The Memory Meanderings of Your Former Mileage Man

The Memory Meanderings of Your Former Mileage Man

By Greg Wilkinson

The past couple of years would find me getting anxious around this time of the summer. Your Mileage Team would be getting their plans together for how, where and when we’d be collecting everyone’s miles and we’d start getting questions from our Members about our totals. “Did we get it?” was a question we’d hear anytime there were a few of us gathered together. It was a suspenseful time for everyone, and I loved it.

This year your Mileage Team is being led by Tim “Papa” Schaefer as I found I needed to separate this from my other responsibilities as Membership Officer. The other members of the Mileage Team are Kevin Hartley, Ray Gocal and “Fatboy” Dave Krzyzanowski and they’re all excited about this year’s program and the chance for a “Three-Peat” with our Chapter riding in excess of one million miles again for the third straight year.

I originally stepped into the role of Mileage Man when Ralph Williams asked me if I could take it over from him after the completion of the 2018 Challenge. He’d held the position after Daddy O passed it to him after many years. I’d been a member of the Ralph’s team all that year, so I believed I had what I thought was a good understanding of what I was being given the opportunity to do, and with Ralph’s encouragement I hit the ground running. What I hadn’t fully comprehended at the beginning of that year was the level of interest in the Mileage Program that existed within the Chapter. I’d soon learn that while we had many members who consistently signed up for the Program year after year, we had many, many more who needed to be encouraged to join us. Thank goodness we had Dan Bauer as our Chapter Director because he went to work and between him and St. Charles Harley Davidson they came up with a plan.

We began  employ a series of monthly Chapter Challenges to get our wheels rolling. We’d go riding off in all directions, for some of the craziest reasons and we had some of our most enjoyable times that year. Even the Dealer joined in with their Monthly Dealer Challenge and the Reason to Ride book became a best seller. It seemed that everyone benefitted from these. We watched as our members rode and our miles climbed. It was an exciting year for me in my first term as Mileage Man. That fall our Mileage Program had the same ending as we’d had for several years, it was at the Dealer’s Chili Cook-Off. Your Mileage Team was ready with their notebooks, scurrying from bike to bike checking odometers as the Wind Down ride rolled into the parking lot. The Dealership was heavily scented with the heady aroma of meat and beans pouring out of the training room as riders piled in to hand over their miles and taste the chili. Early on in the tabulations I could see that we’d had a good summer. The math was looking encouraging, and the numbers continued to come it through various channels. When it was all totaled up, I was happy to report to Dan that we’d made it. We had hit that magical one-million-mile target. It was 2019 and St. Charles HOG Chapter had just ridden its first Million Mile year.

We began to make plans on how we’d make the announcements to the Chapter. I remember thinking that this must be how the men who worked on the Manhattan Project felt like. To keep such a big and powerful secret hidden from my friends was a challenge to me at first, but soon I learned that I had a talent for lying. “Did we make it?” I was asked so many times and all my false answers have probably added some purgatory time to me in the end, but it was an exciting time for me.

The night of the big announcement was here, and we had it all planned better than a Mission Impossible caper. We had lights dimming, flashlights scanning the crowd and poppers staged to blow their load of streamers. Music was playing and Dan was ready to make it official. I will remember a lot about that night, but what is my favorite moment? It was Linda Williams standing there proudly waving the sign with 1,109,499 miles printed on it. Later that evening she told me that she had to lower that sign down for a moment so she could wipe away some tears. I’m sure we all have a favorite memory of that night, but that’s mine. The Million Mile Celebration at Moudy’s was a party to be remembered. The Dealer even shared our excitement. The Million Mile pins that I still see adorning vests and jackets today, the feelings of success that we all shared those weeks were all the result of the hundreds of small events that combined to give us a time I’ll never forget.

