History FRMC

Mid 1985 a band of bikerfriends were looking around to join a club, the problem was that there wasn't any club in the region that follows their idea of a MC.

So on 13 september 1985, seven of these friends decided to start a new club, based on friendship, bikes, loyalty and brotherhood, they called themselves  “Free Riders MC”.

The word “Free” stands not for anarchy but for total freedom and independance to other clubs or organisations.

The bikes must meet a lot of items, so the minimum content of the engine must be 500 cc, plastic race bikes and off-road bikes were forbidden in the club. In those days most of the bikes were self made choppers, not so easy in a time without internet and discovery channel, hardly to contain now in the 21st century.

We were located at a local rock pub called “The Roxy” in Loppem, not so far from Bruges.

Very soon the club started to introduce “hangaround and prospect” to become a member of the club, what was very strange those days in Belgium, only a few Belgian clubs used this way to become a member in the 80's.

In those days we crossed the channel a lot of times to visit clubs, friends and meetings in the Uk, but also in France and the Netherlands.

After two years the Roxy closed down, and in 1987 we started to renovate an old barn to become our own clubhouse, a place that, after a couple of total renovations, still is our clubhouse now.

Meanwhile we introduce a total new concept of bikermeeting, that was called the Country & Western Bikers meeting.  A meeting with Country and Western music, special silly games like  rope-pulling with the bikes, hill climbing, mud-wrestling a giant bonfire, chopper contest (the bikes must ride into the tent and pass the stage for the jury) and on saturday the famous “eat as much as you can BBQ”  From the fourth meeting we had a gorgeous location, a sand quarry, 60m deep, 2 km long and 1 km wide, from the party place it looks like you where into the Grand Canyon.

At its peak we’ve got more than 1200 visitors (bikes only), but the fifth meeting ended with a motorcycle accident of some visitors after the meeting, with lots of complications for the club (afterwards this meeting is dedicated to Meatloaf & Monica RIP). Cause a lot of bad publicity among this accident and the meeting in local newspapers, it was the end of our bigger meetings.

End of the 80's most of our bikes turned into mat black, and from then on this colour became the house colour of the club, lots of our bikes also changed from choppers to street- and rattbikes.

In 1992 we started a new concept, called our “50-hours party”, basicly in february, but a few  years later it moved to the third weekend of september.  It's a small meeting at and around our clubhouse, with “50 hours” of music, good food and drinks.  Untill today it’s still an old school bikers meeting with a great hospitality and lots of fun.  We also introduced an annual one night party (april-may) at a local hall.

In 1998 MC The Route and in 2001 MC Free Arans patched over and became Free Riders.

2000 was a bad year for the club, we lost two of our members (Wanten and Fangio R.I.P) in six months time, both killed by motorcycle accidents.

At the end of the 90' for the first time Harley's were introduced in the club, formely we all ride Jap or European bikes.  Now almost half of the club rides Harley, but also ratt- and streetbikes are part of the scene.

Around the century we started with a Support Crew, a group of bikers supporting our way of life.

These are independent bikers, loners or even bikers in other clubs who support Free Riders M.C. and our way of life.  They have their own frontpatch, some of them have also the bigger support backpatch.  Both join us to several meetings and foreign visits.

With the 20 th birthday of the club we started visiting Free Riders and other clubs farther around Europe, now you can find us several times a year in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece and some other country's.

In 2006 we built our first Unicyclemotor, and for the next three years we were part of the Belgium UniMotorcycle Society competition.

In 2007, 2008 and 2009 we’ve lost some bro's again, Kelt, Pacha and Igor (R.I.P) were all killed by motorcycle accidents. Because the loss of three of our teammembers we stopped the “H-Bomb” unicycle team in 2009.

In 2010 we organised a one-time big Street Happening to celebrate our 25^th anniversary, about 1500 people came over to see the magnificant Stunt Team, Mediaeval Sword Fighters or just to party together with us.

From 1985 till now, we keep our principles of independance, friendship, bikes, loyalty and brotherhood. An old school MC, ready for the next 25 years !

Geuze

Secretary

one of the seven founders 

Updated feb. 2012