Again a week has past and this time I made it a bit less easy compared to last Wednesday. But the mission stays the same; try to spot the ‘R’ and if you can’t find it, don’t worry, in our webshop there are still enough R’s left to purchase.
Back in 1993 we organized our 2th RMC Choppershow. That was in a village called Abbekerk. In the building were different levels and no elevators. So, when I needed to go up a level or down again my brothers had to carry me either way. And this is always risky business.
The short clip starts with some shots of Stud’s bike in the building phase and then we see Stud, Beer, Ger and Jockey carry me down a level. We were young then…
If, like us and most bikers among us, you go to parties on a regular basis, you have to show your ‘best side’.
That means that you are not easy to get small. And then sportsmanship comes into play. Because if you plan to train your arm muscles all evening by lifting glasses filled with BaCo, you also have to calculate the consequences.
Toon, Beer, Schweick and Jezus loading up our gear
Your arms may be well-muscled, but the rest is rapidly deteriorating. That doesn’t take away from the fact that you can look back on a great evening.
Above and below some pictures of a trip to Sweden in 1987. In the first weekend of February of that year we went to the 9th birthday of Gjutjärn MC in Uppsala. The photo above was taken on the ferry from Denmark to Sweden.
My older brother Toon, also clubmember at the time had a American Station wagon. We went with the six of us in his car: Toon, Beer, Schweick, Jezus, Blut and me. And boy oh boy, it was cold that February. The water between Denmark and Sweden was completely frozen, but the ferry services were able to cope with this to a certain extend.
The photo above was our look from the the deck on the sea packed with ice.
Along the way we had a great evening with a friend of ours, Thomas from Norrkoping. As a result, not much sleep was achieved and the ‘men’ had to pay for it the next morning. My older brother Toon drove the first piece, from Holland till Helsingor – Denmark and from Helsingborg – Sweden till Norrkoping. Since I didn’t drink a drop at the time because of my diabetes, it was my job to transport them to our final destination: Uppsala.
Schweick and my youger brother Blut having fun.
Beer and Jezus. Beer is ‘explaning’ something and Jezus is thinking; ‘cut the crap and finish your glass’.
But first I took some pictures of the men and yes, I can tell you, they were so tame. Anyway, back on the road again on to the next party; ‘the 9th Anniversary of Gjutjärn MC’.
Okay, there arms were ‘pumped-up’ for the real party an it took some efforts to reach that point, but all and all, the ‘results’ were there.
The photo below is Schweick taking a powernap.
Jezus and Blut nowhere near reality.
Beer taking a powernap in the stationwagen as well.
The past few days I posted several pictures of Swedish Choppers to get in the mood for our upcoming 29th RMC Choppershow. Today of course no different, except that I have added a photo of my old trusted Pentax ME Super. I still have that camera in my possession and it is somewhere in my attic. This camera was my third purchase.
The Pentax ME I had for this one was stolen from a Raststätte somewhere in Germany during my trip to my writing friend in Finland. That was in the summer of 1982. Back then I was still riding a Kawasaki Z650 Chopper. Unfortunately, a hole burned in one of the four pistons during the outward journey on the highway in Germany. So I had to leave it behind for repair and in all the hectic pace my camera was also stolen. So I have very few pictures of that trip.
Fortunately, Kaija had small simpel AGFA Agfamatic pocket camera back in Finland It did the trick though. In Holland we called it a ‘zipp, rats, click’ camera.
Too bad I couldn’t ride my Chopper through Finland with her on the back of my bike. Now we had to travel everything by train. At least we had a car at our disposal at her parents place, near Kuopio. Well I digress. You know what it is, when you think back to these kinds of holidays you completely digress. And nine times out of ten you often ask yourself the question; ‘what if this’ or ‘what if such’.
The photo above, at the ‘Peking Party’, choppers as far as the eye can see.
Despite all the bad luck mentioned before, I did have a nice and pleasant time there together with Kaija. I will definitely come back to this topic again. I also visited her again in 1985. This was just before the weekend of ‘Hydet Party’. I had already written a bit about this party and I also will tell more in the near future about that party.
