Minnesota & North Dakota District

Have you ever wondered why you joined GWRRA, or for that matter any organization?  When you join, you receive a monthly Wing World magazine, the Gold Book, and Rescue Plus is offered at a reasonable rate to name a few.  That is the business end of things that are promoted by the home office in Phoenix.  I’ll give you a few good reasons why I joined at the end of this article.

I have led a few group rides since becoming a member of GWRRA and the UP of Michigan Ride-In has to be one of the best we’ve been on.  When Bruce and Barb Beeman and Cheri and I first discussed going on an extended weekend we had no idea it would balloon like it did. 

After GWRRA reorganized and eliminated the Regions from its structure, it left a little void.  A void that could sever relationships with people that you only meet at the Region Rally.  So when we met with the Beeman’s to discuss our adventure way back in November, I brought up this concern and asked them how they felt about opening it up to not only our own Chapter members, but all District members within Wisconsin and Minnesota.  The idea passed with flying colors and we were off and making plans.

We knew this was going to be something special when the Root Cellar Resort was filled to capacity after a couple months.  We went on to fill another local motel in town and overflow into yet another resort.  To say the least, it was incredible to see so many people showing interest in this ride.

The toughest part of planning this trip now took a different turn.  With so many bikes going on this ride from Wisconsin, it was obvious we all couldn’t travel in one large group.  We wanted to break the group down into smaller groups of 5-7 bikes each.  We started our trip to the UP from Wisconsin Rapids with six bikes.  When we arrived in Plover there were seven bikes waiting to join us.  We had them follow as the second group with their own lead and tail.  They stayed about ¼ mile behind the first group.  The same occurred when we got to our last pickup point.  There were seven bikes there and they were the third group staying ¼ mile behind the second group.  This worked out well with the tail of each group communicating with the lead in the group behind them.  No one got lost or left behind.

I won’t get into every detail of what we did on this trip, but I would like to share some of the things we observed.  We had a lot of people that were first timers