Link to my Spot location while riding here.
Several very generous early donations have my total at $700 as of April 1st! I am very grateful for the support.
The locations for Tour of Honor 2017 were released on April 1st (no April Fool's Joke!) and it is a nice list of riding destinations. Here's a glimpse of what is in store through the end of October for my home state of Washington.
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| TOH sites for Washington state. |
And as luck would have it, one of the locations is just down the street from me. I am sure that will be my first success this year! So what is required of this rally? Ride to the location and take a picture of the memorial with your bike and a rider flag in the picture. The picture has to be a reasonable match to a provided sample image like the one below for the Tonasket, WA location.
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| Sample image for Tonasket, WA memorial location. |
The rally organizer has also provided a bit of history for each location. For Tonasket they said:
"The Armed Forces Legacy Project is an ongoing project designed to build and maintain the legacy of the armed forces and those who have served. Unlike a memorial, the project accepts the names of living veterans as well as deceased. This one half acre project is a staffed organization which will help veterans to understand and apply for their benefits."
If you are interested in seeing your state just comment on this page with the state name and I will post it in my next update, or visit the TOH website and take a look at the interactive map - see it here.
Several great ride ideas are possible in the TOH rally. One that has me intrigued is completing an IBA Saddlesore ride while visiting all 7 locations in a state. I took a look at Washington and could collect all 7 with a 1000+ mile effort (in less than 24 hours). A Saddlesore ride is an IBA sanctioned event in which the rider travels at least 1,000 miles in less than 24 hours. The trick is to find something nearby that produces a dated receipt (like a gas station) for verification purposes.
I have 2 documented Saddlesore rides and several non-documented rides. Here's a route that is probably not the optimal order for my state.
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| Notional route to collect all 7 Washington memorial sites in one long ride (~1028 miles) |
Tell me what you think - leave comment on this blog. I will answer as soon as I can - I approve all comments before publishing to limit spam.
I did manage to get out this weekend to take advantage of our 1 day of summer in the PNW. I hope I am kidding about this, but so far it has been nothing but cold and wet. I could ride, but it wouldn't be enjoyable. My trip this weekend took me in to British Columbia for a bonus on the Big Money Rally at someone's house. It was a lot of fun meeting up with riders that you normally only see through a website. A bit of rain early was chased away by broken sunshine and reasonable temperatures.
That's it for now. I'll post another update after my first memorial visit :)
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