The city of Fairview Oregon has an annual Fairview on the Green Festival and have added a nice motorcycle poker run to it. The Green Festival is an all day Chili competition and has live music and other things to see while you are there. The motorcycle run this year was the first time I have done the event and was happy to find out that it was touring around the Mount Hood area.
It began from Wood Village Town Center, up the Clackamas River, through the Mt. Hood National Forest and ended at Fairview’s Community Park in time to enjoy the Fairview Chili Festival. While this was not a big motorcycle run, (less than 50 motorcycles,) the route they planned was wonderful. The weather was pretty mild all day and took us through some very nice backroads most bikers do not know about. Some of the roads were even one lane roads that at points, you thought that you were riding all by yourself and not on a road at all.
This was a ride that was certainly meant not to speed through. The selection of roads we went on really showed the beauty of the Mt. Hood area. If we had just sped through, we would have missed alot more than I am sure we did. This was one ride where I have kept the route instructions and will use them again when I have a free day to ride it again.
Up to the end, the ride went smoothly and people were quite happy about the route. Many of the bikers talked about the wonderful scenery and how it could not get any better than that. Check out our photos to see a small sample of the beauty of the route.
While the ride went smoothly to the end of the ride, the city of Fairview was kind enough to have VIP parking for the bikers on the poker run at the Green Festival. Included in the price of the run, they gave out tasting kits to the bikers so they could participate in the Chili contest.
The only problem with the run that I could see is that they seperated the announcement of the poker hand winners and the raffle tickets from the actual end of the ride. While I believe they were trying to encourage bikers to walk around and taste the fesitval, some bikers including me were unhappy about having to wait two hours to find out who had won the poker run.
I would suggest to the organizers to finish the run as soon as possible so that bikers can make their own minds up about how long to stay at a festival such as that. The run seemed to be well organized and ready to handle the different checkpoints as we pulled up. Most of the bikers travelled together for most of the route and so they had alot of bikers to deal with at one time.
I am hoping that next year that they find a similar but different route through the Mt. Hood area. For a ride that was $10 per hand and $5 each additional hand, it was well worth it for the beautiful route they provided.
