We're headed out in the morning to Joplin, MO to meet up with xxxx??? fellow riders for The Hot Bike Tour, a Rolling Rally.

The Tour starts in Joplin, MO and ending up in Wisconsin Dells, WI.

At the end of the ride Mary and I are going to head over to Fuel Moto for a look around and then we'll be headed back to Mississippi.

Depending on which routes we take, it will be somewhere between 2500-3000 miles round trip.

I went last year and it was a blast. Should be even better this year.

We're 95% packed up...ready to roll.

Here's a pic from tonite.



Here's a link to the Ride Report from last year...lots of pics and a video-

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/gener...pic-heavy.html


I'm going to try to post some pics each evening from the days ride and rally. When we get back, we'll probably post some more pics, plus put together a little video.

I'll also be posting pics each day on our Instagram page....

http://instagram.com/dkcustomproducts

For more info on the Tour, check out this LINK

 

Ride safe, good journey

 

Be Safe and Have Fun!

 

Friday morning, ready to roll out of Mississippi to Joplin, MO, the starting city of the Hot Bike Tour.




Cutting the corner of Tennessee for 40 miles or so to get to Arkansas.




Crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas.




We had some fun in the winding foothills in Arkansas. Perfect riding weather in the mid 80's.




The bike is running perfectly. Great sound, pulling strong, running cool, good mpg. Very happy with it!




Entering Missouri.




Covered around 200 miles in Missouri...mostly highway miles.

I have a lot of foot positions between the floorboards, heel rests and highway pegs.

Mary has her footboards, she'll put her feet up on my legs now and then. Recently she discovered that it's a nice change to put her feet up on the top of the bag guards.




Getting close to Joplin. We covered a tad over 400 miles today, getting to the starting point.



Already a few bikes here...registration is tomorrow, so we'll see a lot more then.

Yes, that is John Zamora's blue low rider. If you looked at the ride report from last years Tour, you'll see it was gold then...he didn't like it so changed it up. I think the blue looks pretty good.

Had a good chat with Jeff of Bagger Mag and Hot Bike Mag, also Dave of Hot Bike mag. Met up with several folks who I rode with last year on the Sporty, and met some new folks too. Glad Mary is riding with me this year.

Gonna be fun!

 

Today was not about riding.

We stayed in Joplin. We did ride a few miles to the Dealership for Check-in/Registration.

Last year there were a few trikes, today I stopped counting at 20. There's a bunch of them.




After getting checked in for the ride up to Wisconsin Dells, we headed over to the "event area". Thousands of folks and bikes checking out the vendors, the bikes, the build-off bikes, etc. There was a good band, NightTrain and some good food.





Besides us "normal folk" there are 24 bike builders that built a bike for this run.

They display them every day for a popular vote, then ride their "show" bike with the rest of us to the next city.

Here is the only Trike in the build-off.





Here's a 2014 Ultra with some serious modding and crazy color...but it still has the radiators in the lowers.




It was good to see the "Death Machine" build with a DK Custom Products Outlaw 587 Air Cleaner & Outlaw Breather Bolts.





Very cool build. Lot's of details!





Here's John Shope's Dirty Bird Concepts build. Turbo, crazy front wheel, and paint that the camera just can't do justice.





Unknown Industries was there doing some stunt riding. Will get more pics at the next stop, just caught the tail end of the show.





Some more of the build-off bikes. Gonna be cool riding with these bikes...and seeing how they do riding for the next 4 days up to Wisconsin.




Mary really liked this t-shirt and got the guy to pose for her.

 

Today was the first leg of the Ride...Joplin to Jefferson City.

I don't think the Hotel knew what they were getting into...this is just a few of the bikes that were right at the front entrance.





A close up of Patterson's Led Sled Sporty.






Riders meeting before leaving out. Gonna check tomorrow to see how many are on the ride...it's a lot more than last year...but not near as many as I was expecting.





Yep, a hub-less wheel. Pretty strange looking. lol




Last year, most everyone rode together in one pack most of the time. Traffic split us up into a bunch of different ones leaving out. Looking back, that's Brian Klock on his unique cafe style "bagger" behind us.






Here's about 100 bikes hanging a U-turn...guy up front turned right instead of left....we all followed.




