MotoWolff

This rally was a bit before my time, but in summer of 1980 my father rode there solo on his 1977 R100RS from southern California. I’ve been going through some old photos as a winter project and found some slides from the trip and I’m just sharing them here. Maybe there are a few folks out there who attended in 1980.

I owned this bike until just recently, having acquired it in 2000 after my father’s passing. I have several other bikes and I just wasn’t riding this one much anymore and there is almost nothing worse for a bike than not being used! It had been painted a dark grey in the early 80’s but after I got it I took it back to it’s original Silver-Blue metallic color. It sold on Bring-a-Trailer auctions and now resides in a motorcycle museum in Florida.

I don’t know too much about the Prineville Rally, other than it was the 8th MOA National Rally and only the second one held in the west, the first one being in 1973 at Morgan Hill California.

Looking at the photos he took of the bikes several things stand out to me. First, a lot of people were making these bike their own with paint and accessories, straying from the classic black and white theme. Second, it seems that sidecars were quite in vogue at the time and well represented at the rally. Lastly, not an adventure bike in sight since it would be another few years before the GS became popular in the US.

The National Rally for 2024 is in Redmond Oregon, just a few miles down the road from Prineville. Oregon seems to be a popular location for the rally with Redmond having hosted it twice in the past along with Salem in 2013 (which I attended). I will attend Redmond this year as well which makes this my third national rally along with Salt Lake in 2017.

After this years rally in Redmond I’ll do a follow up post on the event.