First Winner of the MEMBER OF THE MONTH CONTEST goes to AMOROK!!

[the chi]

Congrats to Amorok for winning the first ever TWFix Member of the Month contest!

Below is his entry as well as the other awesome entries we got. Thanks to everyone that participated!!

Feel free to discuss and share your own story!

Winning Member Name: Amorok
Current Ride: Boulevard C50T
How many years have you been riding: 4 years
What is your preferred style(Track, Street, Dirt, Etc): street
Dream ride and why: Suzuki M109RT - It's big, powerful and will still have saddlebags and stuff. Basically a comfort bike with performance
Best Advice for your fellow riders: check your weather report and adjust schedule accordingly

Story Submittal: In before the bell! I'm sure everyone got tired of me telling this story last May but here's mine. Last year at the end of August I was supposed to go to a rally for the website that shall not be named. I was riding to Oxford PA from Biloxi MS and left on the 24th, needing to cover from my house to Atlanta the first day, from Atlanta to Ashland KY the second, a rest day, and then the last leg to Oxford. I made my plan months before I was to go, took leave, bought new gear, changed out my tires and fluids, everything. What I didn't plan on was Tropical Storm Fay seeding supercell thunderstorms for that weekend. Well, I'm a man and I had a goddamn schedule. So on the 24th, under a light shower I took off. I proceeded to ride through painful, torrential downpours through the entire first day. I saw hail, lightning, and rough crosswinds. The entire first day I was soaked and miserable. Initially, I was supposed to meet my old supervisor in Atlanta at Dobbins AFB. Well, instead of telling me where to turn, he told me to go straight on the highway. I ended up almost in North Carolina, then had to turn around and finally got into Dobbins at around 2200.

The next day I woke up and watched the weather, as tornado warnings covered both northbound highways available to me. Then reports of actual tornados came in. It was awesome. Mine cleared, so I rode out and on to Tennessee. Now the altitude increase is dropping the temperature so I end up freezing my ass off. I was hungry and pulled into the first thing I saw, a Waffle House. Let me say, no matter how you feel about their food, the folks at WH will never bat an eye no matter what you look like. I dripped into that place freezing and the lady brought me something hot to drink, a hot meal, and an old army surplus wool blanket to wrap around me. Seriously, the lady said I looked cold and brought me a smallpox blanket! After that I felt ready to press on, so I rode through even heavier rain and finally made it into Ashland late that night. The next day was supposed to be a break, so I ended up stuck with my parents all day. I went to bed that night getting ready for the last day of riding.

Here's the best part. Gustav, coming on the heels of Fay, was scheduled to hit Biloxi and since they're freaked out about hurricanes around there, Keesler activated me and I had to TURN AROUND. I turned the fuck around and rode all the way back. 1300 miles in two days and I had to do it again. The nice thing was that I rode out of the rain at the northern Tennessee border. I gained a lot of experience and a new appreciation of the Waffle House staff.

Member Name: derf
Current Ride: CBR900rr
How many years have you been riding: a bunch
What is your preferred style(Track, Street, Dirt, Etc): street
Dream ride and why: Trip around the world, never sleeping in the same bed twice.
Best Advice for your fellow riders: Ride faster than the guy in front of you?

Story Submittal: My friend Randy and I decided to take a trip out to sturgis and back, we had also made plans to meet up with another guy, Dave, who lives in Buffalo that was gonna tag along. We left Randys house late in the morning with the plan to ride up to Daves house, spend the night there and continue on to Sturgis the next day.

As soon as we set off Randys helmet visor won't stay down, so we stop on the side of the road and duct tape it shut.

50 miles down the road I notice my speedo wasn't working, I had no idea how far we went, or how fast we were going. A quick check of the speedo drive showed that it had snapped off. Duct tape the speedo drive to the bike so it isnt swaying in the wind.

Right away we take off and decide it was a good idea to stop for gas, I had the smaller range and was keeping track of when we had to stop for gas. We didn't make it to the first exit before it sputtered to a halt. Randy went ahead, bought a gas can, filled it up and headed back towards me. According to him he noticed a gas smell and stopped, only to see the can emptying itself all over his luggage, fix the can with some duct tape (notice a theme here), and continued on to fill me up with whatever gas he had left in the can. By the time he got to me the can was empty so he set out again, returned the can, got a new one filled it up and headed back to me. At this point I had been sitting on the side of the road for 2 hours and started to push the bike along the shoulder out of sheer boredom, it didnt get me anywhere but it was better than sitting the whole time.

