2006 International Rally Welcome By Josh Ascher, Michael Friedle and Rob Nye, 2006 International Rally Chairs

January 3, 2006

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2006 to our fellow MOA members!

As we sit here looking out the window, everything for as far as we can see is a ghostly white, and will remain so for at least another couple of months. Not really a good time to go riding, but a very good time to plan for and dream about the world turning green again. Green, as in Green Mountains, as in the Green Mountains of Vermont. A wonderful, enchanted place to ride a motorcycle, a perfect venue for the 34th BMW MOA International Rally, to be held in Essex Junction, Vermont on July 20-23, 2006. This year we are blessed not only with a great Rally venue, but are doubly blessed with some of the best riding in the Northeast in any direction you point your front wheel.

The Champlain Valley Exposition Center (CVE) offers all the physical amenities required for a successful event. There will be virtually unlimited camping space, over 100,000 square feet of air conditioned indoor vendor space, far more than enough outdoor vendor space, excellent seminar spaces, a large grandstand facility, a tempting variety of on-site food vendors, plenty of modern restrooms, plenty of RV parking, a central location for the hospitality/ beer garden/entertainment tent, the biggest facility ever for our Vintage Bike Display and Mobile Tradition exhibit, dedicated entrance and exit for our demo rides, and much more... all on over 130 acres of space reserved for our exclusive BMW MOA use. It is easy to find from any direction you approach the Burlington area. There will be a dedicated entrance and another separate exit to facilitate traffic flow. There are plenty of support services in the immediate vicinity of the site.

You can approach Essex Junction from any direction and have a great ride. Head east over Lake Champlain on one of the ferries, come south out of Quebec passing through one of the small border crossings, west out of New England through the magical Northeast Kingdom or north along the fabled Route 100 the length of Vermont. Maybe you want to head in all four directions and ride all the Vermont "Gap" Roads on your way to the Rally. In the coming months we will be previewing suggested rides, routes and destinations all over Vermont and the adjoining areas. Go to Montreal for lunch, visit Lake Placid to see the ski jumps or take a ride down the Olympic bobsled course, ride dirt roads from the Canadian border to the Massachusetts border, see the covered bridges, white churches, red barns and black and white cows that are the real Vermont. We encourage you to come early and stay late, and you still won't want to leave Vermont.

We have even arranged a place for all those early arrivals to gather before the Rally gates open. The 'MOA has made arrangements with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation to have the exclusive use of Lake Carmi State Park for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the Rally to accommodate our early arrivals. Lake Carmi is located approximately 40 miles north of the Rally site and will make an excellent pre-CVE gathering point for our members. There will be a number of suggested self-guided rides available for you to choose from at Lake Carmi or you can just head off in any direction on your own. You will really have to search to find a boring ride in any direction. This will be a riding rally!

Arrive early, get your fill of the great riding opportunities and then you will have time to enjoy more of the on-site activities when the CVE site opens. Choosing between the great riding, vendors, seminars and the wonderful local attractions will be difficult. Make sure to give yourself enough time to do it all. Visit the vibrant downtown Burlington community for a large selection of excellent restaurants, window-shopping and people watching or stay on-site to enjoy nationally recognized musical acts every night. Camp on-site or take advantage of the 5,000 motel rooms within about a 10-mile radius of the CVE or stay at one of the dorm rooms about two miles away. Tough choices, but this Rally will be all about choices. Your choices of what you want to do.

Please continue to watch the Rally web pages for frequent updates and, of course, the continuing articles that will appear in every issue of the BMW ON from now until July. We are looking out the window watching the snow come down, but what we really see is green! See you in Vermont.