Tag Archives: Motorcycle Rallies & Clubs

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival Announces 2024 Dates

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival 2024

The Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival will return to Loretta Lynn’s Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, from May 16-19, 2024. Back for its seventh year, this event will keep attendees entertained with plenty of motorcycle activities, vendors, daily live music, stunt shows, food trucks, and more.

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival 2024

Loretta Lynn’s spacious 3,500-acre ranch allows plenty of room to roll and romp through the woods and across the hills. Back for 2024, the ADV Experience package was a hit last year and includes three days of trial riding, biker games, morning coffee, skills building, and demo rides on Harley-Davidson Pan Americas, and general admission to the rest of the TMMR activities. The ADV Experience is open to any make or model of adventure bike, and the package costs $149, just $20 more than the price for general admission.

Related: 2021 Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 Special | First Ride Review

Along with the wooded trails on the ranch, there are also fields to camp in, the Fist City Track for bike shows and games, a country store and museum, and three music stages. TMMR boasts its “two-wheeled playground” and invites attendees to enjoy Harley-Davidson demo rides, racing, ADV trail riding, the V-Twin Visionary performance bike show, an all-class bike show, biker games, group motorcycle rides, the BC Moto Invitational bike show, and more.

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival 2024

The ranch’s location an hour west of Nashville guarantees plenty of musical talent. The 2024 lineup won’t be announced until after the new year, but you can expect to see a schedule packed with several live performances each day including outlaw country, Southern rock, country, bluegrass, and rock ’n’ roll.

Related: Fun Times at the Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival 

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival 2023
Loretta’s Roadhouse is the main stage for nightly music during TMMR. For the 2023 event, the Loretta Lynn tribute featured Loretta’s granddaughter Tayla (purple dress) introducing guest performers and storytellers, like Tim Watson on the fiddle who performed at Loretta’s funeral.

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival offers a variety of camping options to suit your needs. Basic tent camping is available onsite, and RV hookup spots are also available. For those looking for a more sophisticated stay, the campground also offers fully furnished glamping tents for rent. Hotels and Airbnbs in the area are also available but fill up fast. Members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces can take advantage of the partnership with Special Ops Xcursions for complimentary tickets and camping.

Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival 2023
The Fist City Track, which hosts racing and biker games during TMMR, also hosts Amateur National Motocross Championships every year.

General admission for the Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival is $129, and VIP upgrades are available. Pricing for tent, glamping, and RV spots on the ranch has not yet been announced. To stay up to date on TMMR news, sign up to join the email list or text “TMMR” to (883) 306-6093. Ticket sales start on December 1, 2023.

Visit the TMMR website for more information.

The post Tennessee Motorcycles and Music Revival Announces 2024 Dates appeared first on Rider Magazine.

Source: RiderMagazine.com

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show Winners

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Hugh Smith won the Japanese category on Day 3. The Marine Corps veteran won a special award during the Industry Meet & Mingle on Saturday night at Americade 40 in Lake George, New York.

Americade has been drawing riders to the picturesque area around Lake George, New York, for four decades. To help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “World’s Largest Touring Rally,” Rider and American Rider magazines co-hosted the inaugural Bring It Motorcycle Show. Since there are so many cool motorcycles at Americade, we invited attendees to bring it!

Related: Americade Celebrates 40 Years

Our show was sponsored by partners IMTBike, SMK Helmets, and Spectro Performance Oils. For three days, June 1-3, we gave awards in five categories: American Bagger, American Cruiser, Japanese, European, and Old School (pre-1990). Additionally, we handed out a daily $250 prize for Editors’ Choice. All daily winners were invited to a grand finale to determine the Best of Show on Saturday evening.

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
More than 60,000 people attended Americade 40. The Bring It Motorcycle Show was held on Beach Road near Canada Street, so it got a lot of foot traffic. We had cloudy skies on Saturday, but the rain stayed away.

The culmination of our event was an Industry Meet & Mingle celebration at the beautifully restored 19th-century Carriage House at Fort William Henry Resort that overlooks Lake George. The Best of Show winner was selected by vote and received $1,000 cash plus prizes from the show sponsors.

Of the 18 daily winners, 14 were on hand for the Best of Show judging when attendees of the Industry Meet & Mingle cast their ballots.

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
The Bring It Motorcycle Show concluded on Saturday evening at an Industry Meet & Mingle event at the newly renovated Carriage House at Fort William Henry in Lake George.

After nearly 100 votes were tabulated, it was the purity and simplicity of Keith Youngblood’s 1969 Triumph TR6R hardtail bobber that earned the grand prize.

“It’s a highlight of my life,” Youngblood exclaimed. “I never expected to win!”

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Keith Youngblood’s beautiful 1969 Triumph TR6R Bobber, which won the European category on Day 2, was also ultimately voted Best of Show. He won $1,000 in cash, a crystal trophy, and prizes from the show sponsors.

Youngblood’s vintage Triumph just edged out the bike with the best backstory, which belongs to Marine Corps veteran Hugh Smith. He uses his 2006 Yamaha Road Star V-Twin to help build homes for veterans with children. Smith dubbed his bike “Milwaukee Packout,” as he uses it as a worksite mule, and it’s fitted with Milwaukee toolboxes and even a battery-powered miter saw on the back!

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Hugh Smith, a Marine Corps veteran, uses his 2006 Yamaha Road Star “Milwaukee Packout” as a work vehicle when he helps build houses for female veterans with children. Check out the bag of Quikrete in the right toolbox and the battery-powered miter saw on the back. He won the Japanese category on Day 3, and he came in second place during Best of Show judging. Americade director Christian Dutcher chipped in $200 to honor Smith for his service and work, and Rider and American Rider magazines will send him some cool prizes.

We only had one Best of Show award to give out, but Smith’s story pulled many heartstrings at the event, including those of Americade’s chief, Christian Dutcher, who graciously dug into his pocket to gift Smith with $200 for a special award.

We thank our show entries, our sponsors, and all Americade staff and volunteers for making our inaugural show such a success. We’ll be back next year, so Bring It!

