Motorcycle events

Once again, motorcycle riders showed their support for the MDA, donating $13,553 during the 35th annual Tomahawk Fall Ride.

The extra hour of sleep for a night is nice, but daylight saving time has longer impacts on sleep and driving habits. Adjust your sleeping schedule beforehand, and the earlier sunset won’t be so jarring.

More than 30,000 riders will converge on the Ozark Mountains in Missouri in mid-September for the 10th annual Lake of the Ozarks Bikefest. This regional event has grown quickly to become a huge draw, with plenty of events, music, rides, and displays. Put this on your calendar—if not this year, then next!

If you ride a motorcycle, you have benefited from the hard work of the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) and its more than 214,000 members. Its mission—“to promote the motorcycle lifestyle and protect the future of motorcycling”—should stir the heart of riders everywhere.

For 50 years, we’ve witnessed the positive impact motorcycle riders make in communities throughout the nation. So in celebration of Dairyland Cycle’s 50th anniversary, we put our thinking caps on—as opposed to our helmets—to come up with a way to shine a light on the good riders do. We came up with the idea of a National Motorcycle Day—a day to honor the motorcycle and riders everywhere for their contributions. That day will be the second Friday in July. This year, that’s July 8.

We’ve put together a pretty comprehensive list of major motorcycle events for the second half of 2016. But this is just a starting point. We know there are some we’ve missed.

The Leesburg Bikefest bills itself as the world’s largest three-day motorcycle and music event. More than a quarter million motorcycle riders from all over the world attend. Near countless activities are packed into a 30-square-block area of historic downtown Leesburg, Fla., during the weekend of April 22-24.

Unless you're one of the intrepid few who ride year-round, now is a great time to plan for those rallies, rides and shows to come! If nothing else, it will make the time pass more quickly until riding season. Here are some of the major events to consider.