[slob]

Hi folks

Please take a few minutes to read the following:

This is not an easy message for me to post, for those who aren't aware I had a serious accident in May 2019, breaking multiple vertebrae and ribs, puncturing a lung as well as tearing two ligaments in one of my knees and breaking an ankle. What doctors like to call 'life changing injuries'.

I have been working fairly relentlessly to recover my fitness and movement over the last three years, however it's becoming increasingly clear I am unable to continue riding sports bikes and I'm still trying to work out if I'll be able to ride any of my beloved Monsters again. (Please don't start throwing suggestions about bike modification at me, I'm an engineer and mechanic, just accept I know what I'm talking about here and I might scream if anyone else says ‘thumb brake’ without understanding my injuries fully.

I feel I should have stepped down a couple of years ago but have hung on through the worst of the CoViD pandemic, as this was clearly a very difficult time for anyone to take over running a bike club during multiple lockdowns.

After discussion with Pedro(VP) and Liz(Sec.) it's time for us to step down and for the club membership to elect a new board to take over.

I took over Presidency from Pedro in 2010, who'd been in the role for three years and he has been VP since. Liz has been in post since 2018, so it's about time some new blood took over anyway.

Just to complicate matters a little more, Ducati are changing the name of affiliated clubs next year, from 'Desmo Owners Clubs' to 'Ducati Official Clubs'. All clubs will be called DOC|'Club Name', which can't contain the word 'Ducati' or 'Owner', as such we would have to change the name to something like 'DOC|UK Monster' in order to remain eligible for affiliation with the factory. This is something else the membership needs to decide on collectively: Continue as 'UK Monster Owners Club' and split with Ducati or change the name to something DMH finds acceptable. I'm certainly not about to comply with this and then just walk away leaving someone else to sort things out (Mr Cameron).

I sold banner advertising to finance the forum hosting for 2022. As an officially affiliated club we need to elect a President, Vice President and Secretary.

Since we don't charge membership fees, we don't require a Treasurer, if that changes we'd need one of those too.

The current board will continue 'til the end of July, ensuring that I can help anyone with issues relating to WDW22 (22-24/7/2022) and distributing any membership kits, assuming the factory manage to send them out in a timely fashion, unless we can complete this process sooner.

I'd also like to offer massive thanks to everyone who has helped as a board member, regional rep, event organiser or otherwise contributed to the forum since I've been here, you've made this one of the nicest corners of the Internet and I've made some great friends, attended some absolutely awesome events, all over Europe and covered well over 100k miles on my Monsters in the last 19 years. I hope I manage to find a way to continue Monstering!

Just to complete the picture, we have always defined a member as a forum user who owns a Monster and lives in the UK or Ireland (or an expat).
Ducati define a member as one of our members who has chosen to be affiliated with the club through MyDucati app or website (but bizzarely isn't bothered if you even ride a motorcycle). The club needs at least 50 such registered members to qualify for affiliation and a supporting dealer, in our case Moto Rapido.

cont...