In a room full of leather-vested Queensland motorcycle club members, who do you think the guy in shorts represents?
Give yourself an elephant stamp if you said the BMW Motorcycle Club of Queensland!
Yes, the man in shorts at the meeting this week of motorcycle clubs and the Police Minister and Police Commissioner was, indeed, from the Queensland branch of the BMW Club.
READ MY SUMMARY OF THE MEETING
And when he stood up to speak, there was quite a bit of playful banter around the conference table … even though he had some sobering comments to make.
“I represent the BMW Club of Queensland; now we’re completely left field from all of this,” he said.
Snickers all round and comments such as “Who let him in the room?”
But he was dead serious.
“We have the same issue here as you. We’ve been pulled over in the rain on Saturday morning up the North Coast because, by the admission from the general duty police, they don’t know how to tell the difference between a BMW and a rumble bike as you refer to it.”
More guffaws from the assembled, albeit a little nervous now.
He also reported that he had been mistakenly pulled up on his off-road bike and a Boxer Cup factory race bike (that he says looks like a police bike) by police who couldn’t tell the difference.
Australian Motorcycle Council secretary Tony Ellis, who flew in especially from Melbourne for the important meeting, playfully asks, “Is that your uniform?”
More laughter.
Tony (who owns two BMWs) adds: “The Victorian BMW Club’s unofficial motto is we ride to eat.”
The BMW rep joins in the laughter, then brings the levity back to earth with a serious issue “closer to my heart”.
“I own a print shop and I do a lot of black t-shirts for a lot of these clubs, particularly the Bandidos, and that has dried up completely,” he said.
“So this is hitting me in the hip pocket right now.
“These guys, as you can appreciate, it is very hard to get a debt collector to get debts from these guys. So I have thousands of dollars owing …
“This is a legitimate business income for me.”
One of the other club members said “leave us your card” and several agreed that they would send business his way.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a card or his name, but if he reads this, can he please contact me on hinchm@hotmail.com and I will happily give his business a free plug so that motorcycle clubs can help him out with their legitimate business.
Before sitting down he reported that he had received a text during the meeting that their club Christmas party had been cancelled “because we cannot get the numbers to ride together to go to Gympie on a bunch of BMWs, so that’s how it’s affecting us.”
(Before anyone suggests representatives at the meeting were flippant about the important issues at hand, think again. Tony, for example, thought it important enough to fly up from Melbourne. Check out my other recent posts on this meeting for his and other comments at the meeting.)