Beetlejuice finally figured out how to drive the new computer someone plonked down on his desk during the summer of 1985. The year was 1998.
Ahem…..
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Beetlejuice finally figured out how to drive the new computer someone plonked down on his desk during the summer of 1985. The year was 1998. Ahem. Being a resourceful and cunning fellow, he soon figured out how to send e-mail messages to himself. Before too long mister was surfing on the Internet and he couldn’t stop talking about computers and e-mails to his friends.
Round about the same time, a few other bikers were experimenting with the same technology and also started sending mail to themselves.
Well it had to happen, one of the group accidentally send mail to some one else. He quickly realised the magnitude of what he had achieved, they could communicate via e-mail, saving on telephone bills and the boss will think they’re working as long as he heard the keyboard clattering away. In a word, brilliant.
So he started sending mail to the others in his riding group, telling them about rides and events. This revolutionary new practice spread through the biker’s community like wild fire.
And so IUB was born in June of 1998.
IUB was modeled on the successful MIG list based mainly in America. South Africans BeetleJuice, Wolf and Pierre met on MIG and started riding together with Johann Keyser.
Inevitably, it soon became clear that the MIG banter was of little or no interest to our dynamic biker boys and they decided to form their own little e-mail group. Like good South Africans, they had to do their own thing – even though they existed out of 2 Saffies, a tame frog eater and an untamed (till this day) Manchesterian.
So the first members were Chris Bruce (BeetleJuice), Peter Thickett (Wolf because he loves the laydeez), Pierre LeBlond and Johann Keyser. They started sending e-mails to everyone they knew and managed to trick some unsuspecting souls to join their newly born group (trying to avoid it being a stillborn group).
It was early days and sometimes a week would go past without IUB e-mail. The guys quickly embarked on an aggressive recruitment campaign. It was the first bikers group in South Africa and they were hell bent on making it the biggest and best. And keeping it there.
As part of the marketing plan BeetleJuice contacted a local bike magazine and sent them some information in the hope that they’d run a piece in their (stupid) magazine to tell other bikers about IUB. The magazine responded by creating their own e-mail group and advertising that instead. BeetleJuice was fuming and vowed never to forgive them.
There were elements of the MIG-group the guys loved and they decided to take those and try to run IUB along those lines. MIG was organised and lightly moderated. But the best part was the trip reports – like a magazine article right there on your computer.
They started sending invitational e-mails to other people they knew could write up some nice trip reports. Some joined up and some marvelous trip reports were soon winging their ways to desktop computers all over the world – er well 5 desktops actually, which including 2 each for Wolf and BeetleJuice – home and work. But that’s beside the point (isn’t it?).
Some more people joined, Andre and Mariette got a computer and dialup just so they could join IUB. Wolf found Rachel Pegg in a magazine where she was advertising a rally and he took her e-mail and invited her to join. She was from Harare and immediately set about making suggestive remarks and posting dirty pictures. This caused some consternation but IUB was
finally on a roll. The year was early 2000 and the millennium bug hadn’t wiped everybody out and assimilated his or her computers. Things were looking up.
IUB was originally called Capebikes (think it still exists) but they soon realised there weren’t enough computer illiterate bikers in Cape Town to get the list up to an e-mail a week. Then they became sabikes, but realised almost too late they’re being confused with the epitome of bad journalism and self-glorification, those bastards at the bike magazine. The obvious next step was to get drunk, puke and decide they need another, proper, unique name.
It took them about a week off in fighting and strategizing to decide on IUB (remember there were all of 6 active members by this time).
They weren’t a terribly creative bunch. Heinrich van Dyk whom was the first IUB member outside Cape Town proposed the new name (Inter Galactic Urban Bikers). Heinrich was a member till recently. If anyone knows him send him regards from IUB. Tell him the list he named is alive and going strong.
The guys (and girls), realizing they’re on a good wicket, did some marketing and put sign-up code on their personal websites. And some other peoples…
BeetleJuice was helping with the Marauder fan site and a signup block mysteriously appeared there. That explained all the marauders on the list! Sign up boxes soon appeared to spread like a turpentined email virus.
IUB’s first web site was on the free yellow servers (existed until recently) and the mailing list was initially run on the Listbot servers which proved to be fairly unreliable at best – members wouldn’t get e-mail for a week and then get mad at each other for “being ignored”.
Beetlejuice was given the mammoth task to move the group (o there must have been 8 members by then) over to eGroups. This was accomplished in a week without too much hair or blood loss. EGroups was subsequently bought out by Yahoo whom is hosting the IUB list at the moment, and doing a jolly good job of it (old chap) – Cheers Yahoo!.
The Cape Town group has become almost a regular biker club with planned rides, weekends away and friendships forming over the years.
Although IUB has no fixed rules a fairly strict etiquette has been followed by the older members and has ensured that the group has not degenerated into a joke (and one liner “That’s cool/LOL/OK/You too”) mailing list – like some others.
Today, IUB is the oldest and biggest biking list in South Africa, providing quality content, friendship and unique humour to hundreds of bikers all over the world.
Tags: The Blog
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