Meeting Up With BF50+ Members Off the Bike
 

Last month, I posted a photo on the "What do You Look Like" thread about a meet-up my husband and I had with Jim from Boston. We had an opportunity to have dinner with him when he visited Philadelphia for business and shared a really fun evening:
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=420723

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we were visiting my son and his new wife in Pensacola. We had a chance to meet up will Bill (qcpmsame) and his lovely wife, Monica. We took advantage of this, and gave him a call. Bill and Monica came right down to where we were, and Monica introduced us to a great restaurant where we had dinner together.

My thoughts are that Monica is as sweet as Bill portrays her in his posts, and for a man who has experienced a number of serious health issues, Bill's fit appearance doesn't give one any clues of that. Tom and I had a great time with them! Bill has a good deal of interesting and informative life experiences in Pensacola and graciously shared them with us and my son and daughter-in-law when they stopped by the restaurant to join us. As a USAF CSO, my son truly enjoyed his tales of work at NAS Pensacola.
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=420722

Meeting up with 50+ members, on or off the bike, has proven to be a wonderful experience for me, and I highly recommend it to others who get the opportunity to do so. It is a great adventure to meet in person the people you spend time conversing with online, and lends a whole new dimension to the community.

Very nice!

Very cool!...would love to meet (and ride) with some forum members myself someday. :)

Getting to meet Diane and Tom, as well as their son and daughter-in-law, was a treat for us. They are the second family we have had the pleasure of sharing a meal with, from BF and the 50+, Rowan and Machka stopped by in November 2012 while on their around the world tour, and we all celebrated my birthday, with soup for supper and some homemade pecan pie, with all of our family. Diane, your son and daughter-in-law were a treat to get to meet, too. She is definitely a keeper for him!!!

When you and Tom come for his winging please let us know what the schedule for graduation is, if visitors will be allowed for the ceremony. Those are nice occasions to attend and so special for everyone involved. Thanks for inviting us to join in with your family for dinner.

Bill

Wow ... you guys look great! Meeting new people is one of the things I love about cycling.

BTW: Pensacola is a RAD name. :thumb:

Hi Miss Kenton,

Thanks for that reminiscence; Tom’s selfie of us came out better IMO, than the one I posted about that evening,”What do you look like?” It was very nice to read your post about Bill and Monica, since he is such a presence on this Fifty-Plus Forum.

Its Cranberry Bogs and Oysters, across the River from Me .. Pacific County WA.

Dunginess Crab Season has started .

Great thread, Miss Kenton.
My meetings with 50+ forum members have been on the bike. rick@occr a couple of times on the Hemet double, and Biker395 at the Eastern Sierra double. rick@occr and Biker395 also met a friend of mine this summer at the HooDoo 500 in Utah

What is this "off the bike" you refer to? I have met many of the 50+ forum members but it's always been on the bike (or very close to the bike!).

Rick / OCRR

I've only met two, Digital Gee and BikeArkansas, but I knew BikeArkansas in real life before I discovered him here as well.

I let DG try out the bike I had rented and we went out for pizza.

Over the years I have met a number of wonderful people through bicycling and through BF. Several years ago I had a delightful dinner with Denver and Nora when they were visiting Carlsbad CA, and I lent Rainman a bike for a week when a business conference brought him to downtown San Diego. I and another BFer took him on bike tours of La Jolla and Point Loma, and he reported having a great time.

All of us are rooting for Bill through his health problems.

Since we’re naming names,

FYA, there is a Fifty-Plus thread, "A Chronicle of 50+ Annual Rides" that lists all the participants, venues, and postings of those gatherings. It used to be a “sticky” but was mysteriously and unceremoniously dumped. :notamused:

All of the 50+ members I've had the privilege of meeting are very interesting people. Barretscv, tsl, Billydonn, and jdon. (Sure hoping I didn't forget any) Hoping to grow that list.

I've kind of done the opposite and got a person to join bikeforums.net.

^^^, +1, Bill, well done, that. Get them here so they can receive encouragement to continue cycling.

Bill(Ol' Twitchy)

I've met up with Jimmuller and Sharon from the Boston area where we rode to state campgrounds. In the last tour, we had quite a jolly troupe of about 8 people or so. Not only are Jim and Sharon fine folks, they play some fine bluegrass.

I've met a couple of folks from this Board in person and enjoyed it. I've made plans to meet others. But, so far life has gotten in the way. Burt, I'm not giving up quite yet.

I have to confess I chuckled when I read "Bill & Monica." I'm sure they did, too, 16 or so years ago.

I can assure you that there was never, ever any enjoyment about those two despicable people, only disgust, not political either. Thanks for bring up a sore point for us.

I have to confess that I didn’t understand the first quote until I read the second.

Like B&M above, also not to be confused with Jim from Boston and my wife Sharon. (I too have also met jimmuller and Sharon in person and agree with that opinion, though I have not heard their music, but have read the reviews). We’ve both been married for the same number of years, and I have occasionally kidded him about the similarities.

Slightly off topic to this thread, I have wondered how frequently subscribers post PM exchanges? I know PM’s are supposed to remain private, as well as the involved individuals, but I am curious about general experiences. Myself, I have corresponded with nine of the subscribers mentioned in this thread, as well as many other individuals. My exchanges have ranged from perfunctory, and often unrequited notes, to brief exchanges of information, occasional friendly chit-chats, to engaging conversations. Since 2008, I have sent 2735 PM’s and received 1785.

