G was the first chapter in Minnesota. Why do they call it G, I don’t know. We just added a chapter “B” up north, we don’t have a chapter “A”. (Oh, I see) I can name the chapters. Just cuz I … (could you? name the chapters?) yeah! sure. There’s chapter B, chapter C, I, G, K, N, O, ther’es chapter.. a.. R, S, V. How many is that? [30 secs of tape cut] but.. anyuway let’s look at that list. You wrote them down there? OK… there IS chapter F – but it’s defunct. G.. F.. I…K.. oh it’s chapter L. That’s what I’m missing. What there’s a chapter F and we’re counting it.
Y: Can I interview you on Friday?
D: let’s see.. any possibility that you may interview me afternoon?
Y: Monday? Oh, afternoon?
D: I have this book deadline and when I come here it breaks my morning up. I’ve got to give a lecture at 1:10pm. Then at 2:10. Do you have a class then?
Y: No, I don’t.
D: Ok, let’s do it at two…
Y: two ten on Friday?
D: yeah, sure. That way we can put it together.
