Rally Day

Continuing on with my series of motorcycle rally posts, this one deals with the main ride of the rally.

Each rally has a character all its own, but each features a “main ride” for all rally attendees. This ride is often the highlight of the rally and offers a trip through the local countryside, a good lunch, and a social gathering over dinner at the end of the day.

To begin with, here is a 3:38 video clip of the group getting ready to start the ride:

[cincopa AsKAi17vrdGn]

After the ride came a surprise, to me: we ate at a Pizza Hut that also serves beer and wine.  The way the locals explained this was that the Canadian government is looking for revenue and taxes and beer and wine are fairly high revenue producers. The more places licensed to sell these products, the more tax revenue the government takes in. Apparently there is a move on to make it easier to get a liquor license providing the restrictions (no off sales, no bartender) are followed. It was quite nice to have an adult beverage with the meal! Beer was on tap and in cans/bottles, wines were available in red and white varieties.  Nice.

The video is a bit long but it does reflect the “herding cats” nature of trying to get a group started doing the same thing at the same time.

We rode through some very pleasant country. This area of Canada is fairly flat, but there are numerous lakes to ride around and small villages to ride through. Here we stopped at a small store for gas, candy bars, and cool drinks:

Fuel stop in rural Ontario

At other times we stopped to regroup and make sure everyone was together :

Group stops for a break

Here are some shots from around the hotel:

I met  – and rode with – some very interesting people and considered the rally a good time overall. Unfortunately I had to start my trip home the next day; I would have liked to stay longer!

Next post: Niagara Falls and The Trip Home.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!