For the Love of the Ride: An Empire Begins

   This is where the beginning of Real Riders M.C. starts, this is where the lives of 3 Real Riders begin....

   I have ridden with many different clubs, in IL it was the Puerto Rican Riders, in Michigan it was the G.R. Street Riders, and while I was in CA I rode with Coast to Coast. In between the clubs I would also ride with independent riders, but riding with them was missing the fun and brotherhood a bike club has, and riding with the clubs lacked the freedom independent riding had. As soon as I arrived in CA I was looking for people to ride with, none of my friends there had bikes nor wanted to purchase one.... at least not yet. I started working at an Albertsons while I waited for my re-enlistment papers to go through, all I had was my bike so that's what I rode. I started out as a cashier so I had to park out front, but like all jobs I rose to management within a month and since I had made friends with everyone I was allowed to pull my bike into the loading room out back. While I worked there I made an effort to make friends, learn the local clubs, and find riders. I was only working there for 5 months when my re-enlistment was ready, I immediately started working at the Oceanside recruiters office where I met "Rabbit"; he was riding a Honda 600 RR, probably a 2004. We rode for awhile bumping into clubs and riders here and there until one Friday I told him to leave work and go find some riders, I was putting a ride together for the next morning and I wanted to meet in the parking lot outside.
   The next day I ride to the parking lot where I find Rabbit (Honda 600RR), Abe (Yamaha R1), Crazy Rob (Honda 600RR), Wild Cat (Yamaha R6), and another fellow who's name escapes me since I only rode with him once. If you ask anyone of them they would tell you they didn't like me at first because they figured I was full of myself with the bike and gear I had; but they changed their mind fast. I explained the route, we made the rules and off we rode, that day we rode up the coast on Pacific coast highway up to Malibu and back down via the interstate. We ended our ride at a bar Rookies which was friendly to bikers. Abe went on a few other rides with us but from that point on it was always the 4 of us riding together, Suicide (me), Crazy Rob, Wild Cat, and Rabbit. Our rides would usually be around 300-500 miles each and always looking for Dragon Tails up in the mountains (curvy roads).
   I had been talking about starting a club for awhile, Crazy Rob and Wild Cat both liked the idea but we were really too far away from being able to start a legitimate club; after all the sets had very strict rules on how a club could be recognized. They would talk about joining a club on set but I never liked that idea for several reason:

To join a club on set you had to become a prospect for as long as they deemed it necessary
You had to join all club meetings, all club rides, and pay fees
As a prospect you have no say in club matters and even when you are recognized as an official club member you still had to rise through the ranks to have more power which could take forever since most clubs already had a lot of members who outranked you.
Most club rides were short, lots of stopping time and parties, and hardly every very challenging.
Most of the club riders feel that since they have seniority over you then can talk all the shit they want and tell you what to do. Note: This isn't all clubs and there members but there are some.

We went on a ride with a club which is going to remain nameless, I don't like to talk shit but I am going to state the facts. We met up with these guys at a gas station, there were about 20 riders total including us, some of them were Marines and others were either civilians or Marines done serving. The ride started down Pacific Coast Highway in Oceanside which if you don't know is a road close to the beach with a lot of traffic, we rode to the beach, parked our bikes, and sat around for about 45 min. When we finally got going we road about 10 miles to one of the riders apartments and waited for another 10 min, then we rode up another busy road for about 20 miles until we finally got to some open road. Once on the open road we only rode for at most 30 min before we stopped at a McDonald's, when we started to eat a couple of us didn't have money so one of the riders spotted me and Rob some money, then the fucker told me that he didn't mind helping us out but he didn't like Cat so he would never help him. The ride was already a total waste but when this prick started talking shit I was about done with these posers. We left and rode another 20 min to another riders house where everyone parked and started drinking. I don't know about you but to me this is a lame, boring, rider posing ride! Who owns a motorcycle to do these things that people do in cars? I don't mind drinking at the end of a good ride but this was just stupid, I told the other two "Lets get out of here" and without must resistance they agreed.

On the road we pulled up at a stop light to the on ramp to I-5, at the stoplight I said to the Crazy Rob and Wild Cat, "Fuck these clubs on set, we should start our own club with our own rules, free from the restrictions these wanna be motorcycle clubs make. Owning a bike is about freedom and the love of the ride, I am not going to let some fake-ass rider tell me how I can ride my bike or where and when I have to ride it! Cat and Rob were on board with that idea and from there we started talking about our club which up to that point was nameless. I am going to have to give Wild Cat some credit here, one day we met up and he said the name "Real Riders" it was a great name really giving meaning to what we were trying to do, and it wasn't taken.
With Real Riders born we settled on a quote of mine "For the love of the ride" as the club motto, Wild Cat really went to work on things getting members to join and setting up a place in his own garage for us to meet. We rode for awhile as an off set club for several reasons, we didn't want to adhere to their strict rules and regulations, and we wanted to be a different club than all the other clubs on set, we wanted riders to come to our club and ride free! We had a few different rules for riders riding in our club:

You ride as often as you can
Make efforts to make our scheduled rides
When you earn a vest you respect it as club colors

At this point we didn't have a vest or colors but we had settled on black and white, Wild Cat and I had been working on a lot of different logos when one day he comes to me with the most awesome fucking thing I have ever seen:

First Real Rider Vest

Real Riders was officially born, we got our vests with our names and ranks on the front like any other vest. (There is a newer version of the vest but I don't have it yet. When I get it I will be posting up the new one, its the same logo and everything just its a patch sewed onto the vest.) There was no M.C. at the bottom yet since we didn't officially belong to a set, the only ones that I knew of were San Diego, LA, and Inland Empire; then one day Wild Cat comes up to me with the idea of joining the set, I didn't like it at first because I knew the other clubs on set and I didn't much care for them. Also to join one of the big sets we would have to adhere to a bunch of rules and even trials before our club would be recognized. Wild Cat tells me of another set, a newer one call North County Alliance. This set was arranged for our area since we were not really located in the areas of the other sets anyways. He told me the rules and they didn't sound to bad so we went for it, then the M.C. North County Alliance is imprinted at the bottom of our vests.
I cant remember all the other clubs that were a part of that set but there were a few, our biggest competitors were the Rival Riders. To me they were not much of a big deal since I though they all sucked ass, they were the only ones to have more riders than us and they did have an official club house but still all they did was talk shit and think they were so bad ass so ya they were gay. I had to move away from Oceanside to 29 Palms where I was stationed, being that I was the Vice President that posed a problem for Wild Cat. He Was running the whole club by himself for a long time and really took the club to some amazing lengths, I guess I shouldn't give him all the credit because as the saying goes behind every great man there is a woman shaking her head, lol OK she wasn't shaking her head but Cats wife also put a lot into the club. I had missed out on alot of the clubs growth, Cat and I always had different ideas on where we wanted this club to be but in the end it always worked out. Now Real Riders in centrally based in Oceanside CA but has grown in numbers and in areas, riders from the club who have left California have taken their colors to a new state where they will begin new chapters.
Real Riders is our official club to all true riders who want to enjoy their motorcycle experience to the max. Real Riders M.C. was a club founded on the principals of 3 natural born riders who want to take the world of motorcycles to everyone who wants to feel the freedom of riding and not be stuck on the sidelines with one of these other clubs. Our motto "For the love of the ride." has stuck in the hearts and minds of all Real Riders and if you were to take one ride with us you would see what we are talking about.