The following year we hit the ground running. We had our first one-million-mile year under our belts, and it seemed to me that everyone felt that they had learned the trick, they had seen behind the curtain and the mystery was solved.  Hitting that mark again was not going to be a challenge to our group. Smooth sailing, right? Hardly! We had a good start, our map on the wall at the dealer was showing color and we decided that our goal for the year should be 1.25 million miles. Piece of cake! Our roster of members in the Mileage Program was at an all time high and the enthusiasm was equally as high. Then came the lows. Mother Nature lived up to her name, but we shrugged that off. We could still ride. We had also learned that Mother Harley wasn’t being too kind to us either. They had dismissed our mileage claims for 2019. Who cares, we all chanted. We knew we still did it. Nothing’s gonna stop us this year. Covid! A pandemic stopped us, or it at least slowed us down, but not for long. We took stock of our situation, measured ourselves and reeled out plan B. While thousands around us crawled into their holes and pulled it closed behind them, we decided to go big. We moved our meetings outdoors and we continued to ride. We even took 60 plus bikes to Sturgis. We had plenty of long rides, hundreds of short day rides and the retiree regiment of the Chapter got their miles by following Kevin Hartley all over the place. Things looked like we were going to be okay, but we didn’t want to be known as a one-hit wonder. We felt we needed to show that it wasn’t luck that we made our goal last year. We were forced to make changes to the program that had worked so well for us the year before. Covid had cancelled the Dealer’s activities, so there was no Chili Cook-Off to signal the end of the Mileage Program for us. We moved the official end of the Chapter Mileage Challenge to December 1st. If we lost any advantage to the Covid we’d hopefully make up for it with the extended time. We also incorporated as a permanent action the Mid-Season Mileage report. Rolled out as a test in the previous year, it’s worth was proven this year. I learned we were within striking distance of our million miles for the second year in a row.

As the season wore down towards its end, I had to begin the task that was proving to be the biggest challenge. Yeah, getting members to sign up for the Mileage Program was getting easier, and why not? We were a proven commodity now. Gotta million miles that needs to be ridden? Call St. Charles HOG, we’ll have it whipped by the Fourth of July. No, it wasn’t getting new members to join, which is still a challenge, but it’s nothing compared to getting members to turn in their mileage. For weeks I’d get emails and texts with pics and stories, all needing to be verified. I’d post on our Facebook that the Mileage Team would be at the Dealer on Saturday’s and invite members to stop by and turn their mileage in. At times I imagined that this is what a man with a swollen prostate trying to pee out a campfire must feel like. Dribs and drabs would come in. Not everyone made me work for it, some members, God Bless ‘em, would give us their miles on Monday, ride again on Tuesday and send the new miles in that night only to repeat it again the next day. These members are truly the standard bearers of our Chapter, waving our million-mile banners high for all to see.

All this time I’m feeding our mileage counts to Tim Cudd, who as Chapter Manager has the unenviable task of reporting them all to Mother Harley for the RIDE 365 program and VISA mileage for points program. So, in reality there’s multiple things going on at multiple levels, but it’s a great feeling to turn in those high numbers.

So, where did we wind up at last year? Surely everyone remembers the scene on the front porch of St. Charles Harley Davidson on that cold sunny Saturday morning. Randy Longest was acting as our master of ceremony and up on the porch we had a true legion of believers, or if not true believers, we were certainly working hard on converting them. We had Brad Holzhauer, Dennis Wappelhorst, Zac, Kim, Sandy, and many of our Dealership friends. Dan Bauer and assorted Officers were also holding court when Randy announced that he had not hit our goal of 1.25 million miles but had surpassed it with 1.3 million miles. Chapter members held signs high showing the total miles 1,319,827, and there in the line, holding a sign half as tall as she was, was Linda Williams smiling behind her pink scarf.  I remember thanking Brad Holzhauer moments later for all the support he had given the Chapter that year and as he reached out to shake my hand he smiled and said “You’re welcome. Thank you, and just keep buying motorcycles” with a smile.

I could go on but let me get down to the point of all this. I was the very grateful beneficiary of unmeasurable support while I was your Mileage Man and I hope that everyone knows how grateful I am to have been lucky enough to have played a part in those two wonderful years. I also want to remind you that your Mileage Team is working hard again this year to help our Chapter make it happen again and I hope that everyone will work with them and do what they can so that Papa Schaefer can have that same wonderful experiences as your Mileage Man that I had.