The entire ride up was secondary roads, weather was great...mid 70's and cloudy. It was a short (240 miles) but fun ride. We started near the beginning...stopped and watched all the bikes go by, then a bunch of us played, working our way back to about the middle pack before the first gas stop.

Ahead on the right is Pat on the Led Sled Sporty.





This is the only gas stop we made. By this time there were smaller groups of 30-40 bikes riding together.





We got to the hotel, checked in, unloaded the bike, then went downtown to the "rally" and some of the bikes were still just getting there 1 & 2 hours later.

Place was packed. Good band, and lots to see!





Unknown Industries did a couple of stunt shows. Amazing. We took some good video...one little clip is on our Intagram page...you can see it HERE

When we get back we'll be putting together a video of the entire ride...and have some more of their stunt riding in there.




Tomorrow morning we head to Springfield, IL.

 

Woke up this morning to some pretty thick fog.

By the time we got down to the starting point, near the old Penitentiary, it was starting to burn off...but it took a couple of hours to be totally gone.

Here's about 1/3 the crew riding.





Found out there were 380 signed up to ride from Joplin to Wisconsin Dells. A few have dropped out, and a bunch added on for a day or two.

Here we are headed out this morning...we were about in the middle of the pack when pulling out.





Headed thru town...pictures don't do the sight justice of 400 or so bikes running thru town.





Within the first 30 minutes the slower riders were behind us. We ran about 40 miles of winding roads at a good clip. Really nice roads and really nice to not have to slow down in the curves.





Nice perspective Mary caught as we were in the rare straight running about 80 mph here.






Like yesterday (and unlike last year) a lot of smaller groups were riding together. Here we are stopped for gas for the bikes and Subway for us.




Mary and I took off about 10 minutes before everyone else and found a good spot to stop to take some pics and video. Vid turned out great, and we'll be posting it up on youtube after we get home.

Here's a pic of Mary with the bike while we were waiting.




A shot of a few of the bikes that came by-






We've been in Missouri the last couple of days....here we are crossing the Mississippi river into Illinois.




We arrived at downtown Springfield. Lot of local bikes and folks, good band, and had a good time meeting new friends.

This local Trike/Hearse was really sharp.




Tomorrow is Bettandorf, IA.

 

That looks like one hell of a ride. Wish I was there!

 

Tuesday Morning 8:00 am in the Hilton "No Parking-Unloading Only" zone. Bikes are where we left them last night.





Besides the 380 or so of us riders that are on this tour, there are 12 Bagger builders and 12 Hot Bike Builders.

These 24 builders all have support vehicles...you notice my Softail is loaded up with what Mary and I need for our trip from Mississippi to Wisconsin and back.

Pretty much all the other bikes in the pic are "builders" bikes...they're not carrying what they need on their bikes...it's in their support vehicles.

The blue one to the left is Zach Ness's bike, representing Arlen Ness Bikes.






Here are the Big Wheel bikes-




This morning everyone left in smaller groups. We left with about 10 other bikes. Making our way out of the city-





After getting out of the city we had about 30 minutes of nice riding. Mary got this nice pic at about 70 mph on some county road.......




.....then it started raining...and getting darker up ahead. Pulling over to put rain suits on....someone looked at the weather on their phone.....




While putting rain jackets on everyone except myself and Mary decided to go to a restaurant to wait out the line of thunderstorms the radar was showing. (I think most of these riders were from Cali and not used to a storm now and then)

Anyway, to me it looked like the route was going to get some rain, but that the red on the radar was above and below where we were going.

So we took off. Yep, we got a lot of rain (and we got video, but the camera was tucked away). But we saw no lightning. About half way to Nees HD we caught up with a group that was booking and we had a great ride with them.

Right before we got to Nees HD it turned sunny and warm. We had just worn our rain jackets, so it was nice to have the pants start drying out.

We stopped at Nees HD, had a nice lunch and visited with some of the other riders, and then took off for a 45 minute ride to Bettendorf.





Got checked in, had a shower, and went down to the "event" and looked at all the local bikes...met some cool people, and had some good pizza!






Couple of local V8 Trikes! Gnarly back tires on the left one.





One of the Hot Bike builds-





Tomorrow it is an hour earlier start...gonna be up at 6am. Looking forward to the tour of the S&S facilities!

 

great report wish it was sat not wen I like to ride over to dells and check it out.....are helmets required on the run? or is ill a helmet state?