Featured Distinguished Gentlemans Ride 29/09/19

Cheers Jez, but I wasn’t either,
And you won’t get a sarcastic reply for fear of offending others.
Have a good break.

 

Enjoy your holiday mate

 

Enjoy your holiday Jez

 

Have a good holiday mate

 

Have a JOLLY HOLLY JEZ! Get soaked ...... in sunshine, and stoked ........ in whatever lights your fire!

 

Steve, what great photos! Your stunning location certainly matches the spirit of the "Distinguished" Gentleman's Ride. Our start and finish locations in Tucson didn't have quite the cachet of Wilton House and Rifles Museum. Hope you had a great ride. Looks like you didn't need to slather the Bonnie with that FS-365. Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

Here are some photos and comments from yesterday's Distinguished Gentleman's Ride in Tucson Arizona. Our fine little city has raised over $28,000 so far for 2019. In 2018 we topped out at $10,000. The weather was picture perfect. 68ºF when I left the house at 7:00am and at it's warmest during the event it hit 82ºF. When I checked the parent DGR homepage a few minutes ago it indicated that $5,500,000 has been donated worldwide.

While not exactly a "modern classic" and most certainly not vintage, I think my Speedy goes quite nicely with my black and white houndstooth blazer and my gloss black Bell Bullit helmet. Though DGR "at large" encourages riders to be on oldies and some modern version looking vintage, our fearless Tucson ride organizer welcomes all comers!

Such as this sweet scooter!



And this is me and our fearless Tucson ride organizer, Nils, before the ride briefing. Nils has organized the Tucson DGR since it started four years ago. RestoCycle is his business--they do vapor blasting to restore aluminum. Inside they had some very sweet vintage Honda six-cylinders all polished up and on display.


Our Tucson ride route--mainly along the western edge of town and then back across through it centrally. A very nice route for our 100+ group. We had the services of the Southwest Rangers, a motorcycle police organization who donated their services to support our ride. All intersections were controlled by these guys and we only had to stop once in nearly 60 miles. Folks who had to wait for us were all quite patient and kind.







Our regrouping / refreshment / and photo-op stop at Brandi Fenton Park.





Thanks to @OsteKuste and his dino mascot, China, I was inspired to get me a ride mascot, too. So meet Javier the Javelina. I'll tell you more about Javi as he travels with me this coming weekend to the Las Vegas Bike Fest.



And our final destination, Barrio Brewery, one of Tucson's first local breweries. Our local Triumph Dealer, Arizona Kawasaki--KTM--Triumph, was one of the main sponsors in addition to RestoCycles. I met a lovely couple at lunch for whom this was their first group ride ever as they just started riding a little less than a year ago. They loved it and are now firmly in the motorcycles fold! I just love the motorcycle community. Even the crotchety curmudgeonly among us.

 

Haha, I'm afraid I did! It rained on and off all morning, particularly at the first stop. It really poured down on the way back to Salisbury but then the sun came out at the end.
These guys got a real soaking along the way!

 

Great pictures Sandi, really jealous of that blue sky! Annoyingly, that was the weather we had all the previous week!

Here is Chelsea, our ride organiser, and her Metisse Mk3 Desert Racer, (still hand-made to order and based on Steve McQueen's original frame design).

 

Love the mascot!

 

Is it just me? I cannot, for the life of me, see any back brake on any of those three choppers .... unless those rear wheel sprocket carriers are actually small, drum braked hubs. The green bike does have what appears to be an hydraulic cylinder on the back brake pedal but, heck, if the left side of that that rear hub is the brake drum, it's tiny!

 

Great pictures and commentary about your day at the DGR, thanks for sharing.

 

Happy Holiday mate

 

Now you mention it!
Only got pics from the one side unfortunately.

 

Steve, I'm sorry to read that it did rain after all. But kudos to you for getting out there in spite of the wet weather to raise money for a great cause! Yeah, I'm sure those guys got a good soaking. That'll happen when you have NO FRONT FENDER!
Glad you got at least a bit of sunny skies!

 

Ooooh, Chelsea's Metisse Mk3 Desert Racer is spectacular! Thanks for the great photos, Steve.

 

Thanks, OsteKuste! You and China were my inspiration. I chose a javelina because they are part of our southwestern desert wildlife. And because everyone think they are pigs (aka "Hog" -- Harleys -- you get the idea) though they are peccaries and not true or traditional pigs. Anyway, I also thought about his name and came up with Javier for the alliterative quality as well as the Spanish language influence and Mexican border proximity we have in southern AZ. And I call him Javi (ha-vee) for short. P.S. Mr. Sandi, Annie, and I spotted (well, Annie spotted them first) two medium-sized javelina in a wash right near our house on our morning walk yesterday morning. I think it was a sign that I chose the right travel mascot.

 

P.S. Is Chelsea's helmet a Hedon?? It's bee-yoo-tee-ful!

 

From the pictures it looks like the rear sprockets double as brake discs, @Adie P .
A bit like this:

 

I think it is Sandi