2026 Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride

It's that time of year again. I tried my first one last year and it was kinda fun.

Here's my thread from last year.
https://www.xjbikes.com/forums/threads/anyone-doing-the-dgr-this-year.132918/

I signed up for the Colorado Springs one this year. It's a little larger event. Anyone else doing their local ride?

https://gentlemansride.com

 

I am.

 

It's here, this Sunday. Everyone should sign up for your local Ride and support men's health.

 

I'm doing the North Fork Ride. Bought a new vintage style open face helmet & procured a tweed vest & jacket for the event. Looking forward to it here on Long Island. Weather looking great!

 

The event went off without a hitch. A couple drops of rain here and there, but not enough to even get anything wet. The event host said it was around 150 riders. I don't think it was that many. There were only 125 signed up online. These events aren't generally much of a ride. More just to cruise around town and attract attention. I was a little disappointed that they didn't make a stop somewhere for a group photo like they did at the Boulder one last year. Probably hard to find a spot big enough to be able to pull it off.

Part of the route took us through downtown where there was an art walk going on, so lots of attention from lots of people on the sidelines watching and waving and probably wondering what the heck all these bikers are doing.

Yamaha was a bit under-represented. I only counted 4, including my 900. A nice little AT1, a good looking XS650, and a newer VMAX. The biggest turnout was Triumph, Ducati, and Guzzi, which makes sense considering it was held at a Triumph/Ducati/Guzzi dealership. A few Beemers thrown in, a few Harleys, a few Hondas. I don't recall seeing anything on the Suzuki or Kawasaki front. I feel like I should have had a wooden box strapped to the back though.











The real excitement came on the ride home. I live a little over an hour from where the event was held, and right around the halfway mark, we got that rain we haven't been getting all spring...and good dose of hail to go with it! Quite possibly the worst hailstorm I've ever ridden in, at least on a road bike. Downright painful at times. I could tell something was coming because the cars from the other direction all had headlights on, so I stopped to put on rain gear, only to find out my rain pants were missing! All I had was the jacket. Didn't take long before my riding jeans were soaked to the bone with a pool of water in the crotch! Cold, soaked, pelted with hail, and no shelter for miles. A lot of cars were just pulling over to wait it out, but there's no point doing that on a bike. All it does is make you have to sit in it longer. I pressed on hoping it would break up soon. Every time a vehicle came from the other direction, I got drowned in a wall of hail and water. Fun!

Made it through without incident and got home safe, but what a sketchy ride. Especially on a road bike. I was actually shocked at how well the tires worked, though I admit I wasn't moving too fast.

Overall, a fun event, and the adventure just adds to the memory.

 

I took some shots but more of the ride, not the bikes.
Here we are at a stop light.

Looking back from the same stoplight.


Arriving at a park for the mid ride break.




I'd never seen one of these.


It was a good ride. Perfect, if not warm weather. There was a 4 cyl. Yamaha 400 and a 2 cyl. 650, maybe an XS? Wasn't labeled. My son rode his Magna and my high school friend again rode his Guzzi, this time with the sidecar off. Lots of Triumphs and a Norton or two. Also a couple of modern Indians.

 

Weather was superb for our North Fork DGR ride. Group ride started at a vineyard, rode out to Orient Point and ended at a BBQ/Tap Room. Over 120 bikes showed up. I was the only XJ! I did see a single Kawi KZ 650 "cousin" from our era, but Triumph, BMW & Harley was largely represented.

 

That's one of the things I was a little disappointed in this year. The Boulder ride last year had a couple stops for photo ops and allocated time for group photos. The Colorado Springs one this year didn't make any stops along the way (other than stop lights), and no group photos. There was a photographer that set up along the route and was shooting riders as they came by, but I haven't seen any info about if/where they will be posted.

It was too hard to dig the phone out at stoplights, so here's a couple captures off the GoPro during the ride. Several short-cycle lights had the group split into smaller chunks pretty quickly. At one point we were so fragmented there were only two of us riding together with several cars separating us from the packs ahead and behind. At first the ride guides were doing a pretty good job of trying to keep us together, but eventually we had more fragments than guides and things kinda fell apart.