It's hard to ride in Utah with stopping to admire the scenery.

Bryce Canyon, Utah

The event started with a dinner and reception Friday night at the host hotel in Cedar City.

Tom Buttars pointing out ride options at the Friday reception.

Riding through Cedar Breaks National Monument with Andy Silverman of Redmond, WA in the lead.

A group ride at Kolob Canyon, Saturday morning.

The BMW MOA Weekend Getaway

September 25 - 27, 2009

By Jim Shaw #61722

Photos: Chris Hughes, Greg Feeler

It's nice to enjoy a club membership that's just as unchanging as it was when we first joined, right? While that's not a bad idea, time marches relentlessly. Since I joined BMW MOA, the membership has probably increased from about ten to almost forty thousand riders. The average member likes doing many things with his machine. And not everyone's idea of a riding event includes a tent and a rock band. At least, not every time.

The BMW MOA's stated mission is to foster communication and a sense of family among BMW motorcycle enthusiasts. Well, the communications have doubled and redoubled with expansions in the BMW Owners News and new Web features. That's very much on track addressing both old riders like me and newer riders who gravitate toward electronic stuff. But, back when I was working on the Board, I felt a growing need for more ways of meeting others at eye level. This is the "family" part of BMW MOA's mission. If I'm right, today's BMW MOA has found an additional direction that most of us can be very glad about: the weekend ride-in.

The Weekend Ride - it seems to me that our organization has hit a home run with the inaugural Cedar City Utah event. For those who weren't paying close attention, I'll describe it.

Cedar City is the epicenter of Canyon Country in Utah. Pick a good, comfortable, affordable hotel. Schedule for exactly the best time of year. Anchor the event close enough to major groups of BMW riders, and you've got a completely successful weekend ride-in for a bunch of happy members. Add good food. Surround it with amazing scenery and roads. Cedar City was quite a success, if you ask the eighty-some riders who came.

For me, Cedar City was a wonderful excuse for a long ride. On my way to Utah, I spent some GS rubber seeing the Grand Canyon from both the North and South rims. While I've seen the Canyon a dozen times, this was my first time on a motorcycle. Other riders came from as close as a half day's travel. I arrived on Thursday afternoon, and used early Friday for some serious riding within a hundred miles of the ride-in hotel.

On Friday afternoon, familiar looking motorcycles began arriving: LTs, GSs, RTs, GTs, Rs, Airheads, Oil and Hexheads, K-bricks, and some inline twins. Riders arrived one and two-up. Some had come from as far as Washington and Idaho. Lots were from California and Las Vegas. We had old riders (like me), middle-aged travelers, and some younger folks. It made for a wonderful 'stew' of people, all destined to have a very good time with each other. New BMW MOA VP Jackie Hughes organized the Cedar City ride, and picked just the right hotel.

On Friday evening, everybody was registered and tagged. The hotel provided a large room for socializing. In late September, nights can be chilly in high altitude Utah, so tire kicking gave way to indoor telling of tall tales of the ghosts of rides past. Names became faces. People became personalities. See what I mean about that 'sense of family?' The hotel cocktail lounge adjoined our reception room, so there were solvents available for the stiff. Some folks were a little 'whelmed' from their ride in. Some wanted an o-dark fifteen departure for canyons in the morning. Many folks stayed up late, getting to know others even better.

Early on Saturday, by arrangement, the hotel started serving a buffet breakfast as early as six AM for the folks who wanted to pack in all the scenery and roads the day could offer. There were three suggested routes, which had been researched by Jackie and others. In each case, if you wanted to join a group ride, one of the organizers volunteered to lead the way and take blame for all wrong turns. Many of us chose to study the suggested routes and fabricate just the perfect combination, just for us.

The day went quickly. I chose to ride to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, via Cedar Breaks National Monument. Interested? Here's a piece of an email I sent to friends after I got back home:

"Honestly, the ride out through Utah's canyon country is one of the finest I've ever taken. The memory of riding through a flock of about a thousand sheep will stay around almost as long as anything I've ever done. Coming up on it, I see a ground fog of sheep, and then this bundled up guy on a horse, herding them. The sheep were at the edges of the road, but converging from both sides. The flock was being moved down from the mountains, and was heading through a notch, where the 2-lane road lay. Eventually, that notch only left room for the road...

Before long, it was just me, the motorcycle, and sheep - knee deep. They are less skittery than calves. Then, as I worked my first-gear way up to the head of the flock, there in the midst of them was the herder's dog, just a few sheep from my front wheel, herding them and me in the right direction. It was comforting to see the dog's occasional glance up into my eyes, as he kept careful track of my speed and direction as part of his flock...

There was communication in those glances. We met at some level. I knew he understood my need, the flock's, and his. He kept all three well away from harm.

To put a little scenery around this vignette, we were up near 10,000 feet. It's cold up there in late September. There was brilliant, crystal sunshine, as only can occur at that altitude. A deep azure sky sharply defined the mountains. And on those mountains, deeply dark green cedars were mixed with the dazzling gold of Aspens. Their white trunks supported billows of yellow and orange leaves - leaves the size of your thumb that flutter in the slightest breeze.

Florentine gold. It was what I rode 6,000 miles to see. And that flock of sheep, and the shepherd's dog made me slow down to enjoy it at their speed. Add the sound of bahing and baaahing all around, and I hope you can see it, too.

When I broke out at the front of the flock, I suddenly missed them...

Riding Zion is to feel very small, winding your way through tunnels and around hairpin turns beneath massive pillars of sculpted granite hundreds of feet high. Bryce is solid gold; rock pillars that seem to have been dripped from some giant orange colored candle in the sky. Riding the park roads, the rider has chances to see those spiked gold towers from the top and from the bottom. If you haven't seen them from a motorcycle and on foot, ask yourself why?

A quick shower and a change into civilian clothes let me shake off the dazzled mentality of the day's ride. Riders swaggered, staggered, and trudged in from their long miles, and gathered before dinner. The registration included a grand buffet supper with plenty for seconds. We again kept the room late into the evening. Riders were preparing for early Sunday morning departures in all directions. For me, it was a longer, faster ride home; mostly Interstates. But that started Monday. Sunday, I would invest in back roads to the East and North, through arid, beautiful Canyonlands and the Arches countryside.

So, how'd it go, I hear you ask? I can't think of any room for improvement. The concept is sound. BMW riders are fun to be with. Canyon country is just one of many pieces of America the Beautiful that warrant an excuse to ride. Do it again, MOA. And again, and again.

Jim Shaw is a former Vice President of BMW MOA and a long time contributor to the BMW Owners News. Jim first learned to ride at the tender age of 46, and graduated to BMW motorcycles at 49. Since then, he has well over 200,000 miles on the Marque. For 35 years a world traveler, in retirement, most of Jim's trips are via a BMW GS.