Kirk Woodward
History of
The Mother Road Rallysm
You won't find Route 66 on any current highway
maps. To roughly trace its path, get a map of
the Interstate Highway system that, for the most part, replaced
Route 66. At Chicago, trace I-55
to St. Louis, then switch to I-44, through Oklahoma City.
At Oklahoma City pick up I-40 and follow it all the way
to Barstow, CA. Then switch to I-15, then to I-10. Follow
I-10 all the way to its end at the Pacific Coast Highway.
Back in the Fall of 1994 I was leafing through a mail order
catalog. They were offering memorabilia from Route 66. A book,
a coffee cup, T-Shirt, etc. When I lived in Peoria, IL I had
often been on Route 66 as a part of my work as a sales representative
in Central Illinois.
Gosh, that would be a GREAT
motorcycle ride. Route 66 crossed two thirds of the United States,
millions upon millions of people have been on that road . . .
all the way from the fictional Joads of The Grapes of Wrath
to Bobby Troup in 1946, when he wrote the song: Get Your
Kicks on Route 66.
My day job is marketing so it wasn't much of a project to
type up a news release describing a brand new motorcycle event.
It wasn't too hard to think up a name either. John Steinbeck
called it the Mother Road in The Grapes of Wrath so
The Mother Road Rallysm was a natural.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Forty-eight Mother
Roaders ran the first rally in June of 1995. The number has been
inching up every year since. Commercial sponsors have slowly become
aware of the event and have added their marketing muscle to getting
the word out about what is becoming the premier event for the
serious touring motorcyclist.