Oct 28th - 30th Texas Hill Country Rally (MSTA)

Great ride report Graydd!! I sure enjoyed meeting you and your wife and hope that next year, we can ride together. With all the great weather, we really missed not being able to ride this year but we had fun playing tourist anyway. We actually got to go to the Ice Cream social for the first time this year and that was really a great experience. We vowed not to miss it anymore.

I am so glad to hear that ya'll had a great time and was bummed to read Big Jims experience was not as good. I think if he had stayed for the banquet, he would have certainly met a bunch of folks and maybe had a better experience. Since this was our first year hosting this event, we learned a few things that we can do next year that will make things better for new folks like having name badges for first timers so it's a little easier to meet others.

As many times as I have attended this event, I have never been invited to ride with anyone but have always just sought out the folks or person I really wanted to ride with and asked them if I could join them for the day. If their group wasn't already too big, I was always welcome. I'm a pretty extroverted person and I think that help a lot.

Anyway, I am very glad that both of you made it home safe and really hope that Big Jim gives us another chance next year.

 

I think I would do two things that would have made it a whole lot better, for me at least. 1) I would fix the name badge issue. With so many riders, from all over, at the hotel, it was impossible to get a feel for the group and who was with who. The wrist band was not a reliable alternative. 2) I would have some kind of mixer after the initial rider's meeting on Friday. You are probably right. I would have had a better feel for the event after the banquet but that was after the ride was over. I had a choice to make. I could stay for the banquet and have a long day Friday or I could make tracks for home and have an easy day on Friday. I chose the latter. I never actually asked to ride with anyone. After breakfast they started to ride out and the people I did approach seemed to be riding solo.

I posted some of my pictures.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10211407448407974.1073741831.1415026811&type=1&l=86b5ac9434

 

Gotta go with Jim on "rallyes" in general. This includes the gramps of them all for the years most of us have been around. The BMW-MOA rallyes. They can get too big or too organized and compartmentalized in a hurry especially if they are "corporate" where the structure is placing attendees in various boxes.

Nametags? Give me a fucking break!

 

In this case the name tags would have helped. The event was not so big as to be like a BMW-MOA rally and since there were lots of bikes at the hotel it was impossible to tell who was a part of what group. Also a name tag would be, for me at least, a good ice breaker and a passive introduction to people I don't know. It's a "sport touring" group but it was impossible to determine the group riders by their chosen bikes. Back in the day sport touring would denote a BMW R100RS. Now the parking lot was filled with BMW GS varieties all looking like they were headed for Deadhorse, AK.

 

You should have come to this one then.

You and Jim could have rode together and bitched about how stupid all of the hard work some one else did to make your weekend great was. Jeeze.

 

My intention was not to bitch but to offer a suggestion for improvement from my point of view. I am sure that the rally was a lot of hard work and I can and do appreciate that.