According to members of the Hamsters, an elite motorcycle club, the freedom of the open road is one of the most exciting things about owning a motorcycle. Also, riding in a pack promotes the flow of motorcycles traveling together.
Barry Cooney, who along with Arlen Ness founded the Hamsters 25 years ago, says that although the club is choosy about new members, it includes all types of folks. "In our group we have people who are blue collar guys struggling to pay to get their bikes to Sturgis every year and we also have doctors."
Cooney and Ness created the Hamsters after riding with a group in 1978 to a Daytona bike gathering and seeing all the tough biker clubs such as the Hell's Angels. "The hamsters got started as a joke, because 'hamster' is a kind of weasel, and, with all the outlaw bad guys' clubs, we wanted to be the opposite," Ness explains. "Donnie Smith made up some T-shirts that said, 'hamsters' and we all got a big kick out of that." There are now 200 members with chapters as far away as Italy, England and Japan.
It takes three things to become a Hamsters member:
- Owing a custom bike
- Riding to South Dakota's Sturgis rally with the group, at least twice
- Receiving an invitation to join by another member
The Hamsters have ridden to Sturgis for 25 consecutive years and have never followed the same route. Some years there are no new Hamsters allowed into the club. Some years there are as many as seven. The average is two.
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