I also occasionally engage in “entre nous” conversations, if you will, of a few posts in length on some public threads, when a particular subscriber and I have some interest in common to both of us. A particularly fertile thread for such conversations is the local thread on the Northeast Regional Discussion thread, “Metro Boston: Good ride today?.” I have described the ambiance as:

Great thread! JFB pointed me here and it does not disappoint.

My sweetie Sharon and I have had the good fortune to meet and ride with quite a few BF members. Haven't met anyone yet that wasn't the very best you could imagine. All fine folk indeed! Of course that includes JFB and berner.

Other members we've met and had the pleasure of riding with, people who are perhaps more often seen in the C&V than the 50+, include pastorbobnlnh, southpawboston, nlerner, ScottRyder, Ed., top506, BluesDaddy, sherborpeddler, ZIPP2001, cmolway, otg, JJScaliger, rootboy, bikemore, rholland1951, noglider, photogravity, ftwelder, bishbike, bikinggrrl. There are a few more I've missed or whose names I've misssspelllled or can't even remember. A few seem to have disappeared, all to our loss.

Riding a bike is great, but making new friends and riding with them is even better!

I sponsored a BFN 50+ rDenver area ide and met lots of folks - all who have left, I believe. Then we had our first annual ride in Glenwood Springs, CO, where I met about 13 - all but one charming. But all of these were bike related. John E, as mentioned by him, and Nora and I enjoyed fish dinner in Carlsbad, CA - off the bike.

I know jmm from that Metro Boston thread, where we even have nicknames for each other, and he is an active contributor. I don’t read C&V, but I note that of the 20 names he mentioned, about seven post to that Metro Boston thread. So he must really get around. I do recognize noglider, but he is from NYC. Recognizing jmm’s writing style, I’m sure he misspelled “missspellled” intentinonlly.

Spinning off further afield from the original topic of “meeting with BF50+ members off the bike [in person],” namely by text, do other subscribers take note of particularly engaging, humorous, or otherwise distinctive writing styles? Writers you might read just because they are the authors, irrespective of the topic? I have a few, but I don’t want to be the first to mention any.

One element of style, if not substance, I enjoy on BF, especially Fifty-Plus was well stated in this post from Advocacy and Safety:

…and another thing. I have received a few “Friend” requests over the years. What is the significance of that? A few were from names I didn’t even recognize. If anyone reading this sent me one, particularly whom I recognize and enjoy (and one is on this current thread), my non-reply is not a rejection. In fact one other is a family friend.

Finally,

While DnvrFox and I have never met, or exchanged PM’s I recall him as the elder statesman of this Forum when I first joined BF, and we have chatted a bit “entre nous” on the Forum. The Annual Rides he initiated have veritably defined my cycling year as I train for them. Just this week I posted to this thread on the Living Car Free Forum, “What do you get from BF transportation forums?, these two items from my list of four:

BTW, there was a Fifty-Plus thread last summer on a similar topic, ”How Do You Communicate on Forums vs Face-to-Face” that was eventually closed, apparently because the posts got so snarky and hostile. In contrast to the "long, deep, conversation formatdescribed above, Frankfast wrote, "Forums for me are just like fast food. If I want something healthy, I'll read some good fiction."

Hi DF,

Thanks for that reply. Entre nous, you really struck a nerve. My job also is to write important, legally binding albeit prosaic reports in a professionally defined style, using proper, so-called “business-writing” English (e.g. Strunk and White’s ”Elements of Style”). I also pride myself to be complete and concise. In fact, I define my style as “concise yet elegant, erudite but not pedantic,” FWIW. A bane of my existence (cutting into my cycling and posting time) is to re-write the contributions to the report by various assistants. My name is on the final report, yet they write in a style opposite to literally every element of mine as stated above.

Maybe it's a matter of “taste,” but I think certain rules apply. I use the analogy you can go to a formal wedding in an ostentatious (verbose) polyester leisure suit, and that’s OK, but peculiar, just as long as you don’t go nude. I can’t accept the retorts, “Well, it’s not that important.,” or “Your other colleagues don’t care.” IMO, verbose and redundant writing is a disservice to the reader, off-puts them reading the message, and doesn’t enhance the writer’s credibility.

One interesting reason I read why writers bloviate (maybe I do too) is that in school, students are asked to write essays of a certain length, prompting padding of the work. Those who do prosper, and become leaders in their fields and promulgate that style. Perhaps there is also that tendency to associate length with expertise and knowledge. (”If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with B***S***.”) I have taken a couple of business writing courses, and the first exercise was to eliminate the unnecessary words in sample texts.

I’ll stop here before I go ballistic about grammar, punctuation and formatting (long paragraphs…:mad: :mad: :mad:)

But BTW,

I admire the distinctively laconic posts of that taciturn Texan, 10 Wheels. For example, in this reply to a thread on the Classic and Vintage Bicycles: What's it Worth? Appraisals and Inquiries Forum:

PS: I just noted after submitting this post I had quoted DnvrFox's post that began:

It appears that the second paragraph, which I quoted, has disappeared. Nonetheless, thanks for the oppportunity to rant, :50: though I guess this post was really "entre moi."

One of my writing tasks is providing Colorado state legislators information and advocacy material regarding disability issues, specifically for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. If the paper we provide is more than one page, or contains a lot of quotes and the like, we know they will not read it, and the effort is lost. Ditto with me - I don't spend a lot of time and effort to read convoluted material.