Related: Americade 2021 Rally Report

Bring It Motorcycle Show Day 1 Winners:

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Editors’ Choice (Day 1): Duane Cipas, 2002 Eddie Trotta Custom (Photo by Matt Gustafson, gustophoto.com)

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
American Bagger (Day 1): Greg Burchard, Harley-Davidson Road King Custom (Photo by Matt Gustafson, gustophoto.com)

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
American Cruiser (Day 1): Jim Botsacos, 2018 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Deluxe (Photo by Matt Gustafson, gustophoto.com)

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Japanese (Day 1): Harrison Hunter, 2004 Honda Rune (Photo by Matt Gustafson, gustophoto.com)

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
European (Day 1): Jennifer Martin, 2011 Ural T (Photo by Matt Gustafson, gustophoto.com)

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Old School (Day 1): John Kyser, 1986 Suzuki Cavalcade GV1400 (Photo by Matt Gustafson, gustophoto.com)

Bring It Motorcycle Show Day 2 Winners:

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Editors’ Choice (Day 2): Adam Mitchell, 2016 Harley Davidson Road Glide Turbo

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
American Bagger (Day 2): Darryl Colten, 2008 Victory Vision

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
American Cruiser (Day 2): Mike Sabatino, 2008 Harley-Davidson Night Rod Reverse Trike

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Japanese (Day 2): Ed Charette Sr., 2006 Honda Gold Wing Trike

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
European (Day 2): Keith Youngblood, 1969 Triumph TR6R Bobber

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Old School (Day 2): Don Adams, 1978 Honda CB750

Bring It Motorcycle Show Day 3 Winners:

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Editors’ Choice (Day 3): Tim Curley, 1974 Honda CB750K

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
American Bagger (Day 3): Sheana Holder, 2013 Harley-Davidson Street Glide

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
American Cruiser (Day 3): Joe Fayo, 2017 Indian Scout

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Japanese (Day 3): Hugh Smith, 2006 Yamaha Road Star “Milwaukee Packout”

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
European (Day 3): Eddie Plam, 2020 BMW R nineT /5 (Eddie wasn’t present at award time, so Rider EIC Greg Drevenstedt accepted it on his behalf)

2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
Old School (Day 3): Brandon Hamblin, 1987 Harley-Davidson Sportster Chopper

The post 2023 Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show Winners appeared first on Rider Magazine.

Source: RiderMagazine.com

Americade Presents ‘Bring It Motorcycle Show’ Co-hosted by Rider Magazine

Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
A customized Victory Vision at Americade 2021.

Americade is a weeklong motorcycle festival that brings together more than 75,000 riders each year to the scenic Lake George area in New York. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the event, which will run from May 30 through June 4, and there will be a new event this year that you won’t want to miss: the Bring It Motorcycle Show, which is being co-hosted by Rider and its sibling publication, American Rider.

Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
A trio of customized Can-Am Spyders and a Honda Gold Wing at Americade 2021.

Americade’s goal is to highlight the best of motorcycling and ensure that the public’s perception of motorcycling is a positive one. It features the most factory demos of any event in the U.S., stunt shows, comedy shows, and plenty of riding opportunities in the beautiful region.

Related: Americade 2023 to Offer the Most Factory Demo Rides in U.S.

Attendees this year are invited to compete for prizes during the new Bring It Motorcycle Show, which will run June 1-3 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Categories include American Bagger, American Cruiser, Japanese, European, and Old School (for pre-1990 bikes), and there will be an Editors’ Choice selection each day. All daily winners will be invited to the Industry Meet & Mingle on Saturday evening when the Best of Show winner will receive more than $1,000 worth of cash and prizes.

Americade Bring It Motorcycle Show
A V-8 trike at Americade 2021.

The Bring It Motorcycle Show will have a prime location between stunt shows and food trucks, making it the perfect spot to admire interesting bikes and take a lunch break in between other activities. We’re excited to host this event, and we look forward to meeting some of our readers. Stop by to say hello!

For more information, visit the Americade website.

The post Americade Presents ‘Bring It Motorcycle Show’ Co-hosted by Rider Magazine first appeared on Rider Magazine.

The post Americade Presents ‘Bring It Motorcycle Show’ Co-hosted by Rider Magazine appeared first on Rider Magazine.

Source: RiderMagazine.com

2023 Barber Small Bore, June 9-11

Barber Small Bore
At the annual Barber Small Bore, each evening ends with parade laps on the racetrack.

We never have a bad time at the Barber Motorsports Park, and that especially holds true for the Barber Small Bore event. The event is full of riders zipping around on small bikes, competing in races and competitions, and having plenty of fun. This year, the Barber Small Bore, presented by MNNTHBX, will run June 9-11 for its fourth iteration.

Related: 2021 Barber Vintage Festival | Rallies and Clubs

Barber Small Bore

Racing includes drag races on a dual-lane 168-foot strip, the two-hour Minibike Endurance GP held in partnership with Sportbike Track Time, and pitbike races. Each race event has dedicated track time before the race to give you the chance to sharpen your skills.

Barber Small Bore
Everyone has a smile on during the Barber Small Bore

A returning fan favorite race is the Creek Bottom Classic, in which streetbikes with displacements of 200cc or less compete on an off-road trail. All riders and bikes that fit the requirements are welcome. There will also be a minibike hill climb and an amateur stunt competition with a $1,000 cash prize. A stunt lot will be available throughout the weekend to practice your stunts before the competition.

Related: 2022 Honda Grom | First Ride Review

Barber Small Bore
The Creek Bottom Classic is a can’t-miss activity at Barber Small Bore.

A party in the South wouldn’t be complete without good BBQ. On Saturday night, there will be a whole-hog pig roast, beer, and a custom minibike show. At the end of each day, there will be parade laps on the famous 2.38-mile Barber Motorsports Racetrack.

Barber Small Bore
Saturday night will have a whole hog roast and plenty more to keep you well-fed and entertained.

Eight miles of trails for off-road riding will be available, top vendors will be selling their wares, and some riders will be enjoying recommended off-site rides.

Barber Small Bore
You’re bound to see something you’ve never seen before at the custom minibike show.

A weekend pass is $50, and one-day tickets are $30. For those wanting a quiet retreat from all the activity, $120 gets you a weekend pass along with access to the Paddock Club with a private balcony, an air-conditioned lounge, and catered meals. Tent camping is $40 for the weekend, and RV camping is $100. Some events have an entrance fee, but most are included with admission.

For more information, visit Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum’s website.

Barber Small Bore

The post 2023 Barber Small Bore, June 9-11 first appeared on Rider Magazine.
Source: RiderMagazine.com

Americade 2023 to Offer the Most Factory Demo Rides in U.S.

Americade Demo Rides
KTM and 10 other motorcycle brands will be offering demo rides at Americade, June 1-4, in Lake George, New York.

The Americade rally is celebrating its 40-year anniversary in a big way. Each year, the influential gathering of riders upon the shores of Lake George, New York, hosts every kind of rider on every kind of motorcycle, and in 2023 the popular factory demo rides have been super-charged!

Related: Americade Celebrates 40 Years

Riders attending Americade will have the opportunity to demo 11 different motorcycle brands. It’s an unheard-of number and is nearly twice as many factory demos as any other motorcycle event in the USA. With so many demo choices for attendees, the diversity of motorcycle genres that have become the face of Americade over the past four decades is clearly highlighted.

Related: Americade 2021 Rally Report

“We’re really excited for the riders!” said Christian Dutcher, Americade’s Director. “It’s a great opportunity to dream and ride and even if we wanted to add another factory truck this year, we couldn’t. All the space has been taken. We’re full!”

