Chapter History
It all started when two friends got together in a small town in the U. P. Wes Fuller, Area Rep, Chapter M and Tom Makela from Indian River, thought there were enough Gold Wing riders in the Indian River area to start a GWRRA chapter.
Toms work would not permit him to take the A/R job. Tom approached his friend, Jerry Rubert, about starting a GWRRA chapter. Jerry took the A/R job and Tom was the Assistant A/R.
In September, 1986, ten Gold Wing owners, State Director Duane Leudecking, State PR Mike Dixon, Wes Fuller, Tom Makela and Jerry arranged the first meeting at the Township Fire Hall and Chapter Z was on its way. We were chartered in November 1986.
Our meetings are currently held on the fourth Sunday of the month at various restaurants. They start at 1:30 PM, dates and locations can be found in our newsletters. While at the meeting members will order off the menu and dine together. From mid April to the end of September we do dinner rides on Tuesday nights. We meet at Burger King in Indian River and leave at 6 PM. Most of the time we go to a restaurant but about a third of the time we do a Brown Bag and picnic at a scenic area. In mid 2007 the ADA who shall remain unnamed (Bernd) in one of his last acts in office implied that we were "Trolls". Since we all know you should not mess around with trolls we adopted the troll as our mascot and use this in several events that we do. So remember if you come just south of the "bridge" KAUTION TROLLS or you may just get "trolled".
Chapter Nickname Straits Area Road Riders
Chapter Color Silver
Chapter Motto We never go to have a bad time
Chapter Reps/Directors
Jerry Rubert 1986-1993
Dar & Joyce DeYoe 1994
Richard & Kandi Bunker 1995-1996
Gary & Robin Nadell 1997
Don & Debbie Loy 1998-1999
Jerry & Sharon Baker 2000-2001
Roland & Jennifer Lempke 2002-2004
Chip Hiles 2005-2013
Wayne & Lucille Thornton 2014-2017
Mike & Carol Rainey 2017 - Present