Understanding Club Culture Ride On……….

2007

Gregg Patterson, General Manager

The Beach Club

Chautauqua---Huh?

I love Conference.

And to do conference right, I need to bike.

Huh?

To do conference right, I need to bike fifty miles a day, wear spandex shorts, eat pizza off paper plates, drink beer from long necks, patch flat tires, and wipe chain grease off my legs.

Huh?

To do conference right, I need to rub shoulders with association presidents, executives from Ireland, tennis pros from Vancouver, CCMs, no-CCMs, college professors, chefs, Assistant Managers, students, wives, husbands, boyfriends, the fat, the skinny, the wimpy, and the stud-ly---all fellow bikers with sweaty gloves, odd colored shirts, dorky helmets and clacking shoes. Ma buddies.

Huh?

To do conference right, I need to talk with “Ma Buddies” about “The Big Journey” called life. I need to yap about clubs and people and careers and passions, to loosen my tongue and theirs with Budweiser debriefs, wine soaked dinners, and Starbuck’s coffee at 8:00 a.m. each morning.

Huh?

Ma Buddies and I are Bicycle Chautauquans, a group of bike riding club managers who participate in a three day pre-conference workshop called The Bicycle Chautauqua. We do The Ride for the joy of biking, for the camaraderie it creates and for the “deep emersion” it provides into our industry, our social networks and our psyches. We ride because the ride provides an opportunity to build relationships and to create a community by working together, eating together, drinking together, bitching together and reflecting together. Chautauqua is the quintessential club experience at the ultimate club gathering.

Three cheers!!!

Ride on------------------

Chautauqua---What?

The Chautauqua vision---that of a mobile, tented “university”---surfaced sometime in mid-nineteenth century rural America. Hugely popular early on, their impact began to wane as the university system blossomed.

Chautauqua was given a “boost” in the mid seventies when Robert Pirsig published his classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In the book, Pirsig---who was a philosophy professor in Montana---talked about his motorcycle ride west one summer as a “Chautauqua,” an opportunity to think deeply about life’s “great journey” while motoring through America. Riding and reflecting. The mobile university. The Chautauqua. Good stuff.

Then Chautauqua got another “boost” in the late nineties when Randy Delany---a CCM’er, chapter president, former Green Beret trooper, avid biker, writer and raconteur---and I were yapping one day, brooding on the need for an “added value conference experience”, and we thought it would be neat and novel to combine biking (which we both loved, me as a commuting / touring biker and Randy as a “Stud Boy” racer) and non-traditional, non-linear “organic” education in a pre-conference workshop. Although we didn’t think riding and reflecting would be seen as a “serious educational opportunity” by The Powers That Be in Alexandria, we submitted the idea and, for whatever bizarre set of reasons, CMAA said “yes” and officially sanctioned the concept. We were hoping that a few CMAA’ers would be amused by the opportunity to ride and would sign up for the first---and possibly last---Bicycle Chautauqua.

The inaugural ride began in a snowstorm outside of San Antonio, Texas. We group of strangers looked skeptically at each other, laughed at the weather gods, straightened out our spandex, adjusted our helmets, saddled up our “ponies”, and pedaled off into the hill country. The romance of it all---men and women doing real Men and Women Stuff, spitting in the face of adversity, a band of brothers, one for all and all for one. Club Chautauqua! Riding and Reflecting? Hmmm. The first and the last------

Wrong.

The Chautauqua survived the Hill Country, and thrived. Word spread. Riding and Reflecting became our motto, emblazoned on our bike shirts. San Antonio. Miami. New Orleans. Los Angeles. Hawaii. Los Angeles. And now Orlando. For those of us who ride, Chautauqua is a big part of our Conference Experience.

How so???

Chautauqua---Why???

We ride in pursuit of “the big three”---Relationships, Exercise, and Reflection.

Relationships: We Chautauquans believe that great clubs are about “relationships and community”. Our challenge as club managers is to cultivate relationships between staff and members, between members and members and between staff and staff. If we, as managers, provide opportunities for shared experience, give people “stuff” to do together, set aside time to “yap” and reflect on the “stuff” they’ve done, we believe that relationships will grow and morph into community. As with clubs, so, too, with Chautauquans.

