It was an excellent weekend at the city of Dublin's St Patrick's day festival. Our Chapter was able to secure a booth for non-profit organizations at this year's event. There are specific requirements by festival organizers that the booth be issued to organizations who promote a specific public or community service. Our theme was to promote motorcycle awareness and safety. Thanks to the incredible effort by our core team and the on-site assistance by a few more members, our paticipation at the festival proved to be extremely productive and well received.
We had an abundance of literature giveaways focusing on motorcycle safety such as Snell Memorial Foundation's work on helmet safety, Friction Zone magazines and many of our own GWRRA literature on motorcycle training and old copies of WingWorld. But, from my personal observation our members interactions with the public at the festival was really key in presenting motorcycle folks as fun, unintimidating regular people. The image of husband and wife partners equally involved in motorcycling and having fun just made for an easy and inviting scene to the public. Several of our members like Steve Foster and Bruce Howland were especially adapt interacting with children often having them sit on the cycle to have their picture taken. These are very positive memories they and their parents had taken away from the experience.
There were more positives to this type of event for our Association and even CA2Q. The many folks we spoke with showed a lot of interest in our Association and the Goldwing. Some are considering visiting us during one of our gatherings to see what it's all about. Whether it bears fruit now, later or indirectly (a recommendation). A positive seed has been planted. I want to recognize our core members who worked extremely hard and sacrificed so much of their time and some personal expense: Steve & Jacque Foster, Bruce Howland, Susan Coles and Shirley Jarumay Thank you all very much!
I want to add a special thanks to Lynda Smith for attending both days assisting at the booth, and Rich Sciacqua for his assistance with our initial setup Saturday morning and staying the day to help with booth visitors.
One other note... We had a blast!!!
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