Americade factory demo rides will run Wednesday, June 1 through Sunday, June 4, and the following brands will be available:

  • Aprilia
  • CFMoto
  • BMW
  • Harley-Davidson
  • Honda
  • Indian
  • KTM
  • Moto Guzzi
  • Rewaco
  • Triumph
  • Yamaha

Click here to register for Americade factory demo ride info.

Americade is one of the highest regarded rallies in the U.S. and features more rides than any event in the country, one of the largest expos in the U.S., a free 2-day block party concert, and the most factory demos in the nation. In 2023, Americade celebrates its 40th Anniversary
(1983-2023). Americade week details are available at Americade.com or by calling (518) 798-7888.

The post Americade 2023 to Offer the Most Factory Demo Rides in U.S. first appeared on Rider Magazine.
Source: RiderMagazine.com

The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2023 to Feature 14 Show Categories

Photo from The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2022 by Kevin Duke.

If you appreciate rare and classic motorcycles, you’ll love attending The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2023, which will be held on Saturday, May 6, on a beautiful golf course near the Pacific coast in Carmel Valley, California. This year’s event includes three featured categories – Italian and Single, 1970s Vintage Muscle, and Bring on the Baggers – as well as 11 traditional categories – American, British, Italian, Other European, Japanese, Competition On Road, Competition Off Road, Antique, Custom/Modified, Choppers, and Extraordinary Bicycles and Scooters.

It’s always a stunning array of wonderful motorcycles, so it’s an event not to be missed. Do yourself a favor and ride in on your bike to avoid parking hassles. A free helmet check station is provided. Admission costs $60 in advance, and you can use a promo Code (5OFF2023) for a $5 discount, saving you $15 over the at-the-door price. See you there!

For more information, read the press release below.


Join us May 6, 2023, for the 13th annual The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, presented by Medallia, as we once again celebrate the evolution of two-wheeled beauties. Hosted on the lush green grasses of Quail Lodge & Golf Club in renowned Carmel, California, combine a day of fun, food, and fine motorcycles!

View more than 350 of the world’s preeminent vintage and modern motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles while exploring the newest and most popular products from leading manufacturers and retail exhibitors. Indulge in delicious dining options provided by local food trucks, ice cream from Marianne’s, and other culinary delights in addition to a selection of wines, brews, and other beverages.

The Quail Motorcycle Gathering
The Quail 2022, photo by Steve Burton

Bring the whole family, as The Quail Motorcycle Gathering has something for everyone, including a dedicated kids area for interactive play!

Ticket prices are as follows:

  • Admission Only Pre-Sale (Ages 18+) – $60 ($70 Day of Event)
  • Use Promo Code: 5OFF2023 for $5 off General Admission – $55
  • Young Adult Admission Only (Ages 13-17) – $20
  • Children 12 and Under – FREE

Purchase your tickets to The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2023 here.

The Quail Motorcycle Gathering
The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2022 in Carmel, California.

Bike entrant applications are also now available. In addition to the traditional categories, the 2023 featured classes are “Italian and Single,” “1970s Vintage Muscle,” and “Bring on the Baggers.”

Related: The Quail Gathering XI

To enter a motorcycle, private collection, or motorcycle club, please complete The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2023 entrant application. Payment instructions will be provided when your application has been approved.

The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2023 Inaugural Why We Ride for Kids Fundraising Dinner

You can be one of the first to enjoy a brand-new VIP experience at this year’s The Quail Motorcycle Gathering and help end pediatric brain cancer, the deadliest childhood disease. Join the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and Why We Ride community for the inaugural Why We Ride for Kids Fundraising Dinner on May 6 at Quail Lodge & Golf Club.

Building on Why We Ride to The Quail’s seven-year history of fundraising and riding, this special evening starts at 5 p.m. following The Quail Motorcycle Gathering and includes cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction, and dinner with Quail Gathering 2023 Legend of the Sport Honoree and AMA Hall of Famer “Bubba” Shobert.

The Quail Motorcycle Gathering

Tickets are available to either the Why We Ride dinner only or the Why We Ride dinner + The Quail Motorcycle Gather combo. To purchase tickets visit the Ride For Kids website.

On Friday, May 5, kick-off The Quail Motorcycle Gathering weekend with The Quail Ride. Embark on a 100-mile journey with a mid-day lunch and evening dinner with other motorcycle enthusiasts. The Quail Ride is limited to just 100 motorcycles. Submit your application to The Quail Ride here.

The post The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2023 to Feature 14 Show Categories first appeared on Rider Magazine.
Source: RiderMagazine.com

Americade Celebrates 40 Years

Americade
As they have done many times over the years, rallygoers and volunteers created an Americade “living logo” in a parking lot overlooking Million Dollar Beach in Lake George, New York. This one is from the 8th anniversary of Americade. (Photos courtesy Americade)

During the week of May 31-June 4, Americade will celebrate its 40th anniversary. What has long been the world’s largest touring rally started from humble beginnings when founder Bill Dutcher reached a crossroads in his life and asked, “What next?”

A lifelong motorcyclist who began roadracing in the mid-1960s, Bill is a man of irrepressible energy. I’ll never forget meeting him at my first Americade in 2012. I was the featured speaker on a Tuesday night, and the title of my talk was “Lessons Learned from Crashes, Countries, and Cover Stories.” Bill introduced me to the audience, but before I took the stage, he shared a story about the time he wore roadracing leathers under his gown during his Harvard University graduation ceremony. He was scheduled to compete in a race later that day, so after he and his fellow graduates tossed their caps in celebration, Bill sped off to the track. He then regaled the audience about arriving late to the starting grid, riding over his head to catch up, and ultimately crashing out of the race. He was a tough act to follow.

40 Years of Americade
Bill Dutcher at Americade ’87 with the winner of the “longest distance ridden to Americade” award – he rode from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Lake George, New York, to attend the rally.

Related: Americade 2021 Rally Report

Bill spent his career in the motorcycle industry, holding marketing positions at Bultaco and Can-Am before becoming the head of public relations at AMF/Harley-Davidson, a position he held until 1981. Ready for a change, Bill and his wife, Gini, decided to start a touring rally near their home in Lake George, New York. Understanding the importance of brand recognition, Bill reached out to Til Thompson, organizer of the Aspencade rally, which had been held since 1971 in Ruidoso, New Mexico, to license the name for an eastern event. That was the easy part.

40 Years of Americade
Americade has always been popular among Honda Gold Wing riders. Here a member of the Red Knights tows a firetruck trailer with working lights and a hose spraying water. The Red Knights have long been a part of Americade.

“In the fall of 1981, I approached Bob Blais, the mayor of Lake George Village,” Bill recalled. “When I pitched him my concept of an ‘Aspencade East,’ he took a deep breath when I said ‘motorcycle rally.’ About a decade earlier, when he was chief of police, he’d dealt with some bloodied bikers who had gotten too rowdy at one of the local bars.” Bill ultimately won the mayor over, and with his backing, the village board approved the proposal.

