We Love Our Wing

Our chapter pin

Today Angela and I participated in our first chapter ride as official members. “Green Freeze III” was the last of a three part ride series taking place January / February / March. Today’s event was the longest, a two-hour ride with a final destination of the Fife Community Center, where the event finale banquet was taking place.

Each event has a registration time with a deadline for last-bike-out and a time for last-bike-in at the final destination.

We arrived at Hinshaw’s just 20 minutes before last bike out with just enough time to get directions for the ride and buy some 50 / 50 tickets. We also signed up for the chapters’ mileage club before heading out. You buy in, give them your mileage and at the end of the season they take your mileage again and award prizes for most miles and closest to average. Just another little fun aspect to riding.

With just 10 minutes until the last-bike-out deadline we took off with Angela giving me route directions. We looped through an interesting section of the Lakeland South area, over to Brown’s Point before heading down into a tour of Tacoma (we ended up passing just a block from our house!), along Ruston Way then through McKinley down into Puyallup and over to Fife. Just outside Federal Way we had caught up with a group of 3 riders and ended up riding along with them for the remainder of the route, chatting at stoplights as we went. There was also some good-natured ribbing about us needing to buy a CB.

Donated fountain pen for banquet

We arrived at the banquet with just a couple minutes to spare before the deadline. Upon arrival we found our chapter president and gave her a pen I had made and offered as a prize. She loved it and said they planned to use it as one of the grand prizes!

Our First Chapter Shirts

We also received our official green chapter shirts with our names embroidered on them and everything. Then, while I took part in the blood drive, Angela got us signed in and collected our various raffle tickets. We won a pair of coffee mugs in the door prize drawing and I’ve already decided to take mine to work. After giving blood we grabbed our meal of lasagna and penne alfredo with garlic bread and salad. They also had several cool sheet cakes for desert.

After the banquet we took the chapter group photo (good thing we’d gotten those shirts today!) then everyone dispersed. Overall it was a nice day and we still feel good about the chapter we’ve chosen to join and the people who are members. Our next “event” will be April 2nd when we head down to Oregon for the Rose City 250 (http://www.rose-city-mc.org/RCEventfliers/250.html).  Stay tuned!  Following are a few more pictures from the day.

A parking lot full of bikes

A Good turnout