FL Rally and Club Ride - 3. A Riding Day for the Club But…

3. A Riding Day for the Club But…

We did not ride! 

It is Sunday, heavy rains are predicted, the sky looks ominous; who wants to ride in the rain? But true to form, a lot of our Ontario Club riders scooted for a few hours, exploring the neighborhoods.

Since this is not our first Finger Lakes Rally, we have done those rides, we have seen the lanes, the twisty roads, the villages. The area around Watkins Glen is pretty. The farm land gives way to some very shady, twisty roads with lots of curb appeal. 

Dinner - Chicken With Mushroom Gravy

But we mostly read during the day, hanging out, waiting for the rain to start. 

The Rally admission includes a dinner on Saturday and Sunday, we only had to cover our breakfasts. Our usual breakfast at a rally is granola with yogurt and fruit. It is easy to transport, easy to eat. Just pour the granola into the yogurt cup, stir… voila!  There is always coffee available at most rally sites, the Finger Lakes Rally provided coffee and water all day.

Breakfast at Our Tent

We chatted with a lot of people; we walked around the site, sometimes together, like a couple, other times as individuals, depending on what interested us. Our meeting place was our tent and we set a certain time to meet there.

A motorcycle rally to me is meeting people, exchanging ideas, viewpoints. To me it is not riding around the neighborhood. I ask questions like, why are you riding a motorcycle? (You would be surprised about the answers you get). Or I ask what don’t you like about riding a motorcycle and equally, you get all kinds of answers.

Dinners Are In the Beer Tent

There are lovers of old bikes at each rally, but I prefer the latest, newest ‘inventions’ that are added to a bike. I find some apps to use from other people like the, to me, new mapping app ‘furkot’.  

I listen carefully when experienced riders explain to me what they do when they travel. What gear they prefer or what farkles they use on their bikes, etc.

To me a rally is visiting an ‘experience store’. I can always find new ideas, new points of view or new ‘stuff’ that I have not looked up in detail before. 

Friend Marty Hard at Work and Always Smiling

Talking about detail or detailing!

 Mary Sluyter, the Detail Man… He is a unique individual, everybody knows him, knows of him. He is a ‘Poverty’ Rider. The word poverty meaning he lives off the land so to speak. His tent is small, his global footprint unassuming. He repairs parts before replacing with new ones. Marty rides almost every day, all year long. He details cars, bikes; RV’s anything that needs ‘cleaning’ outside your house. He will come to your place riding in on his motorcycle(s). Just write to him in messenger on Facebook:  Mary Sluyter……….

Marty's Bike

Marty is a nice guy, you cannot help but love him. His life right now is laced with FREEDOM. He loves the road, rides into areas that are so obscure you might wonder how he finds those places. He posts on Facebook, and his trade mark is to end each report of Facebook with the remark “eh?”

Marty sure is a character out of some book.  He could write a book about his experiences but Marty is unassuming. He does not grandiose himself. He is more at ease living off P and J sandwiches. 

Yes, I talk to Marty, talk to his friends, talk to everybody at a rally. I learned one lesson riding a motorcycle… never judge your fellow rider. No matter what he looks like, what he/she  believes, what he/she does… behind what  you see is a whole different dimension. I meet the smartest people that way. Many a time I would think ‘who would have known’ this person is a: lawyer, doctor, policeman, veteran, soldier or even hero.  You never know!

Marc Is Having Such a Good Time

Everybody has a story, everybody’s life is unique and all have their story to tell. To me a rally is getting to meet folks, getting to chat, getting to know life through different eyes, through eyes from a different prospective.

I like rallies.

To me it’s not about the riding alone, or even riding around the block in a new town. To me a rally represents life; a rally is a place where different experiences meet. 

And if you ever have the luck to meet JJ, and get to talk seriously to him, you KNOW you have met someone special……  Hello, JJ!   

Foldable, Electric Bike

It never rained that day, but… there are heavy rains predicted for the night.

Because of this forecast many riders left the rally on Sunday night. I watched them leave, thinking: “ah, we have to pack a wet tent tomorrow morning, Yuk”.

And then while watching the folks pack up their bikes, while I sat in my chair doing my all time favorite thing, “watching people work”, the idea struck me to move into a now fairly empty bunk house; at least for this one night. It would be a new experience for me; the last time I bunked was during Grammar School.

So I took down our tent, moved some stuff into the bunk house and packed up everything dry. Wonderful! Jean and Ross would haul our heavy stuff (tent, cooler, thermarests) with their truck to their house and we only kept sleeping bags for sleeping in the cabin. 

We Put Our Sleeping Bags on Mattresses On the Floor

We had a raffle that night, prizes were given away. I won nothing. Carol won some LED light inserts but they did not fit her bike.

Here are some statistics of the rally:

468 paying people showed up for the rally.  This rally used to have 1200 to 1300 attend years ago.

Kate L. won best of class with her 1000cc /5 bike

John (Dutch) L. won best of class with his 1000cc/6 bike

Dutch and Kate With Their Winning Bikes

88 riders came from Ontario. The biggest club participating was the BMW Motorcycle Club of Ontario, 28 members came to the rally (used to have 40 members attending).

Carol won the ‘oldest’ female rider award, she deserved it.