This year I volunteered my graphic design work for the GS Giants Event that took place July 10-13, 2016 in Sigel, PA (only 2.5 hours from my home). It was called Back to the BIGinning, because I guess that is where the first event originally took place. I can’t believe how much work it was. I also don’t know how many times I had to make revisions and complete 180’s in the design. All in all, it turned out OK. I had designed T-shirts, posters, cards, stickers and more. The sad part was very little of it was the way I wanted it to turn out, but it was finally done. I even had my girlfriend come out for the first day so that she could deliver the T-shirts to the Rally.

Since I lived so close, Sibley, Sigrid and Jordan all met at my house, we had a grand breakfast that Jordan still talks about. We stopped at a brewery for lunch before getting there and headed to the event. It was in Cooke Forest.

This was the first time my girlfriend got to see what all the commotion is about. I think a night of moonshine and camping was more than enough for her, and she headed home hungover the next day, luckily she drove her car out there. The campgrounds were fantastic, the riding was beautiful, and once again people showed up from all over the country, about 135 of them. The weather was great for the riding, and cool enough at night for fires. The food however, sucked. it either didn’t taste great or there wasn’t nearly enough to go around. Thank god I wasn’t in charge of any of that.

There was good offroading and scenic road rides too. Phil, from Montana, wrecked his bike pretty bad and was the center of all pictures once they got hit back to camp.

After a fun GS event, we headed over to Hamburg, NY for the BMW Rally. I think that ride was less than 2 hours as well. We all set up camp at the fairgrounds and ran out for food and drinks and bought more than we could use, well not the beer.

view from my tent.

The heat was just as bad as it was in Montana at the previous years’ rally. And of course there was very little shade. But none of that slowed down the fun. Sigrid’s husband Marty came out and I finally got to meet him and his friend John, who just got rid of his Harley and got a BMW GSA. I didn’t do any riding at the rally because I was definitely going to ride the GS Track at this event. It looked awesome. It was built into an existing dirt mound and was rather a large area, with plenty of obstacles.

GS Track

I did run the track and did pretty well, but lost some points when I came off the tractor tire and missed the water hazard. I didn’t mind it too much, as it was pretty gross water in there.

The ride home was pretty nice too, as I didn’t take any freeways, rather followed the edge of Lake Erie back home on a beautiful summer day.