A long time between drinks

There has been little to report recently after the Midday Express Ride in January, unfortunately the Quarterly General Meeting was called off the mid January because on the evening picked it was 38C and to damn hot to be doing official duties even know its held in a pub. But by now if your a financial member you will have received your Summer Smoke Signals e-mag, a sterling job by our esteemed editor Ray as usual and at this point I must thank Mark Barthelmie and Sue Heard for the time and effort organising the previous Midday Express Ride, members always enjoy participating in events but fail to realize they don’t just happen without any organising going on in the background, thats why we need people on your committee so it does’nt fall on the shoulders of one or two people. Bearing that in mind we are only a few months away from the next AGM so start thinking which position you would like to procure we always have room for fresh blood and thats very important. Clubs of all hobbies are having a hard time since Covid, ageing members, lack of interest, and people with little or no spare time to spare, lack of funds to participate, we have taken this in our stride with no joining fees only annual subs, no rally fees, quarterly meetings, and 2 rallies a year instead of 4, and 2 only Sunday rides a year, has it increased membership NO, but we still have a staunch number of committed members and changing our constitution to include British and European motorcycles up to 1976  gave us some new extra enthusiastic members. Will it save our/all clubs probably not, but it will prolong it and we must be open minded to accept change otherwise like the dinosaurs we will all be extinct. Unfortunately the killer literally is aging demographics and I reckon that within 20 years this hobby will fail being possibly permits for ICE vehicles and maybe restricted petrol supply combining lots of seperate clubs into one or two huge one will help but inevitably I think we should enjoy what we can while we can.