MotoWolff

Motorcycle rally’s are not really my thing, but when the BMW Motorcycle Owners Association National Rally is this close to home I had to go!

The BMW MOA National Rally this year was held in Redmond Oregon in June of this year. This will be the fifth time the rally has been held in Oregon with other year locations being in Prineville and Salem.

I chose my 2017 F800GS to take out for this ride, not because of its rather ordinary qualities as a touring machine but more because I thought that there might be some dirt road possibilities for the weekend. The rally site is only a couple of hours from my home so long distance comfort was not really going to be an issue. The bike runs great for most things but it does not shine on long stretches of highway.

From my home on the west side of the Cascades I headed to Redmond using the best backroads that I knew. Central Oregon has a lot of great roads and scenery! Even with the detours it was an easy 200 miles to the rally site at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds. Although there was plenty of camping available on site, I chose a local hotel for my stay at the rally. I’m pretty much done sleeping on the ground anymore!

It was an excellent venue for the rally with great roads to ride, plenty of services available and the prospect of excellent weather at this time of year. I don’t know the actual number of attendees but it appeared to me to be a well attended rally. One of the things that I come for is the vendors. I love looking at what is new in the market place and the ability to actually put your hands on the products that you are considering.

The vendors area inside the pavilion was full of interesting stuff but one of the booths held specific interest for me. IMT Bike tours was doing a seminar for their foreign touring programs and it just so happened that in a couple of weeks I would be doing one of their tours in the Pyrenees with a some friends. I have ridden with IMT before but I wanted to see what they had to say before our ride.

My friend Lynn rode out to join me for the seminar and then we did a quick local ride to the hamlet of Post Oregon. This location is said to be the geographic center of Oregon and visiting the little Café/Store/Post Office was like going back in time.

We were only at the rally for only a day and a half or so before heading back home. We had pretty good weather while we were there but the ride home proved to be very wet! It poured on us going back over Santiam Pass to the west side but we had the proper gear for it. 4800 ft isn’t really all that high in elevation but this storm was cold enough to threaten a little snow which could be seen sticking to vegetation on the edge of the road.

Next years rally location is Lebanon Tennessee but its not one that I am likely to attend. There are still so many good riding routes in the west and I need to get some more of those under my belt.