What next?

[jfrdog]

If Paragon does get closed for keeps :cry: would the PAP people make a new park? And if so is there anyway we could help them? :hmph:

[NYWheeler]

Check out the forum at www.paragonap.com. Any news about a new park will be posted there when the time comes.

[XEON]

I am sure the owners will try and find some land nearby. But its going to be very difficult to find land.

[MrZ71]

im going sunday with shaun any one want in ??????

[88sub4x4]

I have a friend who has 400+ acres in NY. Trying to get a hold of him to see if he'd want to do something like a small park. I know it's no where near the size of PAP, but if he'd let us use it, then we'd have out own private wheeling area for a while

[jfrdog]

I have a friend who has 400+ acres in NY. Trying to get a hold of him to see if he'd want to do something like a small park. I know it's no where near the size of PAP, but if he'd let us use it, then we'd have out own private wheeling area for a while
That would be nice. :spinrhead

[ToxicTurtle]

Hey guys...

XEON has heard this before and so have a few of you who are still around from about 2-3 years ago... Now may be the time to start thinking about getting an official club together, with dues, etc.
Let me throw some numbers your way...
If you were to all get together, put together BOD, with Pres, VP, Treas, etc. Put together a dues structure etc and then join up with a larger national organization, you would find yourself with a lot of help and support and lots of info on where you can ride legally and a whole bunch of private land.

EX: East Coast 4WD Assoc. spreads from ME to MI and south to KY. The northeast region (Region D/Northeast.. EC4WDA) includes all of New England, the eastern half of NY and northern NJ. For a club to join the whole deal, is $14 per member. So, if your club has 30 members, it would "cost" the club $430 to join EC4WDA and the Northeast Region. If you were to charge dues of $40-$50 a year, your club would have $$ to use for things like decals, t-shirts, club insurance (which most private land owners require in order to use their land), etc.
Here is what you get for that $14 per member..per year.. Remember.. ONE trip to Paragon cost $35. (not that that was a bad deal by any means and it really sucks that its closing, however, like Kyle has said, as they will work diligently to find a new location and reopen, that could take years)

So, you get membership into Tread Lightly!, Blue Ribbon Coalition, SEMA. You get an EC4WDA decal and patch. You get a 1/4ly newspaper. You have access to all sorts of pamphlets and booklets to help with dealing with landowners and townships, books that show our economic impact on an area (you've probably heard those words being thrown around with RE to how much PAP affects the local economy of Hazleton), safety brouchures, DVDs/CDs, etc... You get into a network of people who know how to deal with towns and landowners so we can teach you all how to obtain legal public roads, how to speak with landowners and obtain legal private lands to use. You will get the ability to buy into an association reduced rate insurance program. You also get free admission to the Lima,OH Jambo; Bloomsburg,PA Jambo and the Essex Jct,VT Jambo and you get to camp for free... However, those slots are limited and you must work the EC4WDA booth to take advantage of those deals.

Mostly.... You will gain access, through club trailrides, to over 6000 acres of private land from southern NH to NY, CT, MA and VT. We currently have 13 clubs from Long Island all the way up through the Boston area of MA. These clubs are out wheeling on their club trailrides at least once a month. thats 13 days a month that clubs are wheeling. Our region clubs offer an open invite (space permitting) to any of their monthly club trailrides. That means that your club members could hook up with one of the clubs and pretty much, could be out every weekend wheeling, somewhere in the TriState/New England area.

Ya know, thats not bad for $14 a year. and.. I know that the idea of actually getting a club together with officers and all can seem intimidating.. we as an association, would be there to help with all aspects of getting a club up and running, with things like by-laws, etc.

Let me know what you think.. It could very well be "What's Next"...
E4WBrill@aol.com

[Cris_XJ]

I think that's a very good idea if we want to wheel seriously we must be a serious association to be taken seriously ,I don't have a problem in paying $14 ,$20 or $50 per year as long as we keep records I don't want to pay for some one elses rig ,but yeah you got my vote.

[dmxjg35]

I think this would be a great idea to look into. If tri-state doesnt want to go this route, is there any info we can look at for becoming individual members of the East Coast 4WD Assoc?

[NYWheeler]

You can check out www.ec4wda.org.