Last week I had already reported that the number of infections with the Omikron variant was increasing rapidly. That has only gotten worse now. But there is, as crazy as that may sound, a positive side to this story. The number of hospital admissions is still decreasing and that is beneficial for everyone, for us but especially for the patients who are allowed to leave the hospital.
It gives us more hope that our 29th RMC Choppershow can actually take place in April. It will take a while, but time always goes faster than expected. And to get in the mood, here are some extra examples of choppers.
The photos shown here were taken during the ‘Peking Party 1985’. We kept on looking out for all the beauty that drove onto the club grounds and the lawn of the adjacent lots during that weekend. At that time, we also had ‘nice’ choppers in the Netherlands, but you could count them on one hand, so to speak. There, in Sweden, it looked like a Mecca of choppers.
Anyway, back to today. We, RMC Opmeer, were infected with the chopper virus partly because of those trips to Sweden, if we weren’t already. And that is all in all better to handle than the Corona virus.
Me with my camera, a Pentax ME Super, making photos during the Peking Party around the clubhouse of Peking Outlaws MC in July 1985.
Okay, as written before, here are some examples of nice choppers seen during ‘Peking Party 1985’ in Norrköping.
As far as I’m concerned, all these examples could also have ended up on our chopper show. And well, there’s no arguing about taste.
The photo above shows an old Vincent and as you can see this is the last photo of the relevant roll of film. It was manageable at the time, but it did have its charms. In addition, developing and printing them cost a lot of money over the years.
The last photo of your roll of film was something else that happened more often in those days when you took a lot of photos and slides like me. After 12, 24 or 36 shots, your roll of film was full again. Then you had to put a new one in your camera again. But then you had to roll back the old roll of film first. That is now something different with digital cameras and mobile phones.
And if you forgot to roll back and opened the back of your ‘body’, most of your roll of film would immediately go to the moon and if you were lucky, you still had some half-overexposed photos left. The older photographers among us will get what I mean, while the younger ones will think: “what is that guy talking about?”
Well, compare it to ‘accidentally’ formatting your storage medium full of photos and/or movies. Fuckfuckfuck…!!!
In those days I had an Olympus OM10 and a Pentax ME Super. Before that I had a Pentax ME and before that I had a Praktica L2. Later I had the very first consumer ‘autofocus’ camera, a Minolta 9000 AF. After that I had successors again until the digital age made its appearance. I’ve a Nikon D750 full frame for some time now and this will probably my last photo camera. Till tomorrow.
Here some more pictures made at the ‘Peking Party’ back in 1985.
For those of you who are borred again, here’s a small puzzle to fill up the time. Try to spot the R’.
In 1992 on Queen’s Day, April 30, we went with the club to MC de Pul, who always organized a show/party on this day. That year I had bought my first video camera. I often gave the camera to one of my brothers, because they are more mobile than I am. Likewise with this recording. We see Latka give away a burnout show.
Due to the 2 MB limit, the quality and duration are limited. Sorry, but there’s not much I can do about that.
In Sweden they also know a thing or two about ‘working out’. Here’s a nice example of training specific muscles. Back in 1985 at the Hydet Party they organized various games where you could win as an individual or as a team and of course there were also prizes attached. Some of them were quite easy to do and others were a lot more difficult.
Now take a look at the photos below…This ‘exercise’ requires your utmost concentration and perfect balance to lift the legs and place them forward simultaneously. Trust me, this is a lot harder than it looks!
All the more fun for the bystanders to watch the teams perform.
We see the girls compete against the ‘men’.
Well, I was there at the time and the ‘men’ performed well below par in this case.
In this case the ‘girl team’ consisted of girlfriends/partners of Gjutjärn MC members. Maybe the men had been drinking a little too much, well, I’m pretty sure. But even if they had been sober, they would still have lost out to the girls. Especially the turning point halfway through the course was a difficult hurdle to overcome.
I made these pictures on my way back from my trip to Finland when I joined up again with my friends from Gjutjärn MC Uppsala. That summer we went to Sweden with the six of us. Fonda, Kwak, my younger brother Blut [RIP], co-founder Beer, Schweick [RIP] and me. When I rode to Finland to visit my writing friend Kaija, the others went back home. Later a bit more about this trip.