He fills up my tank when he got back and we set off again. We made it all the way up to Albany around midnight. We should have been there before dinner. The decision was quickly made to find a hotel and continue in the morning. of course as luck would have it every hotel we found was either too disgusting or too full for us. On to Buffalo we went. we basically rode through the night and arrived at Daves house at 7 am. At that point neither of us was in the mood to ride any further so we stopped had breakfast and a few hours worth of sleep. We left Daves place at noon and shot right up into Canada, hoping to hit Detroit before midnight.

If you have ever ridden through southern Canada it is hard to realize that you are in a foreign country because they try real hard to be like a cold version of America. 4 hours into Canada Dave motioned that his bike felt terrible and we all pulled over. Sure enough he had a decent leak in his rear tire, and while we were trying to plug it, we found 3 more screws in it. Then out of the corner of his eye Randy noticed a screw in his front tire. Sure enough when all was said and done, we found a total of 9 screws between the 3 bikes. A quick call to Daves wife and she was on her way with the van and trailer to pick us up so we could figure out what to do. I think we were riding behind an open screw container

After we recovered that night back at his house, and realizing that we weren't going to get the tires replaced until monday we settled in and debated weather or not to try and make Sturgis or not, we went from having 5 days there and 6 days traveling there and back to 3 days there and 8 days traveling there and back. The decision was quickly made to turn tail, fix the tires and head home on monday. The ride back from Daves house was great, no traffic, great weather, cool for the middle of summer. All in all it was a complete dissapointment that we never made it but we did have a blast the entire time.

Member Name: "Cutty72" Ryan
Current Ride: 2008 Buell 1125R
How many years have you been riding: 4
What is your preferred style(Track, Street, Dirt, Etc): Street/track
Dream ride and why: Many bikes, for every type of adventure out there!
Best Advice for your fellow riders: Start small. Make sure you love it and learn it correctly, then move on to get what you *really* want.

Story Submittal: My most memorable single ride has to be when I was out in Utah for BNCOC. I had not had a lot of free time to explore as classes had kept me busy, but a couple of my classmates were locals and informed me of some good roads that were relatively close. Finally we got out early, so I took off with nothing more than my credit card, a state map, my camera, and a full tank of gas. I hit one canyon road after another, just picking left or right when I got there, never knowing for sure where I was going to end up or how far the road would take me. It was a great day of just me, the bike, the road, and some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. The roads were not overly technical, nor was I pushing the limits of myself or the bike. It was just relaxing and refreshing, and reminded me why we ride.

Member Name: Ebbs-Brandon Eberhardt
Current Ride: 08 CBR 600RR
How many years have you been riding: 3
What is your preferred style(Track, Street, Dirt, Etc): Street, touring... but moving to Adventure touring
Dream ride and why: a ride around the world. I wanna experience different cultures... not just the tourist traps... but it's real soul... the people.... the land... I wanna take a couple years after I retire from the military and ride the world... spend as much time off the grid as humanly possible.


Best Advice for your fellow riders: Be Seen and get lost on two wheels... ya just might find yourself.

Story Submittal:

In Sep 2008 I rode from Fargo to Tenn. via My brothers in Omaha, Eureka springs AR, and Ft Walton Beach FL. I met four members and long time e-friends along the way... but the most memorable part was from Tenn to Indy.

There were five of us... Katherine, Rae, Fatburg, Trip, and myself. we were headed from Trip's place just south of Knoxville, Tenn. and headed up to Indianapolis via any twisty road we could find.

Trip lead for a while... but then a couple wrong turns and Fatburg took over with mr. Garmin providing the route.

I saw a midget fly, Trip slide through a grass corner, what a gas crisis in KY looks like, Katherine hitting my kill switch as the light turned green... twice, Trip's blinker for 35 miles then shut it off and a sudden turn 2 min later, Rae do Yoga at 55mph, Trip almost touch the supports of a bridge as we rode across, Katherine and Ryan do the rain dance... after the rain had started, Trip try to ass pack Fatburg, and a 8hr ride turned into 12+hrs.

it was by far the greatest ride of my short riding life thus far. but that's to be expected when you're riding with good friends and on a good route.

I'm tempted to try that route again with a crew of friends... but I don't think it'll ever live up to that trip.


honestly... I don't think I'd want it to.