2017 Gateway Riders Mileage Contest By Walt Eschmann, Mileage Coordinator

The Gateway Riders mileage contest runs for a year and includes all motorcycles ridden by the members during the year (not just BMW’s). The contest nominally runs concurrently with the yearly points contest, namely from December through the following November. However, I will accept mileage from members covering any year long period similar to this.

This document gives the results for everyone responding by the end of December 2017. Nineteen members provided ending mileage for this year for an increase of one participant; see the table below for complete results. One interesting statistic is the number of total miles ridden by the club, which has shown a steady decline over the last three year period.

Total miles ridden in 2015 from 24 riders reporting was 257,193 miles, 2016 tallied 206,907 miles with 18 riders reporting, and 2017 results ended up with 176,478 miles. This indicates a 45% reduction in total club miles ridden from 2015 to 2017, with an average rider count of 20.3 riders reporting. So our “s t r e t c h” goal for the club this year (I know, I’m retired, but old business habits die hard) should be to beat the number of riders reporting mileage by 10% first of all, (easy goal as I only need 1.9 more riders to accept the challenge) and then beat the 2015 reported total club mileage by another 20% (not so easy as that’s a 51,438 mile increase).

That means our additional 1.9 riders would need to ride at least 25,719 miles each, or 4 new riders need to clock 12,859 miles each, or–it gets better–21 riders each need to add a mere 2449 miles more to their yearly total, which makes it a much more doable task. I think most would agree that adding 2500 more miles per bike is both a lofty goal and one that would result in a lot of smiles per mile ridden.

Yearly changes from 2016 to 2017 were a mixed bag with some fairly severe swings in percentages. Out of 19 members reporting mileage, 6 riders reported increases in miles, 2 riders clocked the same as last year, and 11 members reported fewer miles than the 2015 to 2016 year period. This trend follows fairly true to what was reported in the previous year which also showed 11 members with fewer miles and only 5 riding more than the 2015 year. This year, Mike Halbert showed the greatest percentage increase in miles year over year, while Jim Shaw clocked the highest actual increase in miles ridden. Congratulations guys.

Winner of this year’s mileage award honor goes once again to our events director, Jeff Ackerman, with a total of 24,759 miles, with just a small negative 2.5 percent mileage drop, so he’s definitely waiting for someone to try and catch up with him one of these years. Jim Shaw moves up one spot to second place with 19,987 miles to dethrone Fielding Childress who dropped down a bit in the standings to seventh place. That may have been different if he hadn’t found his glasses in the shower trailer at the national rally one evening, but everything worked out well in the end.

Third place went to the new gimp in the organization, yours truly, Walt Eschmann, who managed to put 12,975 miles on the pegs before dropping those same pegs on his ankle resulting in a three and a half month hiatus from the seat of his Kleiner Roter Bergsteiger (Little Red Mountain Climber). Larry Floyd came in fourth place, missing third by only 80 miles to the Bergsteiger, Followed by Dave Anderson in fifth with 12,553 miles and Phil Sulfstede in sixth at 11,501 miles. A bit of a surprise for Phil I guess, judging from his reaction at our most recent meeting…

Cathy Bissell took over top spot for the top placing female rider with 10,305 miles; coming in ninth, down 2 spots from last year’s position of seventh place. Mary Ackerman took over the second spot for female riders with a total mileage of 8,669 miles.

There is still time to get into the contest for 2018. Just send me your beginning mileage for 2018 at my email address, weschmann@gmail.com for each of your bikes and I will get you loaded into the spreadsheet. If you get a new or different bike this year, let me know the starting mileage and I will add it to the list.

Thanks….Walt Eschmann, Mileage Coordinator