Friends and guest from Friendship Day 2009
Friends and guest from Friendship Day 2009,
I would like to thank everyone who attended Friendship Day 2009. This year we had over 2,000 motorcycles from all over Japan making it our largest ever here at MCAS Iwakuni. There where bikes and riders from all over Japan in which I took the time to look at each and every bike that came. As a founding member for the Friendship Day Bike Meet you do not know how happy it makes me to see how the event has grown since starting Friendship Day 1992. For the first event we had six motorcycles and it was the six Americans who started the event. This year there were bikes old and new which shows people how much the bikes have changed over the years. For some of us older people it brings back memories from the past. This is was great. There were about 500 bikes that weren’t able to attend the Thunder Run and I am very sorry for this. Please understand that our staff is very small and is responsible for escorting bikes to the parking area, making sure everyone is ready for thunder run, and escorting the thunder run event. This being said and the number of bikes we had it was very difficult to keep the bikes rolling with no gaps. There were a couple of groups that wanted to pull over to the side of the road and wait for their friends to catch up causing a gap of about 250 meters between riders and the rider that was bringing up the end at the gate wasn’t able to see these riders. They thought that was the end of the bikes and he left to be bring up the end of the ride. After he left I looked down the street and saw the bikes coming and it was too late to get them out on the runway. I was told by the military policy to turn the bikes back in which was a hard thing for me to do as a rider and knowing that many of you came mainly for this event. There were several things that went wrong with Thunder Run and I as the president of the Iwakuni Motorcycle Club take responsibility for this. I will do my best to ensure we do not have the same problems next thunder run. I know that many riders traveled long distances to ride on the runway and were turned around at the gate. This also included some of our staff. My deepest apology goes out to each and everyone for this. With the event time line set, we didn’t have enough time to get the rest of the bikes out to the runway and back prior to the next event. With 2,000 bikes and a short time line this takes us all working as a team to make the event happen and we ran out of time. At our next meeting this will be one of our topics for improvement
I hope that next year we can enlist more help (both American and Japanese) to support the event. We had many Japanese volunteers that came from Iwakuni, Hiroshima, and Sasebo to support us, but we fell short on support. For an event this size we need a minimum of 100 staff members to ensure everyone is on their bikes and ready to go. I would like to say if it wasn’t for their help we would not have been able to get as much done as we did. Thank you. I would also like to thank Tak, his family, and Staff for their support for the demonstration he put on. Last I would like to say thank you to all of our Japanese riders who came to Iwakuni Friendship Day 2009 and for being good neighbors. I hope to see you at our next Friendship Day.Ride hard, but ride safe and I hope to see you at some of the up coming rallies.
MikeIwakuni Motorcycle Club President