Hello All
On Nov 8 2008, I rode in the annual Angel Ride here, Fairhope, AL. This is a very large motorcycle event where all proceeds stay local to help familys with children with severe medical problems. Two nights of concerts, RV and camping facilities, vendors etc: A good time was had by all, with the exception of the ride itself.
They claim that there were over three thousand motorcycles registered for the ride. The wife and I rode the rig in this mess. There were only about four sidecars in the entire procession. The other sidecars must have done this before and rode as close to the front as possible. I on the other hand choose to ride near the rear (never again) with the rest of my group. It took 35 minutes from the time the first bikes started till I was able to move into the procession,and there were still several hundred bike behind me. One right turn, and the race was on. Within about a mile or two, I could just see the rider in front of me, after the second turn no riders were visable for the next eight miles. Not that I was going slow, I was doing 60 mph on a two lane road that was really rough. After about 3-4 miles of this I backed down to about 40mph. At this point the gap between the pack ahead of me had become so large that auto traffic began to pull into the procession. I finally caught the pack ahead of me about 10 miles after the start when they had to slow down to go through the center of town. Now we are all in a large group, and auto traffic still is pulling out into the procession. A right turn and about 5 miles later we started to come to a major intersection controled by a traffic light. Unlike the other intresections "No police car, No Police officer, nothing! Traffic was being controlled by the traffic light, increasing the distance between packs and injecting more auto traffic into the procession. At this point, myself and about 20 other bikes of our group pulled out of the procession and rode back to the camp ground.
Folks I've rode in many events, I've seen poker runs organized better. This ride was just down right dangerous. I expected from the organizers a first rate ride where safety is paramount. They did an excellant job on the rest of the events, just wish that more energy had been put into the ride. E-mailed the organizers, to thier credit they responded the very next morning. But I got the usual they dont know what happened and they try hard to make it a safe event. Not sure right now if I'll ride in this event again. It has the makings of a really great ride.
This is, unfortunately, rather typical for large rides. 3000 bikes in a single column is almost impossible to co-ordinate. Group rides tend to stretch out with the leaders continually getting farther and father ahead. Common road signals don't get passed back and the column falls apart. Many riders aren't even versed in standard road signals. Group rides of even moderate size need between several and many Road Captains and rides featuring several hundred riders just don't have those. A ride featuring thousands of riders would almost be hopeless to properly organize and stage.
The ideal is to send groups out with a road captain and tail gunner in each group. On a large ride this just ain't going to happen. Radios are a necessity.
Sorry you didn't enjoy the ride but, unfortunately, your experience is all too common.
A 50 mile ride I attended required the services of Law Enforcement from 5 surrounding areas and state police as well. There were 500 bikes and the column was well over a mile long, probably closer to 2 miles. I rode #2 behind the police escort and outriders and on the long straights I could see the column stretching completely out of site behind me. If the road captain up front accelerates to highway speed upon take off then it's all over for those behind him because the spacing will fall apart immediately. Large rides shouldn't travel faster than about 40mph at the front and even so the tail end will have a brisk ride ahead with those at the rear often doing well over the speed limit to close up gaps.
Overly large rides are seldom fun if the riders aren't reasonably cognizant of how it should be done and, frankly, most riders aren't.
As Tomcat says,
even with organisation and a head speed of 40mph-70kmph its difficult. But always the slowest vehicles have to go to the front and the fastest to the back. A few guides have to be distributed and well marked as head and tail guides (arm bind), so when (not if!) the colone gets torn up, each group can continue in an orderly way. As I may suggest aditional medical and technical guides in such a big event are helpfull and have to get their instruction AND STICK TO IT.
I myself organized only a 70 bike run and distributed tasks 2 days ahead and ran with the 3 guides the whole track down first. And it was intentionally far way off the main roads, partially even on gravel.
Beside: hot heads and green horns you have always, so an instruction should always be given. And on the Hamburg' bikers party there were to my time already over 4000 bikes and 300 rigs. A small photo copy of the 150km ride description was random wise distributed so at least improvised guides were available.
So next time go to the head.
Regards
Sven
Thanks for the input. In the future I'll stick to the smaller group rides and just enjoy the comradery,vendors and events. This was just to dangerous for my tastes.
