Polar Bear Grand Tour Best Pictures and Videos of the 2014-2015 Riding Season

We present here a gallery of the best Polar Bear Grand Tour motorcycle pictures and videos for the 2014-2015 riding season. My definition of "best" is probably different from yours. I just looked at the more than 1000 pictures and 50 videos published during the season and picked what I liked best -- whatever caught my eye or I thought was different or offbeat.

Take a look and listen.

The Americade Motorcycle Rally at Lake George, NY is set for June 2-7, 2014

The resort town of Lake George, NY sees plenty of tourists, conventions, and gatherings during the year. However, its biggest draw is in June when it hosts the biggest motorcycle touring rally in the world, the Americade Motorcycle Rally. The rally is held the first full week of June and for 2014, it's June 2-7. This will be the 32nd annual Americade.

The featured seminar speakers for 2014 are Alonzo Bodden, Comedian and Rider, "Touring to Track Days - We All Ride," Maggie McNally, MSF Rider Coach and AMA Board Member, "Girls Can't Do What?" Fred Rau, "We've Come a Long Way, Baby...," and Greg Drevenstedt, Rider Magazine Road Test Editor, "Two-Wheeled Time Machine." Where else can you go to hear such outstanding personalities in one place? Only at Americade!

It's a little late to find a place to stay for the whole week but day trips can be fun too.

Read my article on Americade for more details including a link to the Americade Website.

Also, to find out how to have a good time at Americade, check out my feature, Ten Ways to Enjoy Americade.

How to Stay Dry While Riding in the Rain (Video)

I think most of us have learned how to deal with rain when we ride our motorcycles. Some riders just don't deliberately ride off on their bikes when it's expected to rain. However, most riders know that you can't take a long trip and not expect it to rain.

You're riding along and see the increasing darkness ahead of you. It gets darker and darker. You see cars approaching you with their lights on and then you see wipers going. The wind picks up. You begin looking for a temporary shelter where you can change into your rain gear. You finally stop and get as far off the road as you can in a sheltered place. You get your rainsuit from your saddlebags or trunk and fight it over your jacket, pants, and boots. Hopefully you have some special rain gloves or even a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves. Some even have rubber rain boots to slip on over their boots. Of course, you also have a fullfaced helmet to encase your head and keep driving rain out of your eyes. You are ready for the rain and cautiously ride off. Of course, an extremely heavy rain with puddling, lightning, and thunder should cause you to give up on your riding and seek some semi-permanent shelter to wait out the passing storm.

On the other hand, some riders ponder over better ways to keep dry in the rain. Here are some pictures and a video from core77.com that document one man's attempt to stay dry. You may or may not agree with his approach or want to buy his product. Take a look.

Major Motorcycle Rallies for 2013

In the off season, many riders like to plan rides to various motorcycle rallies. I have just updated my motorcycle rally article and schedule for 2013 to assist you.

Motorcycle rallies (biker rallies) are simply gatherings of riders and motorcycles at specified times and places usually with attendant vendors, food, games, and other activities.

Motorcycle rallies or biker rallies may last from a day to more than a week. Some major motorcycle or biker rallies are built around organized professional motorcycle races.

Motorcycle rally attendance varied widely from a low of a couple of dozen riders or less to huge organized rallies with hundreds of thousands of riders.

My updated article, Motorcycle Rallies (Biker Rallies) - Major Rallies for Motorcycles, gives basic information about motorcycle rallies. The second page of this article contains my list of the top motorcycle rallies.

The picture shows me raising my arm after I parked my bike on Main Street at the 1993 Sturgis Rally. That was the year of the great Midwest floods.

Two Women Riders Receive BMW Mileage Award

According to an article published in Clutch and Chrome, two female motorcyclists have received the million mile award from BMW. Here's an excerpt:

"Travelling epic distances is nothing new to BMW Motorrad adventurers, but while many ride tens, or even hundreds of thousands of miles, two American women have racked up a record few could even contemplate. Enter Ardys Kellerman and Voni Glaves, who are officially recognized as the first female BMW riders in North America to cover one million miles (1.6 million kilometers). The distance, which is more than 40 times the circumference of the globe, took decades to accumulate and between them, the women have used 31 different motorcycles." -- Digits

Read the complete article.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally - August 8-14, 2011

Each year, hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists head toward what many feel is the motorcycling mecca of the world, Sturgis, and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota takes place this year August 8-14.

Check out my article on this great motorcycle rally. See if you can see me waving in the picture when I attended the 1993 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. I really need to go back to this great rally. How about you?

Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Run - Old Bikes Hit the Road

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, The Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Run has begun. This is a coast-to-coast run of pre-1916 motorcycles starting from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and ending in Santa Monica, California. Dates for the run are September 10-26, 2010. Check out the Cannonball Run website for everything you might want to know about this historic run. (I've noticed that the website can be slow to load or even produce dreaded Internal Server Errors.)

To give you a flavor for what the bikes look like and sound like and how enthusiastic their riders are, I've listed five videos of interviews with Cannonball riders:

• #44 Jon Szalay - 1911 H-D 7A


• #16 Bill Campbell - 1915 H-D Twin


• #15 Buzz Kanter - 1915 H-D Twin


• #47 Ron Mattson - 1915 Indian F-head V-twin


• #89 Cristine Sommer-Simmons - 1915 H-D 11-J

Keep checking the Cannonball Run website for daily updates. Hopefully, we may see some coverage of this event on TV.

Motorcycle Touring - Take a Long Trip on Your Motorcycle

The dictionary defines a tour as "a journey for business, pleasure or education often involving a series of stops and ending at the starting point." Thus a tour is a complete circuit.

Motorcycle touring has always been a part of motorcycling. Early riders wanted to jump on their motorcycles and ride to see what was over the next hill. Of course the roads weren't too good in those days and travel could be slow. Bill Stermer in his book, Motorcycle Touring and Travel: A Handbook of Travel by Motorcycle, says:

"The bike on which most people choose to tour tends to be the one they own at the time."

This was certainly true early on before the advent of the heavyweight touring motorcycles of the last twenty-five years. The introduction of the Honda Gold Wing has changed all that. Read more.