The First Outdoor Southern California Progressive IMS Outdoors Event Catapults Motorcycle Shows into a New Era in So-Cal
★ www.wheelsandheelsmag.com / W&HM / Text and Photos by Py Pai
The New Era of Motorcycle Shows, Outdoors
The pandemic wind blew no one good so far. However, there is always a silver lining to it. We found it at the brand new Progressive IMS Outdoors at the new outdoor venue.
OC Fair and Event venue has plenty of space, especially outdoor space, and hangers and halls to allow big shows like Progressive IMS to host big shows. Progressive IMS Outdoors made a super awesome decision by moving from an indoor Conventional Hall setup to expansive outdoor lots and open hangers.
Under the big bright sky of Orange County, CA, IMS Outdoors smartly configured the big OC Fair and Events for many vendors' show spaces as well as many in person demo and riding experience courses.
The big outdoor feel gives attendees a real road atmosphere and closer to the actual use experience of motorcycle activities. It freed people from the carpeted show floor showroom curated experience to the rubber-meets-road type of touch and feel. We highly applaud this wonderful and smooth transition!
The weather during the weekend of the IMS Outdoors could not be more pleasant. It's not baking hot nor rainy drab. It's just right for the best outdoor riding condition.
This opened up the great course that the IMS Outdoor is charting and we are very excited about the future events already!
Discover The Ride, A Dear Farewell
Discover The Ride is a program that helps new and experienced motorcycle riders to get their hands on the handle bars, feet on the gas paddles, a real person experience. This has been a very successful program for the three years of running, especially in the indoor set up in the past, which presented its own challenges.
According to leading champion of the program, Robert Pandya, it's a great turn out of 15K riding sessions in the past three seasons, and just under 5000 were 100% first time riders. That's major, a highly successful program that ease people to the motorcycle world and give them the first taste of how accessible and fun motorcycles can be.
The program's spirit will be carried out by many other vendors and get even more people excited about motorcycle. We salute the hard working folds to make this happened and make it highly successful!
Feeling Electracy in the Bikes
We were introduced to many press conferences, and we found a very common theme. It's about electrical power. Many vendors including Zero, Harley Davidson's Livewire, BMW's CE 40 Scooter, as the largest bike maker, Giant, all jumped on the bandwagon and showcased their electrical version of the two-wheeled vehicles.
This is very exciting at different levels, as it's using more renewable powers, and dovetailing to the Transportation Secretary's initiatives of expanded electrical charging grids, plus the techonlogies behind them are getting smarter and better as more money is invested in this field.
It's a win-win-win solution that we celebrate!
Many New Models Introduced
Besides the headline stealing Electrical motorcycles and bikes, Honda introduced the NAVI mini bike, which is another trend that is making its way. The NAVI mini bikes are highly customizable, as we have seen in the HNRS OC Mini Bike Meet. They are fun to ride, easy to transport, and can be easily piggybacked behind a pickup or a camping van, making them ideal for a destination fun or transportation means.
Strider For Toddlers and Kids, Rock On!
One of the best demos that we saw is the Strider company who put out very small bikes and bike rockers. They are ideal for small child to learn how to ride a bike. On top of that, the bike rocker even can help toddlers to learn how to ride before they can even walk.
We think this is a brilliant product. If kids could learn riding bikes, it would give them a lifetime access to many two-wheels transportation opportunities, plus their balancing ability is developed early so they may get to other sports more easily like skateboarding, surfing, or snowboarding.
And most importantly, they get kids excited about going outside breathing fresh air and not stuck in front of their screens all day long.
Great products and we highly respect their efforts of producing the products and also partnering with schools to help kids to learn to.
In-Person Urban Riding Experience
With the vast open space available, vendors have set up various courses to help interested attendees to experience their demo motorcycles in real situations, such as riding through the crowds, or going through alleys. This cannot be easily and large scaled executed if it were at a convention center. We are super excited about this outdoor format solely for this reason already.
Custom Bikes and a Hanger Full of Vendors and Merchandises
Of course, it could not be complete without the custom bikes, and vendor booths, as well as fun services. We saw some of the familiar custom bikes as well as newly acquainted ones. The artistry and quality put into these bikes are staggering and the care we saw is just phenomenal.
Many vendors took the opportunity of the huge hanger space and stocked up many merchandises for the attendees to browse and try on. This definitely showed the interest is high and the economy is back.
Highly Successful Motorcycle Outdoor Show
We had such a great time experiencing the motorcycle show in an outdoor environment. (It made us think why we didn't do that long time ago.) It's a great space well used, highly informational, excellent in-person experience, and proper atmosphere to be immersed in.
We highly applaud the organizer for a great job that they have done, and we totally look forward to future events already!
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