Viva Vegas

For four days, from 2/25 - 2/28, I went to Las Vegas for the High Rollers Scooter Rally. It's the biggest rally I've ever attended. Picking a handful of photos for the blog from all the ones I took is the hard part.

It's more than 400 miles from Tucson to Vegas, so we decided to trailer some scooters up there. I got together with some friends from the GGR Scooter Club and we shared the trailer and a hotel room for the rally. The drive up was enjoyable as I got to spend some time getting to know some folks that I had never really talked to before.

In the trailer is Bald John, president of GGR. On the ramp is Smiley and that is his Rattler 110 being unloaded. John K. who rides with the Sky Island Riders and is a member of GGR was also along. At the base of the ramp is Grumpy. He's from GGR in California and mets us in Vegas.

In this pic is the reflection of the scooter parking area as seen from our hotel room at the Golden Gate Hotel located at the end of the "Fremont Street Experience."

This is the same parking lot from a different view point. This is taken Friday afternoon. There were a lot more scooters there on Saturday, but I was busy enjoying the festivities and didn't get back up into the parking garage.

There were a lot of scooters, but this was my favorite. It's a Heinkel Tourist and it's in beautiful shape. This is the scooter featured in the book "I See by my Outfit" by Peter S. Beagle.

Another view of the Heinkel.

There were scooters with weapons and gas masks. They are probably preparing for the zombie apocalypse, which a common concern amongst scooter folk, but I'm not sure why.

Some beautiful Lambrettas brought down from Washington state. They were telling us in the hotel that their truck broke down en route, so they sold it to the tow truck driver, rental a u-haul and drove the rest of the way. Now THAT'S dedication to a rally.

Friday night two of the attendee's got married! I can't remember their names, but they seemed like a nice couple. It was a great time.

Here's a pic of their scooter "limo."

Saturday morning was cold and blustery. John and I decided to find something indoors to do. We found the Pinball Hall of Fame! It really took me back to my childhood. If there was an arcade nearby, I would be there.

Another row of machines. All of them are functioning and are playable.

Saturday afternoon at the Golden Gate parking lot.

Sunday morning was a group ride out to Red Rock Canyon. I was riding in the middle of the pack. This, obviously, is a pic looking forward......

This is looking back. I think there were 30-40 scooters along on this ride. It was a blast.

At a fuel stop, there was a group of crotch rocket riders. They really enjoyed coming over and looking at all the scoots. We had one sidecar rig with us, with the obligatory dog. The bikers loved that.

red Rock Canyon is beautiful. It reminded me of Sedona, AZ or the mountains about Albuquerque, NM. Pictured is John K. accompanied by our two scooters: my black Stella and his red Stella Fireball.

For the most part, we road through the park in groups of 2 and 3. Quite a few of us did stop at this plateau for some pics.

Stella and I stopped for a couple of pics.

At one point, John and I saw these Bighorn Sheep. What a treat.

At the end of the ride through the park, we stopped to get the group back together. Naturally, there a little bit of screwing around while we waited.

Once the group was back together, we went screaming through town for the gymkhana and concourse. There were more scooters there, including this beautiful Honda Gyro.

Some of the scooters gathered at Fred's Bar.

A pic of a scooter going over the jump on the gymkhana.

I'm not really a fan of Las Vegas, but I love scooters and scooter people. That made the trip worthwhile. I'm not sure if I'll being going back again next year or not, but I did have a good time this year.

Below is a youtube video done by Scooter Space. It gives you a good idea of the flavor of the rally. You can see my Stella at 0:33 in the video.

Well, I made it through the rally. During the rally, I found myself being fairly disappointed. I looked around and didn't see the massive numbers of scooters for which I had hoped. The scooter clubs from other cities here in Arizona didn't really “represent.” The people who did come seemed to be having a good time and I was receiving nice compliments on the rally bags, the rides and the overall quality of the rally's organization, but I was all caught up in the numbers.

After the rally, as we were disassembling the remaining rally bags, we started adding up the pre-registrants, late registrants, non-registrants and people who were only able to stop by to say hello and maybe do one short activity. We finally came to an unofficial total of 43. When I first started researching rallies, I had several people tell me that 25 is probably the average for a first time rally.

So, how do you measure “success” for your first rally?

1. Did people have fun? - Check, I heard no complaints and saw no one sulking in a corner. Lots of smiles and laughs. Additionally, there were no crashes or breakdowns.

   
   

   

   Community Participation? - Check, We had 18 local businesses sponsor the rally, mostly by providing raffle items. Scoot Over and Vespa of Marana, especially, really came through for us. Big thanks to everyone.

2. Diverse group of participants? - Check, we had a few vintage scooters and lots of modern ones. Our youngest participant was 16 years old our oldest, somewhere around 70, I would guess. We had about a 60-40 split between the numbers of men vs women. We had scooters from 50cc to 500cc.

3. Did the word get out? - Check, We had riders from Arizona and 3 other states; New Mexico, Texas and Missouri.

4. Good rally bags? - Check, my goal was to produce the best rally bag anyone had ever received at a scooter rally. By all accounts, we succeeded. Most of the folks in my club have never been to a rally before, so it was easy to be their best, however, the riders from El Paso and several locals had been to many rallies. They also agreed that this rally had the best rally bags they had yet seen.

5. Gymkhana? - Check, the entire reason I started planning this rally was for an excuse to be in a gymkhana. I watched numerous videos on YouTube to help design it. I think it turned out well. It was challenging but doable. A lot of people gave it a try and all seemed to have a good time.

   
   

   
   

Could we have done better? Of course we could. However, it was a good enough experience that we are already planning on doing it again next year. We won't be calling it “May Day,” however. Another club, in Oregon, already puts on a May Day rally and they took offense to us calling our May Day as well. We are likely going to go with a western theme.

If there is a rally in your area, I think you should go. Not only will you have fun, but you are supporting and encouraging scootering in your community. Also, from personal experience, I know that it is a lot of work to host a rally. Find your host and thank them.

Ride on,

Howard