316 Registered Riders!

And I thought 50 would be a good number when this all started!

Reminder – the rally doesn’t start until April 1st…

For those of you signed up and waiting on a flag, FedEx tells me the box arrives Monday, so I should be able to get them mailed on Tuesday morning.

I know most of your are getting ready to kick off this year’s rally as soon as it opens up. I was just watching the news this morning and saw that we were getting a good amount of snow over our nearby passes (I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass, US-2 over Stevens Pass and US-12 over White Pass). I think someone needs to remind old man winter that Spring is finally here! It also serves as a good reminder to all of us – the weather can and will play a factor in your decisions about where to go and when to go there. Some of the destinations are at elevations that will cause weather problems early in the season. Please do your research and be safe! The responsibility for safely planning and executing your ride rests with you, the rider.

Rider Jeff Klar took this picture somewhere in Idaho/Montana yesterday! Yes, he was driving a car and not riding his bike

It was sunny elsewhere 🙂

Bruce Wood and Ken La Flam found plenty of sunshine while out practicing.
Beckie and Butch Dunlap found sunshine along the Oregon coast. What a nice pair of bikes 🙂

Guess what your biggest obstacle might be this time of year…wind. It happens on any rally with a flag. Think about ways to keep the flag in place when it is windy. You want us to be able to see the flag number to get credit, and you don’t want to be the person who is the subject of a YouTube video showing them running down the road in full gear chasing a blue rally flag…

So it is time for the weekly reminder about what we need to see to get you credit for a destination visit:

  • Your flag must be visible and readable.
  • Your bike must be visible. At least enough of the bike has to be visible to tell it was a motorcycle.
  • The object described by the destination listing must be visible. It doesn’t have to be an exact match to the sample picture I provided, but it should be obvious it is the same object.

Meet those criteria and we will be pretty lenient with our scoring. Miss the flag or the bike and you will be sad.

And one final reminder – we only score submissions submitted via e-mail to the address provided – pnwgrandtour@gmail.com. We will not score anything submitted on Facebook. We enjoy the pictures on Facebook, we might even like them or comment on them, but we will make zero effort to score them from Facebook.

Practice, practice, practice. Send something in to us and you will receive feedback. I have 5 people (including myself) scoring submissions this year. All 5 of us ride, too. Be patient – you will not receive real-time scoring in most cases. If we happen to be sitting at our computer when you send something in, you might get an immediate response, but there is no guarantee that will happen in the future. My promise to the riders is that we will work hard to score pictures every day, but if I am out riding, it may not happen until I stop in the evening.

One more planned update and the we are off and running!

6 Comments

  1. Thanks for all the effort you have put into this event, I’m proud to be apart of it, rider 305. I also do the Tour of Honor Ride, again thanks Timothy, this is going to be fun.

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