SCBMWRC Historic photos provided by the Bolden family
South Coast BMW Riders Club
Our History As We Know It.....
Story By: Eric Wolf
Part One...
Who is Debbie Bolden?
Some children fall asleep to lullabies.
One little girl fell asleep to the steady hum of a BMW engine.
For Debbie Bolden, childhood meant a pillow tucked behind her back, sleeping bags wedged at her sides, and the road rolling gently beneath her. “When I was tired, I rode with my mom,” she recalls. “When I was awake, I rode with my dad.” It was simply how things were done.
Long before she understood titles or club bylaws, Debbie understood belonging.
Debbie’s earliest memories of the South Coast BMW Riders Club go back to when she was six or seven years old. She recalls board of directors meetings—not over Zoom, and not in a back room at Irv Seaver - but board meetings held in her family’s living room. Club members arrived. Coffee was poured. Stories flowed, and plans were made.
“They were always at our house,” she says. “It wasn’t like people were coming over for a meeting. It was just… life.”
Her parents were older when she was born - her mother was 38 and her father 47 - and that age gap only reinforced the sense that she was growing up in a world shaped by adults who had already lived a lot of life. It gave her a unique experience of growing up inside the club.
What also set the Watkins family apart was that both of Debbie’s parents rode their own motorcycles. Her mother, Doreen Watkins, learned to ride in a way that perfectly captured the era. Bland took her to the top of Signal Hill, put her on a Honda Trail 70, and said, simply, “Ride it down.” And she did.
In Debbie’s earliest years, a sidecar carried her along for the ride. By six or seven, the sidecar was gone, and she was riding pillion - confident, balanced, and, by her own account, nearly invisible on the back of the bike.
“They’d pass me around,” she laughs. “And I loved it.”
From infancy until she was 17, Debbie rode regularly with the club. She learned how to lean into turns before she learned how to drive a car. Long days in the saddle were normal. Falling asleep on the bike was normal.
So normal, in fact, that when she eventually took her first vacation in a car, it felt wrong. “I couldn’t smell anything,” she remembers. “I couldn’t feel the road. I didn’t like it.”
Part Two...
How Did the South Coasters Begin?
Debbie’s world existed because of her father, Bland Watkins - founder and first president of the South Coast BMW Riders Club.
Bland was a member of the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America, but by the 1970s he had grown tired of rigid rules and prescribed ways of riding - an irony, Debbie notes, given that he was a motor cop. “My dad wasn’t a rule follower,” she explains. “He just wanted people to be able to do their own thing.”
The club was born not out of rebellion, but out of a desire for freedom - freedom to ride your own way, at your own pace, in good company. While it established itself as an MOA chapter, it functioned with a strong sense of independence, guided more by trust and camaraderie than by checklists and constraints.
Bland himself was a retired Long Beach motorcycle police officer, riding Harleys on duty but choosing BMWs for his personal riding. Over the years, he purchased many of those bikes from Irv Seaver BMW Motorcycles, a dealership that remains deeply intertwined with the club’s history.
Among Debbie’s most vivid memories are the rallies - especially the Fiesta Rally at Featherly Park in Yorba Linda. Camping. Barbecues. Hot dogs and hamburgers. Laughter drifting through the evening air. Attendance was large, and the feeling unmistakable.
They played “moto” games: taking a bite of a hot dog hanging from a string, clipping clothespins to a line, weaving through milk jug obstacle courses, running the planks - all while riding a BMW motorcycle.
At rallies, Debbie was always the youngest rider, a distinction that became something of a tradition. Photos were taken. Plaques were handed out. She was paired ceremonially with the oldest rider - a visual reminder that the club spanned generations long before that phrase became fashionable.
Debbie was watched over, celebrated, and protected by a group of adults who treated her as their own. “It was such a community,” she says. “It was family.”
Part Three...
Why the Story Still Matters.
For Debbie, travel with the club wasn’t occasional - it was expansive. By the time she was ten or eleven, she had already ridden by motorcycle to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Death Valley. By high school, she was bringing friends along, one riding with each parent, disappearing for weekends the way only the 1970s and 80s seemed to allow.
Sometimes, destinations were loosely planned. “My dad would just say, ‘Where are we going?’ and they’d go,” she recalls. “Sometimes we’d end up in another state.”
Every club has its stories, and Debbie’s memories are rich with them.
There was the Mexico trip when she was 14 or 15 - wrong-way riding on a one-way street, a near arrest, and a bribe paid to smooth the way back across the border. She wasn’t even riding with her parents that time; another club member had taken her along on the spur of the moment.
There was the day in Death Valley when Debbie suffered severe heatstroke while riding, and a truck driver intervened - stripping her down, soaking her clothes, and likely saving her life.
And then there was the infamous shoulder incident: Bland leading a long line of motorcycles past an accident and police by riding on the shoulder. The officers waved him through - then ticketed every single rider behind him.
“That one got told a lot,” Debbie says.
These weren’t just anecdotes. They were the shared mythology of the club - how riders learned, laughed, and survived together.
Perhaps the most powerful insight Debbie offers is this: the motorcycle club was where her father was happiest.
“My dad was not always an easy person,” she says plainly. “But when we were with the motorcycle club - that was my real father. Happy. Easygoing. That’s where he was at his best.”
When Debbie discovered - via social media - that the club was still active nearly fifty years later, she was stunned. She attended a meeting and felt the circle close. Different bikes. Different gear. A new generation taking the lead. But the same feeling remained.
“The camaraderie,” she says. “That’s the through-line. That’s what never changed.”
And that is the legacy of Bland and Doreen Watkins - and all of the founders - not the miles ridden or the places visited, but the way we continue to find belonging together on the road. The names have changed. The technology certainly has. But the reason you ride, and we ride, together hasn’t: we carry forward the camaraderie and esprit de corps of our founders.
May we live up to that high calling.