Alabama’s March of Dimes Ride - Saving Babies

Harriet contacted us several months ahead of the ride to introduce herself and to invite Cycle Connections to get involved with this year’s fundraising event. We were very proud to be one of the sponsors and to be a part of the planning process. We knew Harriet had inherited all of the bad feelings from last year’s ride, so we got her to come out to Bike Night at Lightning Strikes. We figured that would help ease her into the motorcycle community, and we knew she would be able to get information out to several hundred people at a time from there, which she did! Actually, she was kind of relentless like a pit bull and it paid off for her, as her Birmingham group was the largest with several hundred to make the ride from there alone.

American Cycle Centers, our Victory dealer, was the “hub” departure point for Birmingham. They also donated a scooter to be raffled off. The other rides came from Montgomery, Dothan, and Huntsville. The plan was to have the groups leave from their departure points and ride to Barber Motorsports Park, where this year for their donations to the March of Dimes they got to take a couple of hot laps around one of the coolest and most beautiful tracks in the world. What better coupling—raising awareness and much needed dollars for things like research programs to help prevent birth defects and infant mortality and getting rewarded for your donations by getting to spend the day at the Barber Motorsports Park, riding the track and touring the spectacular museum that contains Mr. George Barber’s collection of motorcycles, consisting of a wide assortment of styles and age.

The Birmingham group was naturally the first to arrive since they were the closest. And because most of the motorcycle community around here has been chomping at the bit to ride this track, they weren’t about to let a little dew on the grass and chill in the air keep them from that mission. So as soon as they arrived, they were forming groups to take out on the track to do a few laps.

Riders Harley-Davidson in Trussville loaned us the use of their large pop-up tent to put our Cycle Connections banner, cover sheet, cards, and articles under as well as Leigh and Fuzzy’s bikes. We just got that put up when the first group started out on the track. I knew that Leigh was looking forward to getting the V-Rod out there as I’m sure he has thought about it every time we come out here to cover a race, so I hitched a ride with one of the escort riders, Jack Galbreath, on his fat bike. Jack took me out several times and had us all over the track, insuring that we got some really cool pictures from the ride in progress. Between the track and the museum, it was like putting a bunch of kids in a toy store! Everyone had a blast.

Leigh and I had a chance to talk with Mr. Barber and Jeff Ray while we were in the museum. Both are super nice guys, and both were very excited about having the bikers from around the state descend on them. This is the first year they have booked events like that, but they have plans for the future to expand and attract even more events in the future. We are looking forward to it.

This turned out to be the perfect day weather-wise. When people weren’t riding the track or touring the museum, they had vendors to browse through, like the Leather Lady from Altoona, James L. Sanderson Jr. Laser Assisted Comprehensive Dentistry and the folks from Pure Works. And “Blackland” was the band that rocked us all. These guys are good. They just recently started playing for motorcycle events, but they are no strangers to the music industry as they have played with several well-known groups and they have their own studio and have released their own CDs. They purchased a Harley trailer to haul their equipment around to the different events so that they would blend in.

This was truly an awesome daylong event, and between the donations generated from this event and the donations raised prior to the event, they hope to raise around $100,000, but since they still had donations coming in, we were unable to get a final account as of this writing.

I think they have done a very good job with this ride, especially since this is only the fifth year for Alabama to have a motorcycle ride as their fundraising event. Thankfully they have already started the planning for next year’s ride, and you can bet that Cycle Connections will be there.

For more information on the March of Dimes or the ride for next year, or even to make a donation, please click on the March of Dimes logo in Cycle Connections.

Write-On and Ride-On

Story and photos by Lynn Reynolds and Leigh Lilly - Birmingham, Alabama