Relationships. We Chautauquans know that a three day ride during conference, a ride that is physically demanding and filled with “yap time,” builds relationships and community. We start together and we finish together. Ours is a group effort, focused on common goals---making it to the next hotel, doing the miles, helping others.

Relationships. We Chautauquans know that everyone who rides is a member of Club Chautauqua, part of a community of shared experience and common interests. During the day, everyone who rides joins a “club within the club” that suits their psyche best---Stud Boys with Stud Boys in the Stud Boy Club, Geekers with Geekers in the Geeker Club, Slow and Steady with Slow and Steady in the Slow and Steady Club. But at the end of the day, over drinks and dinner, these many morph into one, Club Chautauqua, united by the ride and a bond of sweat.

Relationships. We Chautauquans have noticed that inhibitions shrink into insignificance during the ride. Status and distance evaporate. Presidents yap with chefs. College professors yap with Board Room editors. Yapping during breakfast. Yapping during the morning “upbrief”. Yapping during Gatorade breaks. Yapping during lunch. Yapping while fixing flat tires and busted chains. Yapping at check-in. Yapping during the Budweiser Debrief. Yapping during dinner. Laughing the entire time at life, at bikes, at maps that aren’t read, at roads that disappear, at drivers who turn without signaling, at jobs lost to a younger manager. Relationships are built by doing---and then yapping about what’s been done.

Relationships. We Chautauquans acknowledge Chautauquans as members of “Club Chautauqua” during conference. We introduce Chautauquans during seminars. We Chautauquans high five each other in the hallways. We Chautauquans commiserate with other Chautauquans when they lose their jobs, and celebrate with them when they get new ones. We are a band of brothers, touched by fire, forever connected.

So we ride.

Exercise: We Chautauquans know that good health is the key to happiness and happiness is the business we’re in. Exercise energizes the exerciser. Good health releases the endorphins, restores the soul, provides the buzz, relieves the stress, elevates the confidence, unchains the animal. So---we Chautauquans ride bikes for the love of the sport, for the exercise it provides, for the stress it removes, for the joy of “unspoken competition,” for the community created when a group rides together, sweats together, laughs together, climbs hills together, shivers together.

We Chautauquans know that at conference, exercise removes The Sludge. Sludge deposited during seminars. Sludge deposited from high caloric, high cholesterol meals. Sludge deposited while drinking vodka rocks and expense account wines. Sludge can muddy the brain, goo the arteries, deaden the soul and shift the center of gravity earthward. Exercise is the antidote for The Sludge.

So we ride.

Reflection: We Chautauquans know that “Doing demands debrief.” We know that it’s not the doing that makes us wise but the debrief once something’s done. Reflection takes time and unhurried opportunities to ponder. And we Chautauquans have the time and the opportunity and the inclination to ponder.

Reflection. We Chautauquans are a reflective lot. We reflect pre-ride over yogurt, mid-ride over pizza, and post ride over prime rib and merlot. Once the inhibitions are gone, when status and age and experience are removed by road grime and grease, we Chautauquans are predisposed to ask the Big Questions of ourselves and others. What is the good life? Why work in clubs and not hotels? How do we find balance in a business as looney tunes as ours? What is the perfect club---for you? For me? Why did you lose your job? Why did you leave that job for this one? Why did you get married? Divorced? Have kids? Travel to India? Read that book? Lots of questions. Few answers.

So we ride.

Chautauqua---Time to Ride!!!

Club managers, spouses, girlfriends, boy friends, professors, students, editors, writers, golf pros, tennis pros, executive chefs and most anyone even remotely related to the business of clubs, need an opportunity to do “stuff” together, to achieve “stuff” together, to forge a bond of sweat together and to think deeply about the “stuff” of life---together.

We Chautauquans know how its done.

Each year.

* At conference.
* During Chautauqua.
* Riding and reflecting.
* Bike on.

And enjoy the journey-----------------------------------------

Greg enjoys your comment’s and feedback. Email him at: GJPAIR at aol.com