The bike hammered, the people smiled and a heck of a lot of money was raised for cancer research.
I dusted off the CB100 after its winter hibernation to take part in the Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride this last Sunday. If you hadn’t heard, the DGR is an annual ride and fundraising event for classic style moto’s. You dress in your best dapper outfit and take a ride with a bunch of like minded folk to raise money for prostate cancer research. There were over 20,000 riders taking part in 258 rides across 57 Countries. All in all around $1.5 million USD was raised globally.
In my city we were lucky enough to get a beautiful spring day for the 45 (75 bikes showed up on the day) fantastic machines and their dapper humans. We took a fairly sedate ride around town stopping at a couple of locations for photo ops before finishing at a local watering hole to carry on with looking, talking and pointing at bikes – one of my all time favourite pass-times.
What is awesome about the DGR, aside from ogling at and yabbering about old bikes, is the smiles and waves from all the gentle folk you cruise past. I’ll tell you, nothing brings on more smiles than a polite toot from a 6 volt horn.
For me and my little Honda, smiling onlookers are not uncommon. One of the many things I love about the little machine is the pleasant attention it brings. You know, I had 4 separate conversations going home from work the other day. One scooter lane-split about 20 rows of cars to pull up next to me at a stop sign to ask what year it was – “Had one 20 years ago as a teenager” he said. Fantastic. I told him he should get another and then look me up on google with ‘cb100ss’.
I had a pedestrian dart across traffic (at great risk) to ask if he could take a photo, and then I was stopped in the car park at the shops yabbering for about ten minutes with an old fella before his wife eventually dragged him away. One of the joys of old bikes for sure – add some dapper threads and it was all on show for the DGR.
A few bike highlights worth mentioning. Simmo Arthur’s XLR1200 Harley street tracker was awesome to see up close. Simmo did an epic job fundraising, coming in 3rd globally with over $6.5 K. His tracker is sort of a replica of the legendary Harley XR750 dirt tracker that dominated the 70’s US flat track racing scene. I’d gladly take Simmo’s machine for a spin. Left, left and left again.
I was also stoked to see a few neat looking 100’s at the DGR. Karan was the first bloke I spoke to when I pulled up at the staging point – he was riding a sweet looking Kawasaki KH100 2-stroke. He leaves it parked in his barber’s shop during the week and had to hot wire it for the Sunday Ride. Nice!
Chris built up his slick Skyteam Ace 125 and it only had 500 KMs on the clock before the DGR. The ACE is a tidy looking replica of the Honda CR110 race machine from the 70’s. Gotta love that tank!
The was also another couple of 2-stroke 100’s, another Kwacka and a Suzuki A100.
I reckon there are enough small capacity enthusiasts around town to get a 100’s ride scene going. ‘Little Bikes – a long way’ and ‘80 is a great speed’ theme.
The classic and custom bike scene is alive and well in this city and by the global turnout at last Sunday’s DGR probably in yours too. Get along to these kind of events and you’ll be surprised at the people and bikes that come out of the wood work. Thanks to the awesome DGR crew and all the local volunteers for organising such an awesome event.
Thanks again to my sponsors:
cb100ss 