Police Memorial Run Recap
25 July 2009
I would like to thank all of the members who attended this year's Memorial Run. Actually I should say thanks for getting up real early and attending. That's right, members met up at 06:30AM and we all departed at 07:00AM. Clint led the group over to Cordelia junction which is where we like to stop when doing this run so that we are all fueled up as much as possible before we actually take off on the police escorted portion of the event. We got to Cordelia via Hwy 12 then over to Hwy 121 to 29 then on to Hwy 80 and stopped at Cordelia for about 10 Min's this also is where we picked up Members that are coming from the Sonoma area. After a quick break it was on to Sacramento to the Memorial Park. We had a very nice and fun ride to the park but when we got to the park I actually wasn't all that surprised at the lower than normal turn out, mostly due to the economy and they did make a change to the route that they had been doing for years. It used to end at Apple Hill which is located near Placerville and the police escorted part of the ride was about 40 to 50 miles. They had changed the ending location, due to lack of funds, to Cal Expo which is about 5 to 10 miles away, therefore the route was much shorter and almost no freeway. Now, for me it didn't really matter that much because this is a fundraiser for fallen officer’s families so the route was secondary but obviously to many it was important cuz of the low turn out.
We got to the memorial Park surprisingly a little late as they were all ready in the middle of the service portion of the event when we walked up to the memorial, so we sat and checked the last half of the service and then mingled around, and it wasn't to long before we got the announcement to head to the bikes and be prepared to depart in 10 minutes. Once the word was given for all riders to start your engines we finally got on the road, even though there were a lot less attendees it still took some time to get the group out of the park and down the road. We had a great ride short as it was I think it took all of a half hour to get us out of the park and over to Cal Expo but all in all still fun mostly because we did still have the police escort who blocked the intersections so that the pack of bikes could make it through. As I mentioned we had a great ride and got to Cal Expo without any issues and got parked and went inside to check out all the goings on. They had freebies and vendors and a car show not counting the custom bikes that they had as well.
Although they did have a lot going on I think people felt a little ripped off because of the short ride, I know some of our members just wanted to do more riding and opted not to do their lunch but wanted to ride, eat and ride some more. We all talked about and did in fact opt to head out and up as it were, we decided to head to Auburn for lunch and then a ride through the gold country. We as I said headed to Auburn and did have a great lunch and met some really crazy people while we were there. After lunch the group headed to the gold country via Hwy 49,which took us on an awesome ride, which also took us along the Yuba River. What great weather we had too, it must have been around 85 degrees and nice twisties at 50 to 70 mph, now this was fun, we liked this area so much that we stopped for awhile along the Yuba River and checked out the scenery and all the people that were swimming in the river, this is a popular area that's for sure. While we were on our break on the Yuba River we met up with a State Park Ranger that was nice enough to share some ice cold soda with the group, now that was very nice.
Our ride continued along Hwy 49 until we reached Hwy 70, I believe, then onto Hwy 20 then on to Marysville and Hwy 99, and then eventually back to Sonoma County. I think everyone that went on the run thought by adding the Hwy 49 and Yuba River portion to the days ride was a real bonus, perhaps we should do this every year that the memorial ride is kept we will just make it a bit longer. Thanks again to all that showed this ended up being one of the best ones and now you know why.
Tours and Events Director / Information Officer
Redwood Riders M.C
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