gene hunt Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 (edited) IMPORTANT To participate you must register by 5/1/2019. You can register here: https://2019vmcv2v.eventzilla.net Participants as of 4/29 About the event In 1921, a group of American citizens formed a group, known as the Victory Highway Association, to create a transcontinental highway to commemorate American Forces members who were in killed in action during World War 1. The highway, which existed between 1921 and 1938, went through numerous configurations and iterations using existing and specially constructed roads, bridges and ferries. This highway would be known as the Victory Highway and it crossed the country between New York City and San Francisco, California. In the spirit and celebration of all veterans, and those who gave us their ultimate sacrifice, the Victory Motorcycle Club is pleased to announce the 20th Annual Victory Highway Relay “V2V” for 2019. For 20 years we have been doing this ride, it’s a great ride! Thanks to all the past V2V Chairmen, Leg Captains, and Participants that made it possible to declare this year as our 20th.This year’s two week, thirteen leg journey will begin in Staten Island, NY heading to the great eastern valleys, rolling through the agricultural plains of the Midwest the high western desert, rising to the Rocky Mountains, and finishing at San Francisco, CA! If you want to know how it all began see the discussion at the bottom from Spike who started it all.how did it begin? This year the ride begins on 6/22/2019 and ends 7/4/2019 in San Francisco. The ride consists of 13 legs, each leg is 1 day and led by a Leg Captain who has the baton, a jar of sand from the Atlantic Ocean, and the Spot which allows the entire membership to track the progress of the ride as it goes across the country. Leg Date Start Point End Point Leg Captain 1 6/22/2019 Staten Island, NY Frederick, MD Gene Hunt 2 6/23/2019 Frederick, MD Uniontown, PA Gene Hunt 3 6/24/2019 Uniontown, PA Pickerington, OH(Columbus) Gene Hunt 4 6/25/2019 Columbus, OH Plainfield, IN(Indianapolis) Wayne Oosterhoff Jr 5 6/26/2019 Plainfield, IN(Indianapolis) Collinsville,IL(St. Louis, MO) Wayne Oosterhoff Jr 6 6/27/2019 Colinsville,IL(St. Louis, MO) Kansas, City Lowell Johnson 7 6/28/2019 Kansas City, MO Russel, KS Lowell Johnson 8 6/29/2019 Russel, KS Fort Morgan, CO (Denver) Paul Simpson 9 6/30/2019 Fort Morgan, CO (Denver) Craig, CO John Dextras 10 7/1/2019 Craig, CO Salt Lake, Ut John Dextras 11 7/2/2019 Salt Lake, UT Ely, NV Terry Dammer 12 7/3/2019 Ely, NV Reno Rose Mandile 13 7/4/2019 Reno San Francisco Rose Mandile This year we will have T-shirts and Pins. We have enough funds to purchase 80 T-Shirts for VMC Members, after that we will have to have everyone contribute. Non-Member must pay for their shirt during registration. Hotel and booking information is included in each leg forum/thread as well as detailed information about the ride/route for each leg provided by the leg captain. So how did it all begin? A post from Spike who started it all: 10 years and a few months ago, I got a Victory - man was I excited! #160 and the first in the state of KS (so far, no arguments, so I'm sticking to my claim). Trish and I (my wife) rode that thing all over and got the Steve Martin 'what the hell is that' every where we went. We started noticing Victory everything wherever we went - Victory Baptist Church, Victory Cemetery etc. About this same time, we were playing with web pages and Trish created our own web page all about us and our Victory. Then a woman named Laura sent us an invite to a Yahoo Group for Victory owners. We signed up and there was her, a guy named Graham and a guy named Roadkill there - we made 4 and 5 in the group. Word spread pretty fast and in a few months, there were dozens of us talking. Well we all decided then that we'd head up to Spirit Lake, IA on July 4th in 1999 and meet each other and check out the Victory factory. July4th being the anniversary of Victory #1 coming off the assembly line. We called it the Victory Homecoming and a whopping 8 of us showed up - from all over - KS, IA, MA, TX and MN - it was possible the best summer ever (up to that point). And there you have the seed sewn for the AVR - but we are talking about the V2V. Well on the way home from this homecoming, flying high, Trish and I rode past a place called Victory Junction Restaurant in Kansas City, KS (now basically the location of Nascar's KS Speedway). Of course we pulled in - had to get a match book you know! They didn't have one, but the waitress said we could have a menu. We got home and read the cover of the menu and there was a short article about this road called the Victory Highway. The menu gave very limited details, so off to the internet we went. We went to Ebay and found 2 different maps - one from 1924 and one from 1928. We bought the map from 1924 (Rand McNally) and got a copy of the one from 1928 from a guy at a college. It