First in a series. ATV clubs are looking more and more like side-by-side (SxS) clubs. Photos of ATV club rides aren’t just sprinkled with SxSs anymore. Often, they are the dominant vehicle. In some parts of the country, new “SxS Clubs” are being formed. If you belong to one of them, or have thoughts on how SxSs (called recreational off-highway vehicles or ROVs by manufacturers) have changed your ATV club and its activities, we’d like to hear from you for this article series. Send your club name, contact info and comments to trailhead@nohvcc.org.
“People are begging to join our club!” - John Geyer
There’s something you don’t hear every day. The Havasu Side By Side Trail Association, Inc. has more than 400 members. It has 32 supporting business members. It has a cool logo, a professional looking website and a Facebook page open to members only.
And it’s just eight months old.
“It’s the craziest thing,” said John Geyer, club co-founder. “I put out an e-mail, some people stepped forward and said they’d help with the membership, and we just grew, grew, grew. We get 100 to 150 people show up at our monthly meetings. We’re side-by-side only. There’s a lot of off-roading in this area, and so it was a natural fit.”
Key to the club’s rapid growth, said Geyer, is fulfilling the needs of local riders, many retired and new to the sport, and putting them at ease when riding out in the desert. “They’re scared of getting lost,” he said. “Ten or 15 miles, that’s their limit. Then they join us on an 80-mile club ride. They come back grinning ear to ear. They’ve seen new things and taken pictures of the experience. We hear new members tell us they would have sold their machine if it hadn’t been for the club showing them how to ride, and where to ride.
“We are a social off-road club. At every meeting, we ask new members to stand up and talk about who they are, what they ride, how they like to ride, and where they’re from, so others can gravitate toward like-minded people. When we have a club ride, we have three leaders and three “tail gunners.” We send the fast group out first, then the average-speed group, then the slower group. It works out beautifully. If you don’t want to go fast, you don’t have to go fast.”
The club also holds GPS training sessions.
Another ingredient built into the club by Geyer and co-founder Rick Seals, was creating a club that looks professional, especially the membership application and website. “We hit all the right buttons, and it worked. People will join a club if it looks like they know what they’re doing,” Geyer said.
Lake Havasu City, AZ, population 52,000, is a major tourism destination, known for its boating, fishing, golf and hundreds of miles of off-highway vehicle trails. It’s also a stop on the World Off-Road Champion Series (WORCS) of ATV and SxS races. And while there are many “snowbirds” who spend the winters there, the majority of the SxS club’s members are residents of the area. “I think the vast majority, over 50 percent are retired,” said Geyer. “But we don’t have a high percentage of snowbirds. I would say it’s less than 20 percent. Lake Havasu is a retirement community for the most part, so it’s mostly retired couples in the club. We also have guys who are ex-Baja racers, and dirt bike racers that are members.”
True to its mission statement—which includes “to work with local, county, state and federal agencies to keep desert roads and trails open for public use”—the club has jumped into partnering with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other, established off-highway vehicle (OHV) clubs in the area, on several fronts.
Its members have joined forces with ATV and 4WD truck clubs on cleanup projects in the desert. And it’s one of 14 OHV clubs working to create the Arizona Peace Trail, a 750-mile loop from Yuma to Bullhead City (see February, 2016 NOHVCC newsletter). “I think it’s a great opportunity to market off-roading here in Mojave County,” Geyer said. “Our club is helping to promote it. We want to connect the local trails into the overall trail system, much like the Paiute trail system. We want to make Lake Havasu be a place to stop, gas up, spend the night, get your rig fixed, and be part of that.
“Just recently, the BLM asked us to do crowd control at the Parker 425 (a Best in the Desert Racing Association event). We had about a dozen of our rigs down there, along with the sheriff and the BLM rangers. They said it never ran so smooth, with our help, so they want us to be involved from now on. We’re hoping to leave a good impression about off-roading to everybody. Whatever we can do to help move off-roading to the good side of the ledger, we’re going to do.”
As in other parts of the country, the Havasu Side By Side Trail Association was organized and built by a handful of enthusiastic and dedicated retirees who like to ride, want to give back to their community, and are willing to put in the time and effort to promote safe, responsible OHV recreation. Now, the club’s biggest challenge is handling its quickly expanding membership. Said Geyer: “It’s keeping me more busy than I planned, but I can deal with it for a while.”
Learn more about the Havasu SxS Trail Association, Inc., at: http://havasusxs.com/.