40 Years of Americade
A BMW picnic in the late 1980s atop Prospect Mountain, which overlooks Lake George. BMW introduced their industry-first motorcycle ABS at the event.

The first Aspencade East was held in 1983, and the Dutchers expected perhaps 1,000 people – about as many attendees as the rally in New Mexico. “When more than 2,000 people showed up, I was astounded,” Bill said. “We ran out of T-shirts, caps, and everything else.”

Gini added that when the first attendees arrived at the registration room to pick up their tickets, there was a “certain energy about the rally.”

40 Years of Americade
Bill and Gini Dutcher, the founders of Americade – 40 years old then, 80+ now, and still participating in Americade and still riding.

“People were excited by what was about to happen. We knew that they were just as excited about this new Aspencade East as we were.”

Attendance doubled in 1984, doubled again in 1985, and topped 10,000 in 1986. That same year, the Dutchers changed the event’s name to Americade. It had grown well beyond its association with the original Aspencade rally. And the Dutchers didn’t want their event to be too closely associated with one particular motorcycle brand or model since Honda had introduced a luxury-touring version of the Gold Wing called the Aspencade in 1982.

Americade
Parking motorcycles on Beach Road along the shore of Lake George has long been an Americade tradition.

Even though attendance at Americade has exceeded 50,000 many times over the years, it has always been a family affair. “Bill’s original vision of making a family-friendly motorcycling event still powers what we do,” said Christian Dutcher, Bill and Gini’s son, who took over management of Americade several years ago. “We have many riders who attend other rallies, and they tell me that they love Americade because it continues to be ‘sane.’

40 Years of Americade
The tall guy in the middle is Christian Dutcher, son of founders Bill and Gini, and now the owner/director of the rally.

“Despite having been part of Americade my entire life,” Christian continued, “I am still caught off-guard by the letters we receive. We get letters from people who want to get married here, who bring their children because they met their spouse here years earlier, and even some who spread the ashes of their lifelong riding partner at the rally. It’s very touching and reminds us that what Americade is to many people is larger than the sum of its parts.”

40 Years of Americade
Americade 1990. Rather than the rally’s normal “living logo,” a yellow ribbon was created to honor the U.S. and Canadian troops serving during Desert Storm.

Through his PR position at Harley-Davidson, Bill knew Rider’s founder, Denis Rouse, and many of the magazine’s staff editors and contributors. “Rider has been part of every Aspencade/Americade,” Bill recalled. “I can’t think of any other company who has attended every event except Rider.”

Americade
One of two wooden signs hand-carved many years ago by Rider’s former National Sales Director, Joe Salluzzo.

Over the years, Rider has sponsored Americade’s Opening Celebration, mini-tours, dinner cruises, and other activities. Our editors and contributors have given seminars and talks, led tours, and met thousands of readers and fellow riders. We’ve judged bike shows and photo contests, helped select the Americade Queen, and published dozens of rally reports in the magazine and on our website.

And we’ll be there again this May, joining the Dutchers, the rally’s many dedicated volunteers, and tens of thousands of attendees to celebrate Americade’s big 4-0. We’ll have more details about the festivities in the coming weeks. For registration and other info, visit the Americade website.

See you in Lake George!


This was the First Gear column written by Editor-in-Chief Greg Drevenstedt for the March 2023 issue of Rider.

The post Americade Celebrates 40 Years first appeared on Rider Magazine.
Source: RiderMagazine.com

Connected | Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
A large crowd gathers for the biannual Slimey Crud Run in Wisconsin. Photos by the author.

This essay first appeared in Motorcycles Are Magic: An Anthology, edited by Melissa Holbrook Pierson with assistance from George Sarrinikolaou and published in 2021 by 10mm Socket Press. Pierson, the author, participates in the legendary Slimey Crud Run and explores how motorcyclists stay connected, intended or not.


The invitation to dinner might have been a spring petal on the wind, gone by unseen in the turn of a head. How did I manage to hear the ding of the incoming text, even as it mimicked a tone identical to the imperative summons of the hotel desk bell, over the layered noise of so much coming and going? It configured itself from the molecules of the air of the bar at the airport Chili’s, where I sat killing two hours between flights. The name of the person who had issued it was “Jeff,” to whom I’d been “introduced,” also by text, that morning. He was the vague someone I was told would help procure a bike for me to ride in the vaguely understood run I’d attend the day after I gave a talk at the Black Earth Library. This was the reason I was downing Sam Adams in the first place in the Chicago airport en route to Wisconsin.

RELATED: Melissa Holbrook Pierson: Ep. 9 of the Rider Magazine Insider Podcast

The earth was, indeed, black in southern Wisconsin. This startling notion would pierce my thoughts only after 10 continuous miles of passing it. Sometimes I don’t pay attention to the obvious. It pays attention to me.

Thank you, I had typed back: It looks unlikely, since my connecting flight was just delayed by 45 min., and unless you are eating on European time, it doesn’t look like I’ll make it.

“These guys are old. They eat at 7:30. You could check the menu online, give me your order, and the food won’t arrive till 8 anyway.”

Although I could probably make it by 8, truth be told just the thought of walking into a restaurant, asking where I might locate a table of strangers, explaining myself and then making small talk, made me tired. More precisely, exhausted, to the point of panting. I have an internal timer ticking down the minutes I can be in the company of others before an insensible need to get away whispers urgently Go, run! This is when the Fairfield Suites sings its Siren’s song, urging me toward the soothing deja-vu of anonymity. I could already feel the upswelling of relief loosed by the appearance of the green light after sliding the key card through the door lock: the lighthouse’s lone beacon. Through the stormy spray it promised safe harbor beyond the treacherous rocks of engaging, smiling, the effort of looking interested. I hang on to the rope that after so long is about to burn itself into my palm and I can feel I am about to let go. All I can think about is the comforting embrace of the bed it seems I have known all my life, with its marshalled pillows stacked in predictable order, and the Corian-countered bathroom that represents coming home again, only to a well-cleaned one. Its washcloth-folded-corner identicality will finally activate the exhale of distress withheld while communing with others of my species.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
A borrowed ride is a forever friend.

Then the late plane lands at the exact hour assigned to the on-time plane. As if the reason I too might be late had run backwards, time itself accordioning to something that had already been arranged. My phone’s map, asked to show the destination provided by Jeff, returns the arrival time. 7:30. Precisely. The restaurant is placed directly on the route to the hotel. I am being ordered to Smokey’s Steakhouse.

RELATED: Writers and Riders: Meeting Melissa Holbrook Pierson and John Ryan

The minute the door opens I see the oracle knows me well. It is the kind of place I live for. Not for the food – I had to order salads in steakhouses, or potatoes – but for the chance to walk into the past, where it has been kept safe so we may breathe its lost air in the present. We are to laugh and order drinks from within circles of warm yellow light yielding to a velvety dark just beyond, mysterious shadows that are not so much the result of low light in dark panelled rooms but of accumulated layers of happiness. We are to dine in our own history.