was called the Mohawk Hobbs guide to the Victory Highway. We scanned it in and it was most excellent. We let our website pass away, but another guy ripped off all of our scanned pages and put them on his page - so you can still see them today. They will answer everything about the terrain and EXACT route of the Victory Highway. Well here we have these maps of this road called the Victory Highway that runs from Times Square in NY to Market Street in San Francisco. And here we had this big group of folks on a Yahoo Group that we had been dying to meet. Now up to about 300 folks or so. So it had to be done - we have to ride our Victorys on the Victory Highway. Victory to Victory..... V2V..... But that's a huge stretch of road, so we came up with the idea of doing it Pony Express style - breaking the highway up into sections (Legs) and then getting someone to be the Leg Captain of each leg. We would then get a baton to the first Leg Captain and it would be their job to get that baton from the start to the end of their leg - and hand it off to the next leg captain who would then take responsibility for getting the baton from the start to the end of their leg (leg 2). They would have one day to get from start to finish of their leg. We only had 3 rules - 1. Only a Victory could carry the baton. 2. Stick as close to the actual Victory Highway route as possible and 3. Have fun! So that's what we did and the Victory Highway Relay was born. I've tried to call it the Victory Highway Relay every year, but V2V is the most popular name - at least when people are typing it. One other bit of trivia for you. The baton we carry was built for us specifically by the folks at the Spirit Lake factory. You have to see it to believe it, but it's a piece of handlebar with mini grips on it and a handlebar clamp that says 1998 V92C. There were going to be, but there never were 1998 Victory’s, so very special Here is the History of the Victory Highway and there is also a link to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Highway In the summer of 1921 a group of individuals formed the Victory Highway Association Inc under the laws of Kansas. The purpose of the association was to develop a road that would span from sea to shining sea, providing a permanent tribute to America’s fallen soldiers from World War I. The original proposal was to roughly follow the 40th parallel beginning in New York and ending in San Francisco. Thus US 40 – The Victory Highway – was now becoming a reality, which was to span across 12 states, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Mileage markers at every crossroad were erected with the mileage to the next town/city and to SF and NY. The association wanted standardized (in design) state monuments to be erected with the names of those soldiers lost in each county, thus, the Eagle Statue, showing a bald eagle on a nest, feeding its young was created by Dr. Thomas Roberts, the curator of the zoological museum at the University of Minnesota. From the WEST: The highway project: moved forward, following the original pioneer trail in the West from SF north to Reno, NV to Elko, NV and on to Silver Creek Junction, Utah, just northeast of Park City. By August of 1921, the signs had been erected all the way to Craig, CO. At this point the highway was not paved through Berthoud Pass, CO (that did not happen until the 1930's), but the association was hoping that most of this first transcontinental highway would be at least paved or well graveled by the end of 1923. Work continued from the West coast and the East coast meeting in Kansas sometime in 1923. One of the Eagle monuments was dedicated on Armistice Day, November 11, 1923 on the Shawnee-Douglas county line just west of Big Springs, but has since been moved to Gage Park in Topeka, Kansas in 1941. There is another statue at the University of Kansas, near Dyyche Museum and there seems to be 1 more statue in Kansas, but the history is very vague and I bet our very own historians, Spike & Trish Durkin, founders of the VMC’S VICTORY HIGHWAY RELAY, can help us fill in the blanks. From the EAST: The highway project moved forward slowly, but the history is not clear to me. It looks like the Victory Highway was built in portion, over the National Highway, which was established in 1806 (One of the Pioneer Trails) and US 40 was built over both of them!! Do we have any other historians back East? Please feel free to post any historical information any of you may have. SEE YOU ON THE V2V AND LET’S KEEP HONORING OUR VETERAN’S WITH THIS HISTORICAL RIDE! - - Gene Edited April 29, 2019 by gene hunt 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted March 2, 2019 Author Share Posted March 2, 2019 This will get pinned to the top. - Gene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirtybubble Posted March 11, 2019 Share Posted March 11, 2019 Well......I was going to ride the whole thing this year but my pal talked Grandpop into going to Gettysburg