Update - New changes in the forums (and some history of the Romeos!)

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JerryM100
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Update - New changes in the forums (and some history of the Romeos!)

Post by JerryM100 »

Here is an update on the forums and some changes I just made (if you didn't know, I am the administrator of the forums - send all your questions and requests for password resets to me!).

I just added a feature that put stars under your name on the right side - one star for every year that you have been registered here in the forums. If you have registered recently this won't mean much to you, but for many others it is a matter of pride that they have been around for awhile. And if you notice, many of the ride coordinators have been around since the beginning (Nov 2008). It's a nice little feature that gives a subtle way to give thanks to those who have been contributing to our little family here over the years.

I also added another nice feature that just became available a few months ago. This is an "autosave" feature, so if the website goes down or you lose your Internet connection you won't lose all your work. It will save the post you are working on every 20 seconds automatically. The way it works is with your local browser, not the application itself. What that means is if you lose your connection just come back later and open the same post you started before and all the text should be there (saved in your local cache). The only exception is it won't save attachments like photos, so do those last. This will be a big help to the ride coordinators who do lots of posts (and some quite long) so they don't lose their work.

[Thanks to Roger Shores who gave me the idea to search for a solution after he recently lost a long post. Sorry, Roger, but I found an answer now for everyone!]

This is a brand new feature that somebody just developed a few months ago. Let's see how it works for everyone!

Happy trails to everyone!

Jerry M
Romeos Website Admin

Jerry M
I ride because it frees my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
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Richard
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums

Post by Richard »

Jerry - I appreciate what you do but it's important to remember where we came from as an organization. When you imply that many have been around since 2008 that's a bit misleading to many new members. This organization has been around many years prior to computerization. In fact some of my earliest records date back to 2003, a full 5 years prior to the website.
There are revisionists in many facets of life but lets hold to the truth in the ROMEO's.
Some day soon I may have to write up the entire history of how we came into being since there now seems to be several differing variations of our beginning from folks that were never on the scene when we started this venture.
Richard Kurtz
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JerryM100
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums

Post by JerryM100 »

Yes, of course, Richard, and there have been several posts honoring the history of the ROMEOs over the years. Don Duncan was the first that I recall when he wrote a post in 2009 (http://romeoriders.com/forums/viewtopic ... 438&p=1056). There have been some others as well that I can't find right now, but you haven't written about any history here yet. With so many relatively new riders coming here it would be great to capture how this all came about from your perspective.

Of course, the system doesn't know anything about history before people register here, so the feature to add stars to people's names can only reflect when they started in the forums. Now that we have almost 8 years of history here it is a nice feature to respect those with some time here in a small way.

Please feel free to post anything you would like so we keep a good history of the ROMEOs for current and future riders.
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BeemerBill
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums

Post by BeemerBill »

I've been riding with the ROMEO's since before they were ROMEO's. I believe it was Jack Robinson out of Hutchinson who started getting people to ride their motorcycles some where for lunch and "kick tires", I know I rode with Jack and others back as far as 1996 I believe, and later when Jack decided to get away from the lunch rides and planned to stop them altogether, well Bucky stepped up and thought of places for us to ride our motorcycles to for lunch, later Richard took over from Bucky and took great care of us, but remember back then there was only one coordinator for the entire state. I don't remember the dates for all of this, but I do remember making some great lunch rides. Later Don Duncan started having an "east" lunch ride but always had it on a day other than Wednesday to not interfere with the original group. Through the years we have expanded to several groups and account for I don't know how many rides and riders. I remember it was Don"s wife who came up with the name ROMEO and it's designation, which caught on with a bang. Any way, like I said I've been doing lunch rides for a lot of years and this is the way that I remember it. OK, some one else point out my mistakes.... Bill
Last edited by BeemerBill on Mon Oct 10, 2016 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BeemerBill
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Klem
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums

Post by Klem »

Tom, That's pretty much how I remember it. As I recall Richard didn't like the name Romeos when it was presented but he decided to go along when everyone else liked it.

We had a lot of fun for a lot of years going to all the little places in Kansas. It is a shame how so many of them have died out. One summer Harry and I decided to ride a road that we have never been on for each of the rides. You sure learn a lot of roads doing that. Also spend a fair amount of time saying "where the F--- are we"?

There's not much glory to be had with a group like this. A lot of people have put in time as coordinators, others scouting for restaurants, (that's a fun job) of course the guys and gals that make the rides are what keep it all going. I do think Bucky was right when he said that people should step up and trade the coordinators job once a year or so. It's not hard but it does take time.

The more you mingle with the other riders the more fun you will have. I've noticed that people tend to ride together, then eat together. That's OK but you don't make many new friends that way.

The main thing is to ride and enjoy while you can.

