When it comes to motorcycling, sometimes I feel like the term “IRL” really refers to the “Internet Riders League,” which I (and you, whether we like it or not) inevitably belong to.
Because even though the experience of riding, fixing, and farkling bikes takes place IRL—in real, tarry, oily, sweaty, sunny, breezy, blessed, knuckle-busting life—many of us spend an inordinate amount of time glued to our phones or computer screens, participating in the virtual world of motorcycling.
Most of us (present company included) are constantly online, thumbing through the dozens of channels and communities where people chat about, show off, and otherwise obsess over motorcycles.
There’s Instagram, Facebook and Reddit, dominating our phones (and general human consciousness). There’s ADV Rider, the mother of all motorcycle forums (fora?), at least for the non-Harley set.
And then there are the dedicated brand communities (like bmwmoa.org or wildguzzi.com), the YouTube video channels and their commentariat (FortNine, MotoBob, Yammie Noob)…the list—and content—goes on and on.
But if there’s one thing motorcycling inevitably reminds us of, is that there’s simply no replacement for riding in real life.
Nothing—really, nothing on the interwebs—can shake a virtual stick at real riding. Throwing your real leg over a real motorbike, pressing a real starter button, feeling a real engine rumble to life, wrapping your very real flesh-and-blood hand (hopefully with some good gloves) around a real throttle and clutch lever, and letting the magic of internal combustion, friction, gear ratios, tire adhesion, balance, and physics carry you out into the very real world, and down a very real road.
The result of which is invariably a very real (and lasting) shit-eating grin.
(Behold your humble shit-eater, grinning like a village idiot in front of his new GSA, which also stands for Giant Smile Actuator.)
Anyway, despite having been an avid motorcyclist for decades, the one thing that hasn’t been much of my real-world riding life has been, well, other motorcycle people.
With a few notable exceptions, riding bikes has largely been a personal and solo passion of mine. Most of my friends—and I’ll include my lovely soulmate and wife Emily here—have little or no interest in our beloved “death machines” (as they like to call them). They’re more into pickleball, tennis, golf, poker, wine, or gardening…pastimes which, frankly, kind of bore me to death.
To be fair, my best friend from college also rides, and together we’ve gone on several extended motorbike adventures (BDRs and the like), most of which I’ve chronicled here on this blog. But he lives 3,000 highly inconvenient miles away, so we’re not exactly doing Saturday morning Starbucks runs or weekend bimbles.
I have a few other proximate friends who also ride: one owns Union Garage, an excellent moto-gear shop in Bridgeport (formerly Brooklyn), and another owns Rising Wolf Garage in NYC (where I kept a bike for a riding season). But they’re in different life-stages with different schedules and obligations. And I’m a recently retired Ad Guy with delicious (and very real) time on my hands, and a really loving, supportive spouse who indulges my moto-obsession.
So for the most part, when I’m not with her, it’s just me…and my bikes.
Sometimes I’ll go out to the garage, put on some tunes, crack open a beer, plop down on a lawn chair, and have a chat with them.
It’s very…one-sided.
So when I finally got myself a GSA (which I wrote about here) and heard about the upcoming BMW MOA Rally in Vermont, I said to myself (and Emily):
“I’d rally like to go.”
And had plenty of reasons why.
First, I’d never been to a rally before, not counting the annual Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, which I suppose is sort of a rally, but in truth is more of an annual one-off fundraising ride.
Second, my GSA came with a free, one-year membership to the MOA (aka BMW Motorcycle Owners of America), which let me know about the rally in the first place, and encouraged me to attend.
Third, I live in Connecticut—an easy day-ride from Essex Junction, Vermont.
And fourth, Vermont is a State I Love (link to another Ride Report)— it’s where I went to UVM, just down the road from the rally-grounds; it’s where I met my wife; it’s where we ski every winter; and it’s a large part of the reason I became a later-in-life Ski Patroller and EMT.
So with all that (and the Rally App on my iPhone), I set off for my first-ever, large scale, In Real Life motorbike experience.