for the reenactment July 5-7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkoshar Posted March 11, 2019 Share Posted March 11, 2019 2 hours ago, dirtybubble said: Well......I was going to ride the whole thing this year but my pal talked Grandpop into going to Gettysburg for the reenactment July 5-7 Two comments. First there only so many hours in a day. It is amazing how fast kids grow... Secondly, you need to update your signage for the posts. It doesn't show your current position within the VMC. No going incognito for you:) Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirtybubble Posted March 11, 2019 Share Posted March 11, 2019 (edited) It is Edited March 11, 2019 by dirtybubble Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 Only two weeks left to register. - Gene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highwayman Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 I'm registered. This will be my 6th relay. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llama Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 Fantastic Gene, and all involved. A historic event for the VMC. I wish I could be there with you all but am still excited to hear about all the experiences. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted April 20, 2019 Author Share Posted April 20, 2019 Current attendance posted at top. - Gene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psychored Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 Are there designated hotels at each stop? I registered to ride the leg from Indy to St. Louis and was wondering if there was a hotel in Indy where folks were staying. Thx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted April 20, 2019 Author Share Posted April 20, 2019 (edited) Yes the hotels for each leg are posted in the leg sub-forum/thread there is one for each leg and your leg captain adds other information about the ride there as well. That is leg 5 which is here: https://thevmc.com/forum/index.php?/topic/128911-2019-20th-annual-v2v-leg-5-plainfield-in-indianapolis-to-collinsville-il-st-louis-mo-–-wednesday-june-26-2019/ - Gene Edited April 21, 2019 by gene hunt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ray2625 Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 Dang I missed this before the closing date. Would it be alight to meet the group in San Francisco at least? We are talking 45 minutes from my house and I'd love to meet other Victory riders who are at the same time doing a very Noble thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted May 5, 2019 Author Share Posted May 5, 2019 Leg captain is Rose Mandile, contact her to coordinate, I would consider riding over and riding leg 13 with the rest of the group. - Gene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wind walker Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 I want to register to ride leg 7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 Contact Lowell Johnson, see the thread established for this thread, you are too late for a T-shirt order has been placed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rufun2sun Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 Any dates set for the 2020 ride? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted November 5, 2019 Author Share Posted November 5, 2019 The dates should be the same every year it is just the direction, 2020 goes West to East. I'm not the chairman for 2020 so if it follows tradition it will have 13 legs ending on July 4th on the east coast. - Gene 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llama Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 6 hours ago, rufun2sun said: Any dates set for the 2020 ride? Loving the fact that we have members who are already looking forward to next year’s V2V......now THIS is what this great Club is (should be) about! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rufun2sun Posted November 6, 2019 Share Posted November 6, 2019 Just wanting to put it on the calendar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gene hunt Posted November 6, 2019 Author Share Posted November 6, 2019 The ride should start on Monday 6/22 in or near San Francisco and end 7/4 on the East Coast, near Staten Island. As I said I'm not the chairman but it should be close to what is below, the Chairman and leg Captains may tailor it somewhat. I know Staten Island is a problem so we started in NJ, I went over before the ride started and came back across the Victory bridge got some seashore, pics of the Bridge, and also the Totten to Perth Amboy ferry which was used before the bridge was built. I also know that San Francisco has become a problem with traffic and hotels. Please contact Chuck Miller is you are interested in being a Leg Captain, not sure about the Chairman. I'll help but cannot be involved in 2020 ride. - Gene Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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