That's me on the left, with my son and husband, and Lisa in the middle.
A new motorcycle enthusiast, a new Internet user surfing the Web one day on a "motorcycles and homebrew" search stumbles upon a page called WetLeather. These people are nuts! They reinforce her feeling that riding is right up there with orgasm on the list of "best things', and in July, they're having a party they call The Gather. What to do? Go, of course!
And we did. On a fabulous summer morning in July 1996, we loaded camping equipment, casual shoes, a change of clothes, and a 5-gallon keg of homebrew on our bikes, and '87 Magna 700, a '79 Yamaha 750, and an '80 Kawasaki 750. With few exceptions, we headed west on Highway 2 out of Kalispell, Montana, for GPNDG'96 in Republic, Washington.
Lisa Sieverts proved to be our first reassurance that we weren't crazy to rendezvous with biker-types we'd never met. Lisa, riding her beautiful teal BMW on the return leg of a coast-to-coast solo motorcycle vacation, joined us for the 300-something mile trip to the Gather. She graciously allowed us to feel our way through our first "long" ride, and we arrived Friday afternoon, July 12, for a weekend we'd chuckle over during the long winter that followed.
So, what is Gather about? In 1996, it was about friendly people, awesome bikes, outstanding food, fabulous homebrew, generous mechanics, gorgeous--and hideous--tattoos, rides, conversation, scotch whiskey, entertainment, mosquitoes, camaraderie, cigars and other smokes, water balloons, unexpected noisy late-night events, leather... It was a million laughs. Thanks to Guy, Carl, Bill, Terry, Leigh Ann and Annwn, Martin and Carol, Vic, the kitchen crew, and everybody else who contributed to make the event a success.
See you at Crescent Lake in '97...
Mickey, Mike, and Wayne Lyngholm
Kalispell, MT
lyngholm@digisys.net
A few photos I took at the 1996 Great Pacific Northwest Dryside Gather:
Web page design by H. Marc Lewis