BARF was assembled by a group of riders who frequented Sportbikes.Net (SBN). Since then it has grown to incorporate riders from numerous local and national boards as well as people entirely new to the motorcycling scene.

In late 2001 a group of SF Bay Area riders on SBN used the Pacific forum to attempt to connect with each other for occassional rides in the local foothills and greater surrounding area. They rallied the administrators of the site to create a new forum for them as they were generating a great deal of traffic specific to their geographic region. Not even realizing the acronym they'd soon come to associate with themselves, the battle cry was to create a Bay Area Riders forum. So BARF became the battle cry, and in the end SBN created a No. Cal forum. No. Cal quickly grew to the point that the more general Pacific forum practically died in terms of posts.

Not wanting the gift from SBN's administrators to go to waste, the number of social events and rides organized through the forum rapidly grew. A group of about 25 regulars were on the forum all day long - their posts to the more general forums dwindling as the new forum's popularity grew and people came to know each other better.

January 2002

SBN announced that it would be shutting down. This turned out to be a false alarm (good thing, too - we still love SBN), but we had no way of knowing this at the time. Taking away our primary source of contact led the founders of BARF to look for another solution to aid them in organizing rides and social events. The first idea was to set up an EZboard site, or perhaps Yahoo!, but each was too cluttered with advertisements and terribly slow.

Having tinkered with the software that runs SBN, BARF's "CEO" had a server built and available to host the new site in a more familiar environment - vBulletin forums. The server was hosted on a PIII-600 that was connected to the rest of the world via a meager DSL connection. 11 people signed up the first day and quickly learned how the slow DSL connection would limit them.

No avatars or pictures were allowed in the beginning to conserve bandwidth. In addition, the connection became less and less stable the more traffic that was generated. It was time for a new host for the site. Now things were getting complicated. Persistance paid off, though, as a host was located, a dedicated server was leased, bandwidth on a reliable (and FAST) connection was secured, and the site gained a whole new look and feel.

The site has been up and running non-stop on a fast and reliable connection. The server has been practically maintenance free, with a few early and minor hiccups. It continues to handle the load, although our current rate of growth will probably have the site migrating to a new machine by the end of summer.

We are eagerly looking forward to our 5th social this weekend at Round Table Pizza. We are expecting 50+ people and a presentation by our favorite stunters, BTB. We have had representation at every regional meeting I know of, including the latest Doc Wong clinic with Keith Code, Sportbike Night's Q-Cafe meet, BikeNight's massive In-N-Out meet, and 5150's 75 rider parade to Capitola!

We have had rides both days every weekend, with our dot-goner crowd putting rides together on weekdays. It's reached a point that the "founders" are reading posts about BARF rides that none of us attended -- this is fantastic growth! Everyone is having a good time, the egos are staying in check, people are buying and selling bikes through the site... we couldn't possibly be any happier!

This page is long overdue for some attention. Then again, until now it's never been linked before so that's a start.