Laguna MotoGP Trip Motivation
Sunday, July 24th, 2005 at 8:27 pm by angrybob
Overall I had an incredible time on this trip. There were really three parts: Riding to Monterey, The Races, and Riding Back. I absolutely have no complaints about the races, but wow were some of the riding issues hard on the head…mostly caused by folks that I brought including me.
We had a group of about 14 riders in total and the logistics were tough to manage. Yeah thats a lot, but proper planning on my part could have improved many of the FUBARS. I’ve had a ton of time to think about how I would do this again, just coming off a 1300 mile drive for work. That, and being one who wants to make things better, in the near future I’m going to start a small series on the collection of lessons learned from this trip and over the years.
We were all coming from different parts of LA to meet at the I-210 & Angeles Crest Highway gas station (Shell?). Within 20 minutes of leaving from Palm Springs to get there, we ( five of us) had already splintered into three groups - two twosomes and me by myself. I know…what kind of dumbasses are we? I have no explanation except poor planing and a bunch of little mistakes that lead to a big FUBAR.
Since I was the ‘coordinator’ of my group, it was incumbent on me to provide maps for everyone and have a discussion reviewing directions to the rendevous point at Angeles Crest. I know that now. I took it for granted that we would not get split up. The combination of varying personalities and rider experience levels (actually there is much more than that, but I am choosing to be PC about it), resulted in a disaster.
In total, the group finally collected at the meeting point two hours late…with all of the three groups described above arriving separately. I was pretty pissed, bumed, embarrassed, you name it. I’m going to end this story now because it serves no point to whine about it. Shit happens…the problem was it happend to us throughout the riding portion of our vacation. My hope is to address each screw-up with its recommended solution as part of the article, as assigning blame at this point serves no purpose. Besides, I take most of the responsibility.
Is fourteen people too many? Stay tuned…
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Sounds like a typical weekend bike ride to me, excluding Harley Riders of course. Unless your used to riding with the same group of guys weekend and weekout, everyone seems to want to set the pace or try and impress people with their riding skills. The less experienced riders will give up 15 minutes into the ride and drop far behind because they refuse to commit to the same rapid pace understandedly. Well grap yourself a tofu milk shake and a vegie burger, nothing that your hive minded actions could’ve prevented from my standpoint.