At the front desk I ask where I might find the motorcyclists, most of whom are without motorcycles on a cold, wet night. I had thought this would pose some difficulty. Instead I hear my name. And “Right this way.”

We pass the bar where under festive string lights people order exotic Midwestern beers that have likewise been preserved unchanged since another time, the one that existed before the need to make new versions of what had been discarded without a second thought. The nearest we get now is a label with a carefully researched font, designed last week.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
Before the run, a favorite activity commences. During and after it, too.

We head toward a private room in the back. As we go he tells me how his parents opened this supper club 63 years ago. Also that the Slimey Cruds eat here regularly. It is odd to feel such a pang on hearing the word “regularly.” There is nothing I have longed for more than a group of people to whom I could belong, where I might at last lay down a weary load. I most want what I fear most: to be with others, regularly.

The Slimey Cruds are people who appreciate legacy in all its forms. This old place, their old group, their old bikes especially, the European café racers that defined cool to a generation of yore. Like the brews here, their bikes are originals from before the era of nostalgia fetish, not a simulacrum of old – only with fuel injection and ABS (real spoke wheels though) – but genuine old. Lovingly polished, that’s all. In need of no reimagining because the original imagination was wholly sufficient.

I know none of the people arrayed around the U-shaped table. I spy one empty chair, at a corner. In moments like these I engage an old foe, a formidable prizefighter who is good at throwing a hook I never see coming. The sharp sting from the broken septimal cartilage floods my body with shock.

Or rather, I smile. It is a preemptive feint against humiliation, the punch I fear is coming. I sit in the empty chair and arrange my expression. I watch the butter, study the far wall. I turn to the man to my left just as he turns to me.

“Jeff,” he says. Then, “Glad to finally meet you.” But I’m looking into the eyes of someone whose story I have helped live, someone I’ve known all my life. The only seat at the table had to be next to Jeff.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
Man’s best friend – that goes for both the bike and the dog.

The woman to my right extends her hand, gives her name. I know her too. But in a more conventional way: she is an officer of the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America, a club of which I am a member. She organized a panel on which I participated at a national rally. I had no idea she lived in Madison, much less that she would end up next to me at a dinner I came close to passing by. Her husband, next to her, leans over and tells me he had reviewed my first book years ago. In a few minutes he will stand and raise his glass to me with a quote from that review. After some more toasts everyone will turn their attention to plates of hash browns, served family style.

Jeff starts talking, ignoring the clam chowder in front of him (the menu’s alternative is tomato juice, a choice I last saw when I was 10). What he says is of course familiar, since I have spent days and weeks in his company. He’s at every gathering; we meet on the road and hanging around in shops. We speak often on the phone, as he’s one of those I turn to in times of need – of opinions, of answers. He knows so much about so much. It’s a small detail, almost beneath mentioning, that we’ve never met. I know already he is the type who has no time to waste prevaricating because he’s been in enough tough scrapes, in foreign countries, alone, had ties severed to loved ones through all the usual ways people go away, lots of loss under the bridge. He never spends a second talking bullshit because that would be a second lost to living. That’s why I always go to him. He reveals he owns 20 bikes; of course. I knew that. He shows me his phone. There’s a picture of his Mike Hailwood replica in the desert of Moab taken the week before, a surreal flash of red and green posing in the scrub like the looker she is.

At age 45, he went to law school so he could finance a life in which riding takes preeminence. By practicing law for six months, he earns enough to ride the other half of the year. Ride anywhere he wants.

Living is mainly about losing and I’ve lived very little, I think as I listen to Jeff’s stories. Sometimes it’s blood. (He is limping currently.) There’s losing things, getting lost, losing people, losing houses and money and your way, and then leaning back on a couch in your skivvies, rain-soaked gear having been peeled off, transforming these stories into Homeric poetry in front of a group of people who have just gotten off bikes too.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
This very old-looking Olds is actually contemporary custom built around a 1970s Honda XL350.

There must be a story about the missing tooth, but I haven’t heard that one yet. His smile is warm and takes you in.

And in. I excuse myself from dinner – the others will stay, apparently until this day becomes the next – almost desperate for the Fairfield but glad I lashed myself to the mast earlier. I have become smaller and smaller as my reserves were sucked out through a tiny aperture and now I need solitude and the ice machine and a chocolate chip cookie from a tray near the effervescent desk clerk, always happy to see me and say the same thing each time the door slides open. “Welcome to the Fairfield!”

As I leave Jeff too pushes back his chair. He tries to limp as fast as I walk, as if it doesn’t matter. It matters. I slow down, much as I don’t want to since my car is at the back of the lot and I don’t know why he’s coming out here in the first place and it puts me at 90 seconds’ disadvantage for the elevator to relief, I mean my room.

On the way he diverts our path briefly toward a great white extended Mercedes Sprinter van. What else. It can hold bikes and everything else you need while waiting for the destination, the signal to go past. He reaches in. “I’m going to give you my GPS. That way you can just press the home button and it will take you to my house so you can pick up a bike on Sunday.” He hands me the ruby slippers. And then a backup pair in case the GPS doesn’t work: by the time I’ve turned the ignition on the rental car a text pings. His address.

Riding so much, alone, in foreign parts, and in places far from people (the farther the better), requires installation of new software in the brain, a program that makes you think of everything. In fact the GPS would not work, wouldn’t let me in. But two mornings later the address from his text would be the north star guiding me out of the city into the countryside, winding through gentle hills and into what appears to be nowhere, which is naturally where Jeff would live.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
What communal ride doesn’t mean having an Adventure?

Before this, however, there is an intervening 24 hours. If this wonderment has happened tonight, what will occur tomorrow? First, the talk at the library to which five people or 50 may come, and maybe what I plan to say will please them or it will bore them. Then, as I understand it, a motorcycle movie at night. In fact I don’t know what tomorrow will hold, what black earth will belatedly appear.

I always thought Kismet was a place. Actually, it is, a few of them. The one on Fire Island represents it well, being a bit of Atlantic beach I visited as a teen. Ergo, kismet.

It is also another term for “the will of Allah,” and predestination is Allah’s thing. The will of Allah might well have another name: this wondrous place. Here I am no longer in charge. It is sweet to relinquish the semblance of control, that which dogs me and bites me and wearies me all at once. Here I meet people and on looking into their eyes for the first time hear a voice in my head that contradicts unimpeachable evidence. “I’ve known you all my life.” But that’s strange. You live in Richmond, Madison, Milwaukee, Seattle. This is the first time I’ve been here. Yet here I am looking at you now and I’ve always known you.

A weird sensation that touches me only in this world. It is replete with its own colors and language and atmospheric disturbances. It is a separate cosmos, hidden within the one everybody thinks is the only one. Its portal looks nondescript, just another rusty door, but this is just to hide the gilded paradise that waits on the other side.

