I want to thank you for taking the time to reply and for putting your thoughts and experience into it.
If I can I’d like to try and address some of the concerns a little bit.
Obviously the first part of your message regarding car meets was for context and anything negative including the assault you mentioned had nothing to do with us (just clarifying incase it is misread)
I appreciate that as a biker you understand and support loud pipes so thank you for being a voice of reason in that scenario.
As for blocking the path, we are not intending to be a nuisance by parking there but leaving more room for cars in the spaces and not putting the kickstand on grass which as I’m sure you know can sink and lead to the bike dropping. We always leave plenty of room for people to pass by and, at least in my experience its not a busy route for foot traffic.
Whenever we pull up we turn our engines off almost straight away and when we leave we are not idling for long, the time it takes to put on helmet and gloves is usually it. We make sure everyone is ready and we leave together but we certainly are not making tons of noise over long periods of time.
One of the things you mentioned was being lied to about knowing him and specifically talking about a big bang R1, obviously I can’t speak for anyone else and I wasn’t there to hear the whole conversation but that’s just general loyalty, if you’re riding with friends and one of you gets pulled over… suddenly that’s just a random biker. We all know the rules and we all look out for our people.
Also if you asked who was riding a big bang r1 and they said they didn’t know then they were telling the truth in that regard as the model isn’t a big bang and they may have been genuinely trying to work out if Any of the members had that model bike or not.
Very few of the bikes are decat and even less have flip plates but modifying a bike is of course down to the discretion of the owner.
As for our “token woman on a 125”, we have several female members on bikes ranging from 125s to 1000cc, we all start somewhere and they are certainly not “token”.
We are not there to frustrate the locals in the same way the locals are not there to frustrate us, we just exist in proximity to eachother.
You feel lied to but I don’t think you have been lied to.
Complaints about noise have been made and they are installing noise cameras… that’s on the people who made complaints. We really don’t idle for long and if you are worried about leaving your home on a bike then I would ask how loud is your bike? Maybe the neighbours have mistaken your bike on occasion for one of ours? Just because we wear a hoodie doesn’t mean we are a problem. We arrive, support the business, enjoy eachothers company and a coffee then leave…
And as previously said, very few of the bikes have flips and they are not illegal and often used when the bikes are at shows.
I’d like to finish my response by saying that I’m sorry you have a negative opinion but there’s two sides to each story,
We work with children’s charities,
Mental health charities,
Community outreach and local businesses to try and do some good for local communities, the goal isn’t to upset but to give back and help because we are part of these communities.
I’m grateful for your honesty and I hope you can appreciate mine.
I might wander round and see what the fuss is about on Friday evening!