It took a couple of hours to make my way up through New England…
and into the Green Mountain State.
And when I finally rolled into the Champlain Valley Exposition grounds in Essex Junction, I was gobsmacked.
These…are…my…PEOPLE!
I don’t think I have ever seen so many bikes—and so many BMWs—in one place at one time. Which also meant I had never been among so many fellow bikers (and not just bikers, but dyed-in-the-Bavarian-wool, Gelände/Straße-meandering, boxer twin-mad BMW riders) all in one place. I’d say “under one tent,” but there were…a LOT of them.
Normally, I would have found this a bit overwhelming and intimidating. But fortunately, within a few minutes of arriving, I stumbled on a few friendly faces.
First, my pal Chris Lesser, owner of the aforementioned Union Garage, who trucked practically everything but his brick walls and wide-plank flooring up to Vermont for the Rally…
And next, my friends Michael and Nuri Wernick, a celebrity-status moto-couple from NYC (and the aforementioned owners of Rising Wolf Garage), who seemed to know literally everyone at the rally.
They took me under their wing and introduced me to no less than a dozen people, including several folks from the BMW MOA (including the delightful Jennifer Ott and Tami Bakke); Brian Rathjen and Shira Kamil, the enthusiastic publishers of Backroads Magazine…
the good folks from MotoQuest tours…
Scott Moreno, Founder & CEO of IMTBike tours.
And we even had the chance to dine together under the one big tent with Scott, Paulo Murteira from IMT, and other friends. (FWIW the wood-fired pizza truck was 👨🍳 🤌chef’s kiss.
I even got a chance to say hi to the folks from MAX BMW (where I bought my GSA), and left with one of their sweet green Vermont Rally T-shirts. Thanks, Max!
It was truly remarkable (I’d even go so far as to say exhilarating) being around so many real-life people who share the same real-life passion (obsession?), and who just come up to you and start talking. In many other aspects of “real life” this would be awkward, unusual, or just plain weird; but here, it was as natural as balancing on two wheels.
I stumbled into random and spontaneous conversations with (among others):
• a gentleman who appeared to be in his late seventies, who rode his RT up from Arizona in THREE DAYS (he’s an annual MOA rally-goer and obvious endurance-ride addict)
• a couple from Mystic, Connecticut, whom I later recognized as having met several years ago in the pool-table “waiting room” at Hamlin Cycles—Jim Hamlin’s eponymous and excellent Moto Guzzi shop in Bethel, CT. Hello Paul and Dawn Miller!
• a guy who rode his GS in from Detroit (Hello Dan Conner—if you stumble on reading this, nice chatting Rivians, tech sales, housing markets, and bikes with ya!)
And so many more. It was awesome.
Beyond that, I wasn’t entirely sure what you actually do at a rally, other than chat and chill with other riders. But I soon figured it out.
There was a ton of scheduled programming—bike-tour travel presentations, maintenance seminars, a GS challenge course to try out your off-road skills, a police bike cone-course to watch razor-sharp on-pavement handling skills…
Plus BMW Motorrad brought their entire range of bikes for your demo-ing pleasure. I chatted with several folks who spent an entire day just sampling different BMWs.
And me? I had a sweet set of Denali D7 Pros installed. They’re fabulous and on high-beam can light up the entire state of Vermont. I also did some volunteering (which was super easy to sign up for via the Rally App), hoping my EMT/Ski Patroller skills might prove useful (and they did).
I covered an afternoon at the MOA’s first-ever Rally Blood Drive, where we had to revive and care for a donor who fainted (and boy, where they out cold!)
And I did another afternoon shift at the Rally First Aid Station, which took some effort to find (FYI this was NOT it, as I mistakenly discovered when I showed up). It was actually under the Grandstands, closer to the center of Rally action.
A funny coincidence: just as I’d settled in at First Aid, another guy came walking in for the same shift. He looked incredibly familiar, but out of context. The minute he opened his mouth to speak, it clicked.