Motorcycling. It’s like a living Watteau, sunshine and pinks, flying swings and satin whispering to the air. Every day a fête galante of baroque sensuality, though there’s black grease under the fingernails and a pocket torn half off the FirstGear jacket. (Happened one memorable day long ago in Baja. Or maybe Alaska? On the Haul Road.)

It is raining. The librarian has stationed long tables outside the room, above them signs reading “Motorcycle Helmet Parking.” Clever. Of course there are helmets there. There always will be in a place like this no matter the weather, for the people who cannot do anything but ride.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
A miniature bike ridden by a giant.

I stand before the room of people and talk. I read a poem called “Coda: Road.” Road is always the coda to the story called road. I am taken out for lunch by some riders who have come from Chicago.

I have half an hour in my generic hotel room of solace, after hours of parley with those of my kind who never quite seem exactly like me – they are all connected to others, and to the world, in ways I ache to be, like the child wishing hard on the other side of the pane from the brand-new Flexible Flyers or the cupcakes with frosting towers and sugar flowers – before I must reattach prosthetic wings. In the neverending rain I drive into the heart of Madison. There’s the Barrymore Theater, but ah – here’s the parking space. It’s so far away I get lost and soaking trying to find my way back on foot.

I arrive on time for the beginning of the movie even though I should have missed it. This is a trend in the magical land that is Wisconsin. I have time to buy a beer in the lobby and retreat to a pilaster which will be my spine. I stand tall and invisible, watching clots of motorcyclists gesticulate, laugh, confer. (My tribe, to which I both belong and do not, composed as it is of humans.) The group is especially tight in Madison, a family of a few hundred.

In the ’70s, a couple of university grads noticed each other, or, more to the point, each other’s bikes. When you see someone riding your type – a Triumph, a Ducati, a CB750 – you recognize a kinship that goes deeper than mere DNA. And when you’re doing it in the same environment that sorely tests the person who loves to ride that motorcycle, denied during the long months of ice and wind blowing off the lakes (both small and Great), the recognition is like solder, hot and fast.

They got together to ride and wrench. Information was exchanged, in garages and over dinners. Next, necessarily, came the name: any loosely affiliated group of motorcyclists is a gang, in the eyes of the outside world. Up to no good.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
Variety is the spice of motorcycling life.

This group of intellectual hell-raisers, who in truth did like to ride fast – why else fall in love with metal beings in whose veins flows the blood of born racers? why else ponder the depths of carburetor jetting and aftermarket exhausts, ratios of bore and stroke? – decided to give the public what they wanted. What moniker would best suit these exemplars of the anti-social’s lowest rank? The Slimey Cruds it would be. A little in-joke. Next they would put on a run, where they might show the townspeople who really owned the roads, their slow-rolling thunder implicit warning.

Or not. Because the run is no run at all: you find your own way between Pine Bluff and Leland. Together, but apart. It’s 30 miles. So your run might take the better part of the day; there is no such thing as a straight line in a motorcyclist’s desires. There is wandering, exploration, and chance. There is time stretching to whatever length the way demands.

When you meet again, a thousand machines will be parked side by side in a roadside museum of individualism. The old, the painstakingly restored, the elegant and the rare – and sometimes all of these in one: the one you love to ride, and the one others love to pause to eye and imagine these lonely, embraceable curves on. (For that is the real secret of Madison and its diehard riders – their personal possession of endless roads through some of the most heartbreaking scenery in all America.)

Showing a movie the night before the run is the ritual warm-up to this riding-season warm-up; the next run, for it is a biannual event, will mark the end of the season four months later in October. It is not unusual for it to snow, or be cold enough anyway. Tomorrow it will also feel cold enough.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
The obligatory scenic stop for a photo of new friends.

I overhear one man say to another, “That bike saved my life,” followed by knowing laughter. All that needs to be said, multivalent meaning. I know all the levels instantly, intimately. Bikes saved my life too. And gave me this one. Now comes a temporary pause in the beer-drinking portion of the evening. It will resume at intermission. I enter and find a seat alone. The lights go down and the movie begins to roll. It tells the story of a New Zealander who was crazy enough to hand-build a race bike from the ground up. Its design is revolutionary. He works on it night and day. He brings it to America to compete in the Battle of the Twins; there is crisis and devastation and triumph and death (Isle of Man, of course) and more triumph, amid continuous mind-bending work and invention. Then the New Zealander is dead at age 45, of cancer. Now 10 of his bikes remain in the world, frozen forever at some indeterminate point in the progress toward perfection. There will never be any more, so individual an object they are. The man who was their beating heart is gone, and they are like Lenin’s embalmed corpse: at once his monument and his requiem mass. The one that got away.

I feel Jeff behind me. I know he’s there even if I don’t see him in the dark. At intermission I do, and I move to sit one row in front of him. I hear his voice, first to one side and then the other. Making plans with his cohort: What time will you be over? Yeah, not sure what I’ll ride. So-and-so is bringing the truck at 9. She’s coming a little later.

“You’re coming at 10, right?” Right, I say. The lights go down again.

The next morning I pass through a cattle gate left ajar at the end of the driveway to Jeff’s farm. The place is well hidden. It is also Penn Station for motorcyclists. There are five or six bikes on a concrete pad outside what looks like an old dairy barn; a Quonset hut on the other side of the farmyard holds what must be the rest of the stable. I had overheard one of Jeff’s friends answer a question from someone the night before: “Well, if you’re counting frames too, then I have around 40 bikes. I think.”

I have my choice of two specimens from the early ’70s, a Moto Guzzi Eldorado or a BMW slash-5, the second of which a friend of Jeff’s is just unloading from a van. Its shiny chrome with insets gave rise to a perfect nickname, Toaster Tank. Ask and ye shall receive. As I get out of the car another friend arrives, a gentlemanly writer who is a celebrity in the motorsports world who will later tell me about the happenstance that led to his career, one sheaf of typescript fluttering to earth and caught by these hands, not those. Decades later, he is known to millions. What might have happened to him otherwise? He does not know. Pure chance has a central role in deciding everything of moment.

We are getting ready to go. I’m standing in the kitchen – I have seen places like this before, where unmarried men live, and the bottle of bourbon is always in the same spot next to the sink, the same old grease giving the patina of history to the stove, dishes from yesterday or last month in the same leaning tower on the counter – and I ask Jeff if I might use his bathroom. He points to the front door. “There’s no bathroom.” Oh, I say. My brain automatically scrambles to make a sensible narrative out of facts suddenly tumbling as if during an accident: What happened here?

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
The difficult choice between two hardy classics, in front of a true motorcyclist’s cabinet of mysteries.

For now it’s a simple matter of disappearing into the brush behind the garbage cans.

But how does one go without a bathroom at night, in the winter, when there are houseguests? How does one live without a bathroom?

