Kim Reid: Burly Biker, Charity Guru

A lot of the biker culture is charity minded … You love to ride, you like helping organizations. Well here’s a place where you can do both.

I’m standing inside a pantry. Yesterday, hundreds of shopping baskets were filled from these shelves. Tonight, forty people will laugh and eat in the diner across the hall. And in the week ahead, 220 bagged lunches will leave this place for the surrounding elementary schools.

But right now, the On Rock building is quietly recovering. A food bank needs to be cleaned and restocked in these spare hours. Otherwise all those people will go hungry.

I can hear Kim Reid in the other room. It sounds like there’s a small group of students with him – some kind of goodwill field trip. It sounds like he’s showing them how to clean something.

I don’t know what to expect from the On Rock president. I remember that I sent him a lengthy email, asking for an interview about the upcoming charity ride. I explained that we were running a series of community articles and that we wanted to showcase how Canadians lived out their passion for powersports. I asked for his thoughts on all of this. And he responded.

Let’s do it.

Peace,

Kim.

Not much to go on. But here we are.

Kim walks into the pantry where I’m standing. He looks like a real-life stereotype: big, burly, wild beard. He hasn't told me that he rides a blacked-out Harley-Davidson Night Train with aftermarket pipes and ape hangers. But I could probably guess it.

I’m following Kim into the diner now. He throws his head back at the student janitors in the other room. “ My slaves for the day ,” he chuckles. The irreverence is convincing, but something in his voice belies a deep appreciation. And I’m still fiddling with the voice recorder in hopes of catching sound bites like that.

We grab a seat in the diner and Kim pours me a cup of coffee. I want to talk about the motorcycle ride that he organizes in support of the food bank. So Kim starts with the charity itself.

Before the food bank we were a drop-in centre for teens. It was called The Vault, because we started in a bank down in Pointe-Claire and it had a massive vault on the main floor … It was actually my office, but you could never close the door because you’d die. I was in the vault. But the kids loved it because it was a 6000 pound door and it was just weird … We were basically a greasy spoon, arcade-type place for high school kids. Just a safe place to be off the street. No drugs, no alcohol, no fighting, no swearing, respect for everybody. That was our goal.

One day this little old lady shows up and says she has this food bank that got kicked out of a church, because the church was changing their programs and they didn’t have room for it. But she needed a place to do it, so we let her come in on Monday mornings to do her food bank … And then she faded out. She was eighty-one.

Six months after the lady stopped coming, Kim realized that he was running her food bank. People kept showing up, so On Rock kept feeding them. Simple as that. Spontaneous as that. I haven’t even sipped my coffee yet, but I can already see that simple and spontaneous is Kim Reid’s style.

Nothing I've done has been planned. That’s not the way I roll. What comes, comes … If there’s a need that develops, and if nobody else is doing it, then how do we make it happen? … There are so many organizations that see a need and then they put together a three-year study to figure out the feasibility. Bullshit … the need is now. Three-year feasibility – that means three years of people that are waiting for something to happen. Let’s make it happen now.

The coffee is going cold and I've already forgotten about it. In our generation of 5-year plans and risk assessments, this guy’s worldview sounds like a memory. It sounds like something we've lost - like something worth finding again.

I ask how Riders Against Hunger came about, and the response is as candid as I expect.

We’re a charity, and we’re always struggling with trying to make finances work. We've grown so quickly that sometimes the money doesn't catch up to our expansion … We just keep expanding because of the need. But money is the challenge … So we started coming up with fundraisers that not many people were doing. So we do [the charity ride] in August.

A buddy in Ontario was doing one called Riders Against Hunger, which is what we called ours. So I went up and saw his and thought, there’s not very many rides going on in Montreal. So I started asking around and everybody said “well, they just don’t work.”

But I was like, “Bikers have money. Come on, we’re constantly modifying our rides. So don’t tell me they don’t have money. There’s a way to do this."

And there was. Riders Against Hunger has a couple tricks for attracting bikers. It’s a poker run, where motorcyclists pick up five cards throughout the ride. Last year the winning hand took home two Air Canada tickets to anywhere in North America and the Caribbean. Not bad.

Entry costs 40 bucks, which also gets you refreshments, a barbecue dinner and a T-shirt. Of course, participants are encouraged to raise more than that. The next $50 gets you a raffle ticket and $100 will garner a pin too. Raising $150 merits a patch, and anyone who hits $500 gets a belt buckle.

Attendance has been growing steadily over the last three years. Kim tells me that they hope to hit 125 riders this year, largely due to his complex marketing strategy.

If you give stuff away, people come.

Fair enough. Kim is the kind of person who likes simple solutions to serious problems. In February, it’s the coldest night of the year walk. And in early summer, a wine tasting fundraiser brings in the dough. But American steel attracts a different crowd than Italian grapes. And in Kim’s estimation, “bikers hate walking.” Hence, Riders Against Hunger.

For On Rock, anything that feeds people is worth doing. But for Kim, I sense some personal value in RAH.

I started [motorcycling] about 8 years ago. I have always wanted a motorcycle. My foster parents wouldn't let me ride, and then I moved out when I was 16 so I couldn't afford to ride. And then I had a family and I couldn't afford to ride even more … It was only when my kids started getting a little older … that we were in a place where my wife gave me permission to get a motorcycle.

[Motorcycling] is the one thing I do where I can just get on my bike and turn off. It’s all the clichés: the wind in your face, being out on the road, and there’s just nothing to think about … Just peace. I don’t even care about the weather. It’s therapy.

Therapy.

So we have some TLC for our souls, delicious barbecued meat and a couple tickets to Barbados on the table. And all you have to bring is some cash for the food bank. Seems like a good deal.

If you think so too, the sign-up form for Montreal’s Riders Against Hunger will be online shortly. I’ll see you there.

Mississauga’s version sounds equally awesome. It’s put on by Kim Reid’s buddy:

Just another biker who runs a food bank.