Well, as a youth leader, I'm used to using examples to make my points, makes it easier for the kids to understand. Not that anyone on here is a kid, but bear with me, it's the way I say things lol....
I gotta say that I can't stand smoking. I mean, really, it brings out one of my "non-christian" sides. It just makes me mad, if I had a dime for every time I've wanted to flick a cigarette out of someone's mouth, I'd be rich. It's a dirty, expensive, and most importantly, an unhealthy habbit. I respect other people's right to smoke, but at the same time, I feel that I have the right to breathe clean air. My grandpa used to say "A man's right to swing his fist around stops at the end of another man's nose," and it's true. You have the right to smoke, as long as you're not forcing someone who doesn't smoke to breathe the smoke, too.
With that being said, when people come over to my house, I ask that they don't smoke in my house. Just makes sense, right? I'll kind of put up with someone smoking outside, as long as they don't breathe on me, and as long as they're responsible about disposing of the cig butts, but inside my house? NO way. It's a matter of respect. The other side of this is that if I was to come to your house, and you smoke, I'm probably not going to ask you to put it out. Why? I'm in your house. My rules might not really apply. I might not stick around as long, (I have more than one health reason for not wanting to breathe the stuff), but it's your house, your rules, and if you decide to smoke, I really don't think I have the right to ask you not to.
It seems lately that we need to remember that we're in Lucky's house. Maybe as a reminder, we should all take a second and cruise a few areas that we haven't really looked at.... on the homepage, scroll down until you find the website's stats.... you'll see that there are over 8,700 of us in Lucky's house. Imagine that many people in your house. I know I couldn't take it, lol. There are also over 5,000 events, ranging from small local things, to big national rallies, all of which, or in the case of the big events, part of which, are being planned and coordinated in Lucky's house. He's letting us do it for free, not charging us "rent," just saying, "come on in, brothers and sisters, the door's open!"
The other part of the site that we should be checking out can be found as the very first "catagory" when you open up the forum menu. It says "Forum Rules, site instructions, and tips." Click on that, then click on the first topic, which is the forum rules. Actually, before you click on it, look at how many views it's had. Of nearly 9,000 members, there have only been 797 views of the forum rules. That doesn't seem right to me. Go ahead and read the rules. They're not hard to follow, there aren't that many of them.... just do it.
Now, for the apology.... When I first came on this site, one of the first things I did was create an event. I didn't read or follow the rules before I did it, and it got deleted. I guess I could contest whether that was right or not, I really didn't think I did anything wrong, but I did make a mistake by not reading the rules first. The bad part was that I got a pretty big attitude about it, too. I even went as far as shooting back a nasty response when my post was deleted, and that was where I went really wrong. I'm truly, truly sorry, bro. I shouldn't have done it.
The bottom line here is that Lucky has invited us all into his house, to laugh, play, cry, and just generally shoot the bull and share our experiences as bikers. We could all afford to show him, his lady, and the rest of the moderators a little more respect. Truthfully, if there was someone smoking in my house after I'd asked them not to, I'd drop them on the sidewalk. If we wanna talk about rights, Lucky has every right in the world to pull the plug on this thing if he wants to; I know that he won't, but he could.... we don't need to make his job harder, there's already 9,000 of us camped out in his back yard, so we can at least show him the respect and follow the rules. To the guys that have chosen to ride off, that's fine, I'm really gonna miss FXR, and I know that I missed SingSing when he left; I didn't talk to Hambone much, but I know he was missed to... now it seems like people are getting bent about things that they could have avoided by just reading and following the rules.
I hope that no one thinks I'm getting smart, I just saw that member / rules viewed ratio and it kinda made me upset. I write this because this is a family, and a darn good one at that, and I don't wanna see any more of my kinsmen/women take off when there's other more simple solutions. Ride free, folks, but follow the rules!