One lives to ride.

When Jeff is on his big dual-sport with the enormous plastic gas tank that drapes the frame like saddlebags on a camel, carrying enough fuel to take him ever deeper into unpeopled regions, even the concept of a bathroom is unnecessary, a word in a defunct language. You learn to live without what you no longer need. He tells me the house he bought when he was younger, an old farmhouse, burned down a couple years ago and with it everything he owned. His history, that of his family. His books and his music and his memories. It taught him something, about the impermanence of things and their ultimate irrelevance. That the lesson was grotesquely painful was a testament to its necessity. Now he lives in what was the old farm’s chicken coop.

As we head toward Pine Bluff, motorcycles thicken. They pass us, shoom. We pass them, on the side of the road, in the other lane, in gas stations. The highest concentration occurs in the parking lot of a big barn of a bar – inside are coffee urns and “Welcome Motorcyclists” banners and people chatting and meeting, again or for the first time, and still the place feels like an empty cavern – then it is time to go. Jeff leads with a friend following on a YSR pocket bike who looks like a cartoon, a man on a machine half his size, hovering a few inches above the pavement. Nonetheless I have to work to keep up although I crack the throttle wide on the old BMW. The journalist is behind me (I critique my riding through his eyes, hoping he doesn’t hear when I mis-shift, precisely as I always hope no one notices the red-faced panic or quiver of fear in my voice when nothing has caused it but being with you), and behind him the owner of my borrowed ride, his 12-year-old son riding pillion.

We fly under open sky. We are lost, one by one, around curves that rise and fall mid-turn, then are met again on the straightaways. We ride in precise concert, singers who have practiced the harmonies on this particular chorus so many times we are one voice in many parts. I’ve just met them but we’ve known each other forever.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
The end of the Slimey Crud Run is a lot like the beginning: talk and tire-kicking.

In Leland, its population of 50 temporarily boosted by a factor of 15 this day, the concentration of motorcycles has reached critical mass. The Slimey Crud Run functions just south of pure anarchy, which means it functions as it was intended: valve clearances spot on, carburetion dialed in, torque a propulsion of sensual ideal, everything else the possession of gorgeous chance. Bikes line both sides of the road around Sprecher’s Bar, an aboriginal watering spot set down in the middle of a nowhere that was also pretty much nowhere in 1900, when the elderly owner’s father bought it as a general store. To keep it going through two world wars and a great depression in between, Sprecher’s tried a little of everything. The recipe that ended up the keeper was beer and guns. It might be the only place in the country now for one-stop shopping, your argument and its conclusion obtained in the same room. A sign tacked on the back wall reads “If you voted for Obama, please turn around and leave! You have proven that you are not responsible enough to own a firearm!” Over it hangs a Confederate flag, no doubt a recent addition to the décor, as Wisconsin recruited and lost 91,000 men for the Union cause, many of them in the famously noble Iron Brigade.

Connected Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run
Inside Sprecher’s, guns for sale and beer for drinking.

We get cheese and salami sandwiches (mine minus the salami), and even though the town is flooded with people, as in the parable of the loaves and the fishes there are still stools available at Junior Sprecher’s bar. There one can sit and gaze at the wall, its rifles and shotguns racked and handguns displayed in a glass case near the establishment’s framed license to sell them. I don’t leave even though I was asked so politely by the sign. Jeff has been absorbed somewhere outside into the mass of his countrymen. When it’s time to leave he materializes next to me.

We mount up again. Back a different way; here there is always a different way, and that is the only way. An hour and a half later we snake up the driveway, lean bikes on sidestands. At home he peels off his gear and now wanders around in his long underwear. He’s a big man. He loads the potbelly stove with lumber scraps and gets a flame going. Beers are found. We sit variously on office chairs and other scavenged seating. We are in the only place we belong at an unrepeatable moment. I sense something in the room I have either been longing to become or something I already am: elementally human, molecularly social. Kin. But I will leave.

Two days and a thousand miles separate us now, jet fuel long burned or offloaded to the long-suffering earth. It presaged our return, a trail between us and all those we were soon to rejoin, or hoped to anyway.

I am outside, home, when I hear a sound from the phone in my back pocket. I pull it out and see what I or someone else or maybe some thing have made happen. The phone is calling Jeff. I quickly end the call, praying I punched the button quickly enough. Filled with rising curiosity about how this might have happened. Chastened. Afraid. I did not mean to connect.

“Connected” first appeared in Motorcycles Are Magic: An Anthology, edited by Melissa Holbrook Pierson with assistance from George Sarrinikolaou and published in 2021 by 10mm Socket Press. Pierson is the author of The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles; The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing: Long-Distance Motorcycling’s Endless Road; The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Hits Home; Dark Horses And Black Beauties: Animals, Women, and Passion; and The Secret History Of Kindness: Learning From How Dogs Learn. Her essay “Alone: Onward Through The Fog” was published in the September 1992 issue of Rider. For more information, visit MelissaHolbrookPierson.com.

The post Connected | Chance Encounters on the Slimey Crud Run first appeared on Rider Magazine.
Source: RiderMagazine.com

Chasing Quail | The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering

The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering
The 12th edition of The Quail Motorcycle Gathering drew a crowd of nearly 3,200 to enjoy 270 vintage, classic, and custom bikes as well as a wide variety of vendors and food purveyors on a beautiful day in May. Photos by the author and courtesy Kahn Media.

From my home in Southern California, it’s just a day’s ride to the scenic Monterey Peninsula on some of the state’s most sublime motorcycling roads, including Highway 1 on the majestic Big Sur coast. Good food and nightlife on a Friday night in Monterey are steps away from dozens of hotels ranging from reasonable to posh, so an overnight run is both easy and fun. Add the prospect of attending a large vintage and custom motorcycle concours on the green grass of the nearby upscale golf course, and you can see why The Quail Motorcycle Gathering has been a great success since the first one in 2008.

The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering
Catching up after a two-year break, the 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering celebrated the 50th anniversary of Harley-Davidson’s iconic XR-750, which was actually in 2020, with a featured class.

Plenty of enthusiasts flock to The Quail just for the day, so the parking area along Valley Greens Drive becomes quite a motorcycle show in its own right. This year, 3,200 spectators enjoyed 270 notable and highly polished motorcycles arranged just so on the grass of the Quail Lodge & Golf Club in Carmel Valley, ringed by vendors of every sort. The one-day event cost $55 and ran from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., so attendees had to keep moving to see and do it all.

Led by Gordon McCall, Director of Motorsports for Peninsula Signature Events, The Quail Ride kicks off the event on Friday (not to be confused with Why We Ride to the Quail, a two-day charity ride for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation that starts on Thursday in SoCal – for more information, visit Motovational.org). The Quail Ride is a 100-mile loop around this gorgeous area limited to 100 riders that includes two laps of Laguna Seca Raceway with its famous Corkscrew, an experience that’s worth the price of admission alone.

