North Central Rally

July 2003

So this is the trip Greg and I took to the North Central Rally, a rally for old Yamaha 750/850 triples. I rode one for a decade or so, but finally in 2002 upgraded to an 1100 four cylinder. However, they still welcomed a traitor like myself.

Hold the mouse cursor over a picture to get a caption for the picture. Almost all of them were captioned by Greg after he saw the initial version of this page.

Friday, July 11
Getting There
The rally was pretty much straight west of Madison, just over the Mississippi in Iowa. I planned a route that took us on nothing but tiny back roads. We did end up getting onto some stretches of gravel roads, but the varying road conditions were well worth it.

We'd stop frequently on the side of some back road to chill out and stretch our legs. I don't think we ever saw another vehicle go by (aside from the occasional tractor).

I had mapped out a route, but when we left on Friday afternoon, the clouds looked pretty ominous. We tossed the plan and just tried to keep to the back end of the storm clouds as they rolled through.
Throughout our ride that day, nearly every road we traveled was wet from the recent deluge, but we remained remarkably dry. Putting on the geeky rainsuit probably helped our luck.
Saturday, July 12
Triples Rally
Sunday, July 13
Getting Home
Above left is Kara with her dog, Brandy. In the middle is her parents, Dave and Heather, loading up the trailer. They were on the way to the Mall of America on their way back home to Fargo.
One one of our stops coming back, I happened to notice that Greg had a ring dug into his rear tire. For some reason his chain guard was rubbing. The tire was straight, so it is still a mystery why it happenned.
The farmer in the tractor stopped to see if we needed any help... ya gotta love the helpfulness of strangers in this state. After an hour or so of trying to bend the chain guard, he just left it off and we successfully made it home.