When life gives you lemons, go ride Lemonade!

The 2012 Rose City Motorcycle Club's Grand Tour

This year we have several rides planned to collect all twenty checkpoints for the Grand Tour.

The first two checkpoints are almost in our back yard and easy to get.

The OR-500, a 500 mile (800 km) ride put on in early May by the Rose City Motorcycle Club usually goes by one or two of the checkpoints.  We are registered for the OR-500.

In mid-May we are going on the 2.5 Mile Ride with a group of GoldWingers from the GL1800 Riders Board.  It takes place this year in SW Oregon.  We will stay an additional day or two and get the checkpoints in that area.

In late June we are going on a camping trip with friends in central Oregon.  It is a birthday party for Florian and I'm supplying the beer from my homebrew stock.  We will then add an additional few days and do all the SE Oregon checkpoints before returning home.  Florian is not a biker and will be going home after the weekend camping trip while we head southeast.

 Lastly we will get the distant checkpoints (the last five) during our big trip to Sturgis.  We will also be meeting GoldWing friends from Italy who are shipping their GoldWings to New York for a ride to Alaska.  It will be the seventh time they have come to the US to ride.  They will be going to Sturgis and Yellowstone on the way to Alaska.  We plan to meet them in Sturgis and ride with them as far as Calgary, Alberta.  There we will part and return home.  We went to Alaska two years ago with our Dutch friends, Dirk and Hetty.  During our loop to South Dakota we will follow a route that collects the checkpoints and visits other sites.

Follow along and see if it all goes as we hope.  The first ride.