Listen to our interview with Gordon McCall on the Rider Magazine Insider Podcast

The Quail has hosted as many as 400 machines in past years, but as McCall said this year, “It’s too many bikes.”

“You can’t see them all in a day, and we’re a one-day event,” he said. “So we pared that back. This to me is the heart and soul of the motorcycle community. We’ve got a lot of smaller companies, smaller vendors, and they help make this possible. Just look at this – people are in a good mood. We’re ready – enough with hiding under a rock for two years.”

The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering
The Best of Show award went to this 1951 Vincent Rapide owned and customized by Max Hazan.

Indeed, after a two-year break due to the pandemic, the 2022 Gathering may have been a bit smaller, but I still had trouble taking everything in. In addition to traditional classes like British, Italian, Japanese, Competition, and Antique, the event showcased five featured classes. Two-Stroke “Braaaps” comprised on- and off-road ring-ding superstars, like the 1986 Suzuki RG500 Gamma from Matt Torrens of California. Other classes highlighted minibikes, BMW /5 Series motorcycles, and the Harley-Davidson XR-750, a crowd favorite and one of the most successful racebikes of all time.

While this is a very social event, it’s the bikes that are the primary draw, and there was no shortage of interesting, amazing, and historical hardware to ogle. Vintage machines wearing a time-earned patina or lovingly restored to original or better condition by the best in their field are most prevalent, but the show also includes bikes from some of the icons of the custom motorcycle world, like Max Hazan from Hazan Motorworks in Los Angeles. Hazan’s wildly custom and beautiful 1951 Vincent Rapide won Best of Show, a controversial choice to some given the irreverent nature of customs based on famous vintage bikes.

The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering
Chris Carter of Motion Pro accepts the Spirit of the Quail award for his multiple championship-winning 1984 Honda RS750.

But the 40-plus judges on the committee, led by veteran Chief Judge Somer Hooker, also gave top awards in many other classes to near-perfect history-making motorcycles. An incredible 1984 Honda RS750, for example, ridden to three Grand National Championships by Bubba Shobert (and owned by Chris Carter of Motion Pro) was given the Spirit of the Quail award.

The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering
The “mini bikes | BIG FUN” class was highlighted by this 1968 Honda Z50, which Steve McQueen had customized by Von Dutch.

Yamaha brought a fleet of famous flat-trackers from its racing past, like the 1977-78 Kenny Roberts Racing Specialties-designed, monoshock-framed MX250, one of two bikes champion racer Jeff Haney rode to multiple lap records during his undefeated 1978 season at Ascot Park. Arch Motorcycles, the company started by actor Keanu Reeves, was there with its pricey, out-of-this-world production bikes.

The Gathering was also a rare opportunity to try out apparel like airbag vests from Helite or cool jackets from Walter Leather Company, and a silent auction supporting the Monterey County Youth Museum offered everything from golf at the Quail Lodge & Golf Club to stays at The Peninsula Chicago and New York hotels.

“The success of this year’s The Quail Motorcycle Gathering was truly overwhelming,” said McCall. “From the immense support of our incredible sponsors to the amazing spectators and the diverse demonstration of remarkable motorcycles and classic cars, we are so proud to have come back stronger than ever and are excited to see what 2023 will bring.”

The 2022 Quail Motorcycle Gathering
Former AMA pro racer and industry legend Thad Wolff (left) with his arm around Rider’s longtime Editor, Mark Tuttle. Wolff competes in ARHMA trials on his restored 1964 Triumph Tiger Cub, which he entered in the Competition Off Road class.

Me too! Next year, The Quail Motorcycle Gathering is scheduled for Saturday, May 6, 2023. Tickets will go on sale this fall, and it’s likely the all-inclusive passes will be limited in number and sell out again, so be sure to put it on the calendar.

For more info, visit Peninsula.com/en/signature-events/events/motorcycle.

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Source: RiderMagazine.com

Gold Wing Road Riders Association to Shut Down after 45 Years

Gold Wing Road Riders Association

The Gold Wing, Honda‘s flagship touring motorcycle, was launched in 1974 as a 1975 model. The original GL1000, powered by an in-line Four with shaft final drive, was the second most powerful production motorcycle at the time, runner-up to the venerable Kawasaki Z-1. It had no fairing and no luggage, but it was so smooth, torquey, and reliable that it became popular with touring riders and has evolved over six generations. (Read our 2021 Honda Gold Wing Tour DCT road test review).

Just a few years after the Gold Wing was introduced, the Gold Wing Road Riders Association (GWRRA) was founded. The GWRRA’s annual gathering is called the Wing Ding, and the 43rd and final event took place June 28 – July 2, 2022, in Shreveport, Louisiana. At Wing Ding 43, it was announced that GWRRA would shut down as of July 31. The following is a press release issued by American Honda.


Gold Wing Road Riders Association founders Paul Hildebrand and Shirley Stevens-Garcia announced last week during Wing Ding opening ceremonies that the organization will be closing. American Honda is saddened by the news and thanks the GWRRA for its dedication to one of Honda’s most iconic models.

RELATED: Honda Gold Wing Milestone Models 1975-2015

Founded in 1977, the GWRRA grew through the heyday of motorcycle touring to the point that it eventually had approximately 80,000 members in 53 countries, and with over 800 active chapters managed by 4,000 volunteer leaders. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, the GWRRA has called itself “the world’s largest single-marque social organization for owners of Honda Gold Wing/Valkyrie motorcycles,” and it adopted the motto “Friends for Fun, Safety and Knowledge.”

A dedicated, family-like group that published its own magazine (Wing World, whose September issue will be the last), the GWRRA worked hard to improve the image of motorcycling and prided itself in being a not-for-profit, nonreligious, non-political organization whose members covered a broad spectrum of backgrounds, but who were unified by a love for owning and riding Honda’s legendary touring model, the Gold Wing.

RELATED: Honda Gold Wing Timeline: 1972-2018

“We would like to thank our members, vendors and advertisers for 45 years of unwavering support,” said Abel Gallardo, COO of GWRRA. “We truly could not have made it this far without all of you. To our rider-education program, we cannot begin to place a number on the lives touched by your efforts. To our leadership-training and motorist-awareness programs, thank you for educating our members, officers and public to keep our riders safe and enjoying the ride.”

The GWRRA will officially close on July 31. In the interim, it will offer prorated refunds on prepaid memberships.

“For nearly five decades, the GWRRA has set the powersports standard for a grassroots organization based on a single model, and Honda will be forever grateful for the enthusiasm the club’s members demonstrated and generated for the Gold Wing,” said Bill Savino, American Honda Senior Manager of Customer Engagement. “While the GWRRA’s closure is undeniably the end of an era, we want to make sure their members and all Gold Wing enthusiasts know that Honda remains committed to the Gold Wing model and these customers for years to come.”

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Source: RiderMagazine.com