“Tony? What the heck are YOU doing here?!”
Turns out it was a fellow Ski Patroller (Tony Philpin) from Ski Sundown, the small CT mountain where we both work during the winter…and also an EMT.
Who’d’ve thunk? You meet the nicest people on a BMW!
We only had a few minor incidents, but ironically three identical ones. Each patient had a “get off” from their GS and managed to gouge a nice hole in their shins, presumably from the foot pegs. Nothing a little Bactine, sterile gauze, and a large Band-Aid couldn’t solve. It was fun and gratifying to pitch in and help out.
Beyond that, and like everyone else, I did some fabulous riding. This included several beloved gap roads like Smuggler’s Notch and Roxbury Gap, which were fun to “ski” up and down on a 600-pound motorbike.
And since I was back in my old college stomping grounds, I spent one morning poking around Groovy-UV (as we called the University of Vermont back in the day).
I even visited the spot on the old campus quad where I first kissed my wife ♥️😍. That was back when we were, oh…nineteen? As Shaggy would say, “Zoinks!”
And while I loved all the IRL togetherness, and I normally do enjoy motocamping, I wasn’t so sure how I felt about tenting it with 5,000 of my favorite fellow motorcyclists, sharing a handful of port-a-potties and 6 showers with all of them. Especially since high heat, humidity, and violent thunderstorms were in the forecast (which unfortunately proved accurate).
Fortunately, though, my wife booked me into a lovely and peaceful AirBnB in Underhill, a lovely and peaceful 25 minute ride east of the rally.
It had a swimming pond. Bullfrogs. Air conditioning. A comfortable bed. And a piping hot shower.
Did I mention it had air conditioning?
And each morning before the Rally, it was just me and Mount Mansfield, which I’ve been hiking, riding, and skiing my entire adult life. Nice to see you, old friend.
I loved every single IRL moment that I spent at the MOA Rally. Frankly, I’m still kind of buzzed by it. It was awesome spending the entire weekend off my phone (except for the occasional photo op), engaged with other humans, and shooting the shit about bikes, riding, Vermont, tires, suspension, saddles, lighting, countries-toured, and states-ridden.
It was shockingly, refreshingly, and entirely POLITICS-FREE, unlike virtually every online space these days, which have become infected with endless posturing, side-taking, and virtue-signaling. (Insert vomit emoji here, not for either side, but for the incessant side-taking).
It was great just to talk to people—even complete strangers—and feel a general and widespread vibe of camaraderie and joy, which confirms my long-held belief that motorcycles are, in fact, joy machines. For the most part (at least here in the developed and car-dominated west), they really serve no other function but to convey pleasure and joy. Get together with 5,000 other folks who have that etched into their own souls, and it’s bound to be a happy time.
My only very gently critical observation would be about demographics. I’m 61, and felt like I was on the younger end of the attendee spectrum, which can’t be helpful for future rallies, or the future health of the sport. Motorcycling is obviously a recreational activity that takes time, skill-building, risk-tolerance, and disposable income (BMW riders probably among the sport’s greatest income-disposers).
On the one hand, I was inspired to be hanging with some septa- and octagonarians who are still in the saddle. And given our shared passion, everything else (age, sex, race, religion, and economic demographics) falls away when we’re grooving on bikes. I heard a fair bit of chatter about the absence of youth (which in this case would include twenty-, thirty-, and forty-somethings). Maybe one of these years, instead of “bring your child to work day” MOA should do a “bring your child to Rally” weekend.
Regardless, a hearty shout-out to the BMW MOA organizers—and Rally Chairs Bob and Bonnie Cohen—for throwing such an exceptional moto-party. I’m sure a lot of hard work went into it. We sure did our part, hardly working…but working hard to enjoy all of it.
Next year, the MOA Rally is in Great Falls, Montana, a less-modest 2,212 miles from home (Essex Junction was a 300 mile walk in the park, for comparison).
And I’m actually thinking about riding to it.
longitudeandgratitude.blog 