MOTORCYCLE CANNONBALL
ENDURANCE RUN 2014
T
David Uhl welcomes riders
he Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Run hit three
cities in Colorado this year, Burlington, Golden and
Grand Junction. The Golden stop was held at Uhl
Studios and a great crowd turned out to welcome the riders.
For those of you not familiar with the run, it is a coast to coast
endurance run, but with a twist. All of the motorcycles must
be built before 1936.
The main rule for participating in the event is that the engine
on the motorcycle must be original and any chassis or parts
should be as they were originally built with but, updates for
safety are allowed. The run is a total of 3,938 miles that spans
over seventeen days. The oldest motorcycle in the run this year
is a 1914 H-D 10E ridden by Victor Boocock from California.
This year’s route takes the riders from their starting point in
Daytona Beach, Florida to the ending point in Tacoma, WA (see
the route table). Each day’s ride ranges from 200 to a little over
311 miles each day. All but 250 miles of the route are taken on
non-Interstate highways. There are a total of 101 riders in the
8 Thunder Roads Magazine® Colorado
Shinya Kimura working on his 1915 Indian V-Twin.
endurance run this year that include four women also known as
the “Cannonball Belles”. The riders hail from all over the globe,
United States, France, UK Germany, Canada, South Africa,
Poland, Spain, Ireland, & Italy.
The riders maintain and fix their own motorcycles while on
the run and are even allowed to carry spare parts. The riders
use a decidedly “low tech” guidance system. Rather than using
a GPS, a weather proof box is mounted on the handlebars; it
contains a scroll inside with the directions for the entire run.
The Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Run is truly an
unusual event; where else can one see more than one hundred
riders on pre-1936 bikes on a run that is more than 3900 miles?
October 2014
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