[ToxicTurtle]

I have already been contacted by Justin/XEON.. He will not have the time to step up as a presidential position.. This does not mean though that he won't be involved in this in some manner.. What it does mean is that those who ARE really interested will have to start really talking about this.. If you would be interested in helping to get this started and would be interested in holding a position you need to post up here. Usually clubs have a Pres, a VP, a membership secretary, a recording secretary and a Tres. Sometimes the mem and rec are combined into one. By Laws are easy as we have standard ones that can easily be "stolen" from any one of our Region clubs and fitted to meet Tri-State 4x4's needs.
The key is to get a whole bunch of people talking about this... bring people to the board.. make posts to bring people to this post and see what the general interest is.. I see that there are over 600 registered users... obviously all of those folks aren't active.. someone here probably has an idea of how many active posters/users there are here on the forum and how many usually make it to your regular meet and greets/trail rides etc. Its those regular, active users that we need to get together.. at least the ones who want to take the next step. Once we have a good idea of who and how many, we will schedule a meeting. I will make sure that someone from EC4WDA is there to assist.

Yes, there are individual memberships available through EC4WDA... however, getting a club started overall, will be your best bet.

again, questions?? Please don't hesitate to ask.

PS.. for some reason, I have no smilies available... and my settings are set to allow them... ??? Is there a way to access them that I don't see? Thanx!

Talk soon,

[XTC Jpr13]

I would be willing to help out with what I can, but I Dont know how much time I will be able to put in every month, and also dont want to do this through tri-state unless Justin and Rodney are also involved!

[XEON]

PS.. for some reason, I have no smilies available... and my settings are set to allow them... ??? Is there a way to access them that I don't see? Thanx!Go to your User CP, Edit Options, Miscellaneous Options (Bottom), and change it to Standard or Enhanced.


As for becoming a club. I dont have time or the knowledge to do so. We have kept this group a group and its working out great for us. We are doing what we want to do, which is to acually go out and wheel. Becoming a club could be a great thing. But that was not the original goal of the site.

[ToxicTurtle]

Thanx for the tip on the smilies...:wtg:
Well, I can't help on the time deal... The knowledge stuff, we have covered.. I've been involved in organized 4 wheeling for over 20 years. EC4WDA has been around for close to 40 years. We are here to help with all the organizational BS.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what you have here. It IS working great... Unfortuantely, the main place that you all wheeled has been shut down. True, Kyle may have another place up and running at some point.. we don't know when, and even then, if its another lease and Kyle doesn't own the land, it puts us all in the same precarious position.
So, what you started this for, to actually go out and wheel, will be hindered substantially because you will have very few places to go. This may very well send members out wheeling in places that they are not sure if its legal.. this in turn may end up getting members ticketed, arrested, etc. None of which anyone wants and it hurts all of us when it does happen.
There are several clubs that started as forums and as they too saw areas deminishing, closing or just finding out that where they were going was actually illegal, they chose to create a paid "section" if you will and those paid members were able to attend the EC4WDA events on the private lands.. the whole entity benefits as there are legal public areas too.
Although I couldn't tell you off the top of my head where the legal roads are in central/eastern PA, I certainly have the contacts to obtain that information. anyway, a couple of those clubs chose to just charge the $14 dues for EC4WDA, where as others formed complete clubs, with a whole range of By-Laws, etc.
If you'd like to contact them, they are New England 4 Runners Owners Club and TTORA-NE. Lee Kaldany is the Pres of NE4ROC and can be reached at lee@ne4roc.org (lee@ne4roc.org) Heath Boisvert is the Pres of TTORA-NE, intrepidse17@gmail.com (intrepidse17@gmail.com) Shoot them a quick email and ask them how they set things up for their clubs. www.CTJeep.org (http://www.CTJeep.org) is another club that started as just a forum, they chose to go the full blown route. They just held elections and I don't have thier presidents email but you can contact Aili McKeen with questions at: defygravity@snet.net (defygravity@snet.net)

I hope that no-one feels that I'm trying to shove this down your throats, it is purely an offer to help as I know that you have sustained a major "land loss", will have less places to wheel and may end up wheeling illegally, which will hurt all of us...

again my email is E4WBrill@aol.com (E4WBrill@aol.com) if you have any questions... or just post up here if you feel it will benefit everyone.

Talk soon,

[Halo Performance]

I think it would be a fantastic idea, but as for Tri-State, thats Xeons and Badzooks call.

[ROCKREADYXJ]

Toxicturtle

I have been working on forming a club to join EC4WDA if you can further help me or have any usefully knowledge please contact me anyway you chose.

Any others interested in joining a sanctioned body please also contact me I am looking for members.

Joe

joe@trcoffroad.com