Don
Motorcycles are like Potato chips One is never enough
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums

Post by Parkville Rider »

Don makes some good points. For the record, the name ROMEO has been used by several groups and most of the time stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out. If you look it up, you get some interesting references: :ugeek:

1. an attractive, passionate male seducer or lover. :lol:

2. a code word representing the letter R, used in radio communication. :P
Gary D.
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Richard
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums

Post by Richard »

Guys - Richard here again. The primary reason I have not previously written a historical account on the formation of the ROMEO organization has been because in many respects, it is my history and I didn't want to come across as self centered or arrogant. But, in just these short responses, there are enough errors that it leads me to finally have to clarify facts before they become permanently ingrained in the true history of our organization.
As many can attest, I'm certainly not a technical being when it comes to this computer. In fact that may well have been my weakest skill set that led to what some felt was my failure to respond to issues timely enough to the challenge of growth in the early years of the organization. Somehow we got thru it and I am most proud of what we together have built. All, as you know, without officers, dues, by-laws or a formal organization other than group ride coordinators. Then we became a real entity with the introduction of the computer, a fact that I was never quite able to catch up to.
So, I begin with -

fact number 1 This organization did indeed begin as a result of Jack Robinson and his FSSNOC (four stroke singles national owners club) discontinuing their Wednesday lunch rides. There were quite a number of his members that felt that this one thing was the most valuable benefit of his organization and wanted to continue with the lunches without the FSSNOC association. I gathered as many phone numbers as I could find and we had a trial ride to BRICKS Diner in Arkansas City, Kansas the following Wednesday. The actual names have been subsequently lost in my records but I do recall one of our now current members, Alan Patton, was one of the seven or eight present that day. We had a delightful time and unanimously decided to continue the weekly rides on our own, unaffiliated with any organization and using the name of 'The Wednesday Lunch Bunch'. By the way, Bill, Bucky wasn't one of the people present.

fact number 2 Don is correct in that his wife coined the name ROMEO for the group but it wasn't an immediate change. Quite some time evolved before this new name was adopted. We operated under the Wednesday lunch bunch for... (I'm still searching old records). Well great, I knew it was bound to happen and it's been one of the things that has kept me from delving into this discussion earlier. Last night I had uncovered some lost records dating back to '07', '06', '05' and '04'. Important records showing where we went on our lunch rides under the banner of The Wednesday Lunch Bunch. This valuable page of information also contained actual dates of when Bucky set up the first Spring outing at Grand Lake of the Cherokees and subsequently the fall outing. Sometime within this time period was also the time the change of name was proposed by Don and universally accepted. All subsequent rides appeared to use the ROMEO designation. I had a virtual habit of always writing up a ride report after each and every ride and filing it under draft after I finished posting it. The reason I say all this is I have only 18 pages of draft left today and yesterday I had over 20 pages that I had looked over. Can someone tell me how I can recover these back?

fact number 3 When I stated above that the history of the ROMEO's somewhat parallels my own history requires further discussion. I owned a small mom and pop motel in Lindsborg, Kansas and literally was on duty 24 hours a day. We opened the office at 7:00am and put it to bed at 11:00pm each and every day. Now, unless your clock differs from mine, that's 16 straight hours on duty not counting the night bell which went off frequently because Bethany College is located in Lindsborg and it has many Colorado students as well as Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas. Parents were constantly leaving home after work to come see little Jane and Johnny, not to mention other regular business. We had bought the property in the summer of '87' and after quite a number of years of this schedule, I was a walking nightmare and Joyce could see it about to break. So, she suggested I take a day of the week off and leave. I couldn't have been more pleased. I had a bike in storage that I never got to ride and I retrieved it. A 650 Yamaha Seca. Thing was, it was all gummed up from storage so I got it running enough to take to Beggs Yamaha in Salina for carb work. I still didn't have a bike to ride so I searched the papers and found a used R65 in Wichita and bought it. So started the adventure. I loved that bike! All black with a Quicksilver Fairing and a special BMW headlight cowling unlike anything I had ever seen before or since. I was everywhere on that bike including a marathon trip to Oklahoma's Winding Stair Mountain and back in time to go on duty. I went thru several bikes, the Beemer, a Guzzi SP II come to mind. Then one winter Jack scheduled a Winter Rally in Lindsborg called the Frosty Buns at my motel and I was introduced to Singles and Jack's FSSNOC group. I loved that group because Jack always scheduled his rides on Wednesdays. To make a long story short, I acquired a '96' Suzuki Savage via the internet with some help from my son and he and I drove to Nebraska to pick it up. I was now a bona fide fizznocker.......

fact number 4 I rode the FSSNOC rides regularly and even pulled a few people in from the Lindsborg area. Paul Dahlberg being one I can recall vividly. Paul rode an old CB750 and he bought a new Aprilia 200 to ride the FSSNOC rides with me since he didn't have a single. To ride in a singles club it was a distinct no-no to show up on anything else. After all, it was Jack's club...he owned it!

