Conference Memories: The Ones I Attended and the One that Got Away

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by Bruce Jackson, PCI #239T/EMSCI #325T
George Mason University (VA) Police Department (ret.)

Photo: Richmond 2011: Hans Rey and Bruce Jackson. Photo courtesy Bruce Jackson.

The year was 1993. If IPMBA was a human it would have been a newborn with no name yet; just the baby of the League of American Wheelmen (now the League of American Bicyclists). My bike unit was less than a year old at this point and police mountain bikes didn’t know what front shocks were. My Sergeant had helped create our bike team and he somehow managed to convince the powers that be that four of us should go to this little hamlet known as Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to attend the Police on Bikes Conference and the first-ever Police Cyclist Course. I am this 20-something, snot-nosed brat and I’m getting told that I am being sent to Florida to learn how to ride bikes and – oh, by the way, I’m getting paid to do this. I couldn’t pack my bags fast enough.

Seventeen hours later, a low-riding minivan stuffed full of gear and bikes arrives in sunny Fort Lauderdale and my mind was blown. First, let me say this was the first conference of any sort I had ever been sent to and I had no idea what I was in for. Secondly, we arrived just in time to witness the beginnings of an epic prank war between left coast and right coast. The pranks were hilarious and when we are all together again, telling war stories and lies, I will share some of these memories with a little plausible deniability.

Now the first thing to remember about the 1993 conference is that some of the veteran bike officers from the West Coast had been on bikes for several years and a lot of us on the East Coast had just started out. I soaked up every little tidbit I could from these guys because they had been at it for a while, and the most training I had been able to get so far was a two-day, weekend workshop conducted by an instructor from the League of American Wheelmen that focused on just riding in traffic. Workshops at the conference then were in their infancy and involved mostly technical riding. There were a few workshops where they discussed plainclothes operations and targeted enforcement, but they mostly involved the presenters telling us what they had tried, what had worked and what hadn’t.

My final memory of that conference was the obstacle course competition, which involved some epic successes and some even more epic failures. Mountain bike design and development were experiencing some difficult growing pains; I think the best example of that was seeing parts falling off a bike that weren’t supposed to fall off. I’ll leave it at that.

Fast forward 10 years to 2003 and beautiful Charleston, West Virginia. IPMBA was no longer a baby. We were in what I would consider some of our most formative years. One of my favorite workshops from that conference was the “Introduction to Intermediate Off Road”. I’m thinking, “this doesn’t sound too bad”, but started having my doubts when my ears popped going up the mountain we were going to be riding down. I think I fell down the mountain more than rode down it. This was also my first conference that had our brothers and sisters from Canada in attendance and I remember them walking around with full duty belts and no guns in their holsters because it is too much of a pain in the butt to bring them across the border. If I would have known they were coming, I would have brought extra hardware for them.

It took me eight more years to get back to a conference and this time I was close to home with it being only three hours away, in Richmond, Virginia. I had been doing the instructor gig for quite a while and decided it was time to up my game and become an Instructor Trainer (IT). In order to do that, I needed to teach and/or present at a conference, and Richmond was the perfect spot. I scored a place on the cadre for the Police Cyclist Course.

My fondest memories of Richmond were the instructors and presenters. I got to work with and learn from some truly amazing people. Artie Gonzales, Matt Worm, and Pat Hernandez all took me under their wings and helped make my little contribution work. This was the conference that I think I finally realized I was beginning to become a bit of an “old salt” when I watched some of the younger officers just shred the obstacle course. Attending Hans Rey’s presentation and meeting him on the rooftop deck at the Richmond City Hall was pretty cool, too.

By far my favorite conference was 2013, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was an amazing experience with the food, the sites and the awards ceremony and dinner in LSU’s Tiger Stadium. I also got to work with some of those previously mentioned mentors who were now friends. Riding through downtown and along the river was just awesome. Add in the fact that I got to taste some frickin’ amazing delicacies. I never knew there were so many recipes for Nutria rat!

2016 brought me to the last conference I was able to attend, in Asheville, North Carolina. Having spent time in Asheville in 2004, I already had a love of the area and the city. I also got to see some friends with the Asheville Police Department whom I had met in Richmond in 2011 (the conference that inspired them to host one). Riding through the city, climbing the hill back to the conference center every day, and the nightly swapping of lies around the bar were memories I will cherish forever. I also got to meet one of our founding members – Allan Howard, PCI #001. When he rolled in, it was like everything stopped because the man, the myth and the legend had all arrived at once.

If you have survived my ramblings to this point, you can surmise that a little gray has begun to set in. I have gotten to witness the birth and growth of our organization that will soon turn 30. I have had the great fortune to meet and work with some terrific people who have since become close friends. As I wrap this up, I have thought about one conference in particular that I wish I could have attended and didn’t. Ogden, Utah, 2002, will always be the one that got away. I would have loved to ride Moab.

Bruce began his law enforcement career in 1989 and served 27 years with the George Mason University Police Department. He co-founded the department’s bike unit in 1992 and continued to serve the bike unit throughout his career. Retiring at the rank of Lieutenant in 2016, he joined the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Training Academy staff. He serves as manager of the Professional Development Unit, which coordinates all continuing law enforcement education and training for 17 agencies and more than 3,000 officers and deputies. He continues to serve as an auxiliary officer with the Town of Occoquan Police Department, where he gets to ride bikes as much as he wants. Bruce became an IPMBA instructor in 1997 and an Instructor Trainer in 2011. He also is certified as an EMSCI and teaches firearms for both basic and advanced students. He can be reached at bjackso13@gmail.com.

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