Having read, yet again, people slagging off Harley riders I felt it was appropriate to offer this bit of news to hopefully address that balance.
This is slightly convoluted so stay with me, I'll try not to bore you and confuse myself.
In my other life, the one outside these illusionary walls, I am involved with the Auckland Coast Guard. We are the people charging around in the red and white boats annoying all the peacable boat owners.
Recently, one of our more notable supporters, a man by the name of Ginger Gibbs passed away and as part of a way of continuing his plans and remembering his achievements a group of his friends broke the round New Zealand speed record in a power boat.
Have a look on the website: www.swashbucklersflyingpirate.co.nz
They achieved this in 69 hours (a favourite number of Gingers apparently), a great achievement and not that easy to achieve, I can assure you. To put it in perspective, if we (coastguard) respond to a job in heavy conditions and spend, say 8 hours working in those conditions, we are absolutely buggered. It takes me a couple of days to recover from that sort of beating, it is similar to racing enduro for 8 hours. So, a great achievement by all the participants.
Ginger was president of Matakana Riders, a social group of Harley riders, and these guys felt they could help out with the record attempt and continue Gingers support of Coast Guard by following the boat around the North Island (it wasn't possible to follow around both islands) raising funds.
So, for 69 hours these guys followed the boats route as much as possible, stopping in towns as they passed thru and asking for donations for Coast Guard.
If any of you have done fund raising, you will know how hard that is, constantly seeing dis-interested people ignore you and having to keep going for 3 days. This was a huge effort!
Matakana Riders raised $14,000 in those 3 days and have donated that money to Coast Guard.
Now, the point of all this is: These guys look a bit rough (hide the virgins & children kind of rough) and ride Harleys. A lot of us would have a fairly negative preconception about these guys, and a lot of that crap comes out in here illustrating that.
But, they busted their arses for us, gave a lot more than the boating public often do and to no benefit to themselves.
They did this to remember a friend and because they recognised the voluntary work Coast Guard does.
So, from now on I love Harley riders............
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Originally Posted by sunhuntin
to the "Matakana Riders" for the support they gave to a very worthy cause,and was a shame to hear about Ginger Gibbs passing away not so long before the event,I heard he was a real driving force behind the challenge. So to The Matakana Riders and to Ginger " Thank You" .
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