fact number 5 I recall Jack phasing out from weekly rides to less frequent longer distance destinations. It was as he was sampling the interest in longer distance destinations as a trial experiment of what he now does quarterly with his Thumper Cafe. He had a called destination in Mullhall, Oklahoma what was nearly hit by a tornado and later a really long distance lunch ride to Cleveland, Oklahoma some 225 miles in which I took the Long Distance Trophy beating out Jack by just a few miles. I was preparing to do an Iron Butt ride and was using this as a bike test to see where the issues were that I needed to work on before I took off. It was sometime in this time frame that I had indeed completed this 1000 miles challenge finishing in 22.5 hours using some 14 gas stops including running out of fuel once and blowing the guts out of my super trapp muffler on the return trip on I-25. I wasted some 20 minutes going back to retrieve it only to find it had been completely flattened by truck traffic.

fact number 6 The Iron Butt convinced me that the Savage was not a keeper although I did enjoy the thing. Later I ended up in the hospital having a growth removed from my chest although not as a result of the cycle. Joyce gave me a few days off and I took them on another cycle trip, again to Winding Stair Mountain in Oklahoma and back. I could expound on this trip of disaster what with a flat tire and all but it's not relevant to this topic. Needless to say, this solidified my quest for another bike.

fact number 7 Enter the phase of the maxi scoot. To cover all bases, I decided to get a more comfortable ride that I could enjoy for long distance and also attend a FSSNOC ride if one should again be called. I bought an Aprilia Atlantic, a 500cc water cooled runabout. It would do all things I thought, including, as I said, still allow me to be a fizznocker. Jack cut back the Wednesday rides sometime within this period but this scoot rewarded me with many happy hours. Only problem was this particular model had a world wide problem of oil getting in the gas. I kept this bike just long enough to complete a other Iron Butt ride. This time a 1500 36 hour ride, this time with my son. We made it with hours to spare but the bike struggled with oil in the gas and had not been happy at altitude. I traded again but not before I worked with the Aprilia Lead Tech in isolating the problem and resolving it with the simple solution of installing a hotter thermostat in the engine. Problem solved!

fact number 8 Sitting in the cafe at Whitewater on December 31...a Wednesday and the last day of the year I called Salina Powersports and traded my 2003 Aprilia for a 2004 Aprilia Scarabeo...the touring model. The last day of the month and the last day of the year. There's no better day to get a great deal on a trade. And so began my love affair with what I still consider one of my favorite all time bikes bar none. I could do everything on that bike and it was when I became earnest in expanding the Wednesday Lunch Bunch. I gathered names and phone numbers everywhere I went telling the story of the fun we have going on rides to little out of the way places. At the time I happened to be on the Board of Directors of the Kansas Restaurant and Hospitality Association and every member seemed to have a 'pet' project. So I searched what I could do for the Lodging arm of the Association and came up empty of thought but it occurred to me I could be of benefit to the restaurant guys and have fun doing it. So it became my quest!

fact number 9 As I sat in the office one slow lazy day scouring the Kansas map, I focused on the upper left hand corner. It listed all the cities and their populations. I began to count how many cities there were in Kansas with population of 1000 or less. I was astonished to find that there were 428 little places in the state that were ripe for assistance. This became my focus and the mantra for our group. To help the little ma and pa cafes in Kansas towns with populations less than a thousand. We would get in a great ride to places we probably didn't even know existed and become an economic benefit to them at the same time. We were riding for good reason in addition to having a good time. I presented this to the Board of the KRHA and they liked the idea and ultimately offered use of their website later on with our success. This was prior to our website. I would call the KRHA and they would take my information and post it on their site. I had a computer but didn't know squat about how to operate it. It was just a plaything for my wife. I was still into a manual accounting system for the business and saw no use for it.

fact number 10 I was also operating from a calling tree. I had been collecting names of everyone I would contact on the street or at a filling station or in Marquette where the Kansas Motorcycle Museum is located and had acquired quite a list of cyclists many of whom were former FSSNOC guys I had been acquainted with. I made up posters and on an afternoon, took off and delivered them to quite a radius from Junction City to Salina to Hays and down to Great Bend to Wichita and back. I'm sure I have now forgotten some and some have now come and gone but the point is, I was getting the word out about our weekly rides. And we were having a great time and growing with new faces and bikes each week.

fact number 11 We covered the entire State in the beginning. I purposely held rides to distant locations gathered in part from the KRHA membership roster as a benefit to them assisting us in our start up and for initially funding our beginning order of shirts upon the change of name when we went from the Wednesday Lunch Bunch to become the Official group known as the...ROMEO's. One of my longest rides ever scheduled was when I called a ride to Galena, Kansas back in 10-19-05 and Harry Bryant alluded to it in his entertaining monologue during this past September at the ROMEO Rendezvous.

fact number 12 to be continued

fact number 13 to be continued while I continue to search for the lost drafts...


#keepers #history
TerryBlueRT
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Re: Update - New changes in the forums (and some history of the Romeos!)

Post by TerryBlueRT »

Very interesting ! I read your whole post Richard .
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