To find new people that would want to go riding motorcycles, you can try out a few social platforms that are specific to motorcycling or you can search the web for Riding Clubs in your area. But smaller Riding Clubs often only use social platforms to promote themselves or their events.
Overview
In this article, we discuss how you can find new people to go riding motorcycles. This has nothing to do with dating and I’m not the right person to be giving advice on that topic anyways. This article is just plainly for finding someone or a group of friends that you can go riding with.
We’ll discuss the following:
- Figuring out what type of people you want to ride with
- Finding people on social platforms
- Finding riding clubs to join
- Will riding with other people help me gain confidence in riding?
Figuring out what type of people you want to ride with
This part isn’t all that important right now except for some basics that you need to consider.
The type of people you associate yourself with is more of a long term thing that you might want to look at and I suggest you don’t be too picky when making new friends because you’ll soon realise that you can be friends with just about anyone if motorcycles are involved.
What you do need to consider is whether this group of riders are going to ride at your pace or encourage you to keep up with them. If you can’t find a group to ride with at your own pace, just ride on your own for a little while.
It’s really not that big of a deal if you ride on your own for a month or two and I’d much rather keep my readers alive than push them off a cliff hoping they can fly.
You want to find a group that rides at a pace that you are comfortable with. That’s the most important thing. After that, you can try riding with some other groups if you really want.
Finding people on social platforms
You might think that Instagram is a good platform to find local motorcyclists to go riding with but that isn’t the case. Many Instagrammers aren’t really interested in meeting new people and just plainly want to show off their bike or become popular.
This obviously doesn’t include everyone but these people are usually the most easily found. You are more likely to find someone on Instagram willing to ride with you if you look for people that have only a few followers (like 10 or 20).
Still, you have to filter through a bunch of people to get a few people that will actually want to go riding with you. You are much better off looking for people on social platforms that are specific to motorcycling.
Moto Riders Universe is one that I highly recommend even if it’s still very fresh.
These are some advantages you get with this app:
- You can see on a map who in your area want’s to go riding
- You can post photos and stories (called Moto Blogs)
- Separate friends and followers lists
- Embed YouTube videos
- Post events
- Stay updated with motorcycling news
Overall, this app is most impressive since I’ve tried so many that are full of bugs and have weird ways of doing things. It was super easy to figure out and I was able to use it right away with no issues. This App really stands out over all the others. I’m very certain that this is the best way to find new people that want to go riding motorcycles.
Finding riding clubs to join
Some riding clubs have their own websites that you can look up on Google or Bing. But I would bet that most riding clubs don’t have a website and just make use of social media to promote themselves or their events that they might have.
You are likely to find them on Facebook if they are older riders who manage the social pages but Facebook is being used less and less by the younger generations for various reasons so you might find their page on Instagram or some other platforms.
But since you are most likely a new rider, you might want to know what the difference is between a riding club and other clubs…
A Riding Club (RC) is most likely just a bunch of people who enjoy riding their bikes and like to do it with other people. There are RC’s that do things the MC way with all the rules and stuff but then they would most likely not be promoting themselves on social media.
As a new rider who just wants to hang out a bit with other motorcyclists, don’t assume that an MC and an MCC is the same as an RC. You won’t get into trouble for asking them anything or not knowing the difference, but you could save yourself a lot of time if you know what you are looking for.
If this seems a bit confusing, all you need to know at this stage is that you are looking for an RC or an informal group of riders. In my opinion, you ought to be making friends all over before considering joining any club.
Will riding with other people help me gain confidence in riding?
No, not at all. If anything, it will break down your confidence in riding. But it can help you gain social confidence that people often confuse with riding confidence.
Let me explain what this means…
When learning how to ride or trying to build your riding skills, you only want to be focused on riding your motorcycle and engraving what you learn into your sub-conscious. There is a big difference in knowing how to ride and automatically riding without thinking too much about it. When you are able to do this, you will become more confident in riding your motorcycle.
But riding with other people takes your mind off of what you should be learning since you still need to focus using your conscious mind. Focusing too much on what other people are doing can lead to mistakes from your side. So in essence, I don’t recommend you go riding with other people before you feel that you can ride without thinking about what you are doing.
To avoid any confusion, what I mean by this is that you don’t have to focus on using the controls of your bike like the shifter or clutch for example. You should still have most of your attention on traffic and never let your guard down. Because if you do, you are no better than the car driver who says “I didn’t see them”.
Now, social confidence is something entirely different from riding confidence and you shouldn’t confuse the two with one another. When you go for your first ride in a group, you’ll feel like the spotlight is on you just like when you were practising in the parking lot and looked around if anyone is watching.
Don’t be bothered with this at all. Think of the group as traffic and don’t do anything that you feel doesn’t meet your current skillset. You can push yourself but only a little at a time to make constant progress or you’ll end up six feet below the surface or in a jar on a bookshelf.
Final words
I hope this article was able to help you find some people to ride with. If it did, be sure to tell them how awesome I am! …or, you can just share this article on social media.
Featured image by demonios_s1000rr on Instagram.
I always try to keep my articles interesting and informative. And I’m always thankful when they are shared on social media platforms or Pinterest.