Who We Are!
The Border Riders Motorcycle Club “BRMC” is a not-for-profit 501(c)(7) organization for gay men who like to ride motorcycles and who like to go camping on their motorcycles. Our membership spans the Pacific Northwest with the greatest participation in the Portland, Seattle and Vancouver B.C. areas. We are one of the largest and longest-running gay motorcycle clubs in North America. We welcome like-minded guests to our Meet & Greets, day rides, and to our monthly meetings and summer campouts with a sponsoring BRMC member.
Table of Contents
All the news you need to know about the BRMC
Meeting Recap By Dennis H.
Photos By Tom C., Jeremy W.
April Meet & Greets Portland and Seattle
Plus
Members’ Birthdays
The BRMC 2026 Calendar of Events
Non BRMC Motorcycle Events
Request for Pictures & Closing Comments
March Meeting Recap
The March meeting was at the home of Don W and Jorge B in Lynwood. Those coming from the south battled the lane closures on I5 and SR99 reduced to 1 lane. Have to love Seattle area traffic. The challenge was well worth the effort as we were greeted with plenty of snacks and drinks to socialize until the meeting started.
After the meeting we were treated to Jorge’s butter chicken with rice that was so good that many skipped the salad – Don and Jorge probably had salad for a week. Then scrumptious deserts including a pie that came over from Suquamish on a Can-Am.
Throughout the evening Don was showing a slide show of old club pictures that he has digitized with many members able to identify previous members of the club, including things like Tom C in his younger days. After dinner the slide show changed to videos that he had digitized, and considering the age of the tapes most were relatively clear. The videos also showed a different era of the club with some X-rated content. Given the size and weight of video equipment at the time and the batteries needed for nighttime videos indicate they needed a support vehicle.
Thanks to Don and Jorge for opening their house up to us and to Don and his efforts in turning the archives into formats that can be seen and shared.
March Photos
April 2026 Day Rides
Portland
No day ride planned for April.
Seattle
Seattle will be having a Day Ride April 4th!
We will meet for breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe in South Lake Union for breakfast at 9am, 391 Terry Ave N Seattle WA 98105
After breakfast we will go to the “125 Years of Motorcycling in the PNW” exhibit at the Museum of History and Industry. The entry fee is $25.
For parking think about someplace in between as the cafe and museum are an 8-minute walk apart - there are several parking lots near the entrance to Lake Union Park
When done with the touring the exhibits we will mount up and do a short ride out to the east side of Lake Sammamish in the Carnation/Fall City area. Potential rides and lengths will be discussed at breakfast.
There is a possibility of using 520 to do the day ride loop, so it is a good time if you haven’t done so to register your motorcycle plate on Good to Go so you can pay the pay by plate rate.
April Meeting
The April Meeting will be held on Saturday 4/18 at the home of Kas C. and Chris M. in Vancouver, WA.
Registration is $25, opening on 4/2 and closing on Wednesday 4/15
April Meet & Greets
Portland M&G
Portland’s April Meet & Greet is being hosted by Jason S on April 1st. You can find us at Bruno’s - 6258 SE Foster Rd - Portland, OR. 97206. Arrive around 5:30 for dinner & conversation.
This is a great way to meet club members, learn about the club, & learn about our upcoming events for 2026.
Stay tuned, we’re looking to switch up locations.
We hope to see you there!
BC M&G
We are still looking for a member in BC to take the lead on this. Please let Dennis know if you are able do this.
Seattle M&G
For the April Meet & Greet in Seattle we are returning to Georgetown at Jules Maes. Dinner at 6pm on Wednesday April 8th, officially met and greet starts at 7pm.
The address is 5919 Airport Wy S, Seattle, WA 98108
We hope to see you there!
High Mileage Competition
Members are invited to join our annual High Mileage competition! Read the rules in the Members Area.
This mileage competition is open to any and all active Border Riders Motorcycle Club (BRMC) members who choose to compete in the most miles ridden on their motorcycle(s), including 3-wheeled vehicles that have handlebars and a saddle for the use of the rider.
Reader’s Corner
A place for you, the reader, member and/or guest, to contribute.
Tell us about your travels, adventures, mishaps, etc.
To contribute, send your story & pictures to News@BorderRiders.com
Keep in mind, you can write about a trip that happened over the summer. It’s doesn’t have to be something you did last month.
Gear Store
The Gear Store has several new items and will be at Victoria Day. This is a perfect opportunity to freshen up your BRMC Bling in preparation for our 2026 events. Please bring cash or check as we do not have the ability to accept credit cards on site.
From the Handlebars of the President
The club occasionally gets information about wanting to promote stuff on our site. We have as a club decided not to do so, though we occasionally mention other events in the area that don’t conflict with club events.
I was recently contacted by a motorcycle adventure trip provider in Nepal for 13-day trips in the Himalayas. It got me to thinking, the brotherhood of motorcycle riders is worldwide. So, I did a little Googling and here is what I found:
8% of United States households have at least one motorcycle.
Only 3% to 4% are active riders, so a small subset versus ownership. (Means there are a lot of used motorcycles that should be available for sale)
The average age of a rider has gone from 32 in 1990 to 50 in 2026. If we ran the numbers on the club, we would get similar results.
Northern states have the highest per capita ownership of motorcycles. I wouldn’t have expected this one.
Cruisers make up 38.2% of all registered motorcycles nationally, with touring bikes at 23.5%
Female riders are the fastest-growing ownership group.
The highest ownership worldwide is Thailand with 87% of households having at least one motorcycle, which is consistent with other countries in the area.
I draw the following conclusions:
1. If you want a lot of people to ride with you need to move to a different part of the world where motorcycle sales are rising.
2. Stay north, moving to southern climates decreases the per capita number of people to ride with.
3. So, we are a very select group, at 3-4% active riders, then reducing to 10% gay, then factoring 20% female riders we end up as 3/10 of one percent of the population.
So, I took it one step further if you can follow my logic to see how many people living in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon should fit into our club.
Population of WA, OR, BC 16,000,000
25% live within reasonable distance of activities 4,000,000
50% are male 2,000,000
10% are gay 200,000
3% are active riders 6,000
48% enjoy tent camping 2,880
For average age people age 50, 1.17% 34
We have 31 members, reduce that number by 10 for inactive riders gives us 21. Looking at my figures above we need 13 more members to get to a full membership of 34.
Where are they?
.
Dennis H.
President
president@borderriders.com
Vice President Chatter
Join us at our last meeting before the summer riding season in beautiful Vancouver, WA on Saturday the 18th!
Ron S.
