A PINT – YES THE GOOD OLD PINT.

Great things can happen over a pint or two and at the time in the 80’s the Cellar Bar was the place to hang out. Lots of bikes just driving around Eyre Sq. and nowhere to go so a handfull of us got our heads together in 1981 and formed the Tribes MCC.

It just started out as Sunday spins, meeting other bikers in different towns and get to know the form around Ireland about rallys. We had no mobile phones, internet, bible etc. but packed our bikes with our tent, sleeping bag, pots, pans and gas burner and headed off sometimes on a Friday afternoon as the rallys were a two night event. We got the feel of rallys and got well known around the country so with meetings every 2nd week in the Cottage Bar, Salthill we wrote up a constitution and decided to hold a rally once a year around Galway.

Lots of names for our rally came up,the last two were Offish (rare type of fish spotted off the Galway coast) or Heart in Hand (taken from the Claddagh ring) – we even had a rally badge made up in 1982 with a fish on it called the Offish rally, but decided not to hold our first rally until 1983. I’m glad to say the Heart in Hand came through !

We also wanted to improve the image of bikers so helped out with fun runs, cycle races and made ourselves known to the public in a much better light. We took part in St. Patricks day parades with big floats, Easter Egg drives, Christmas toy runs (the first was with 3 bikes and Santa collected about 250 pounds) but was the start of bigger & better things to come (now with over 400 bikes partaking and up to €20,000 collected). I’m glad to say the club has grown immensely and is still rocking.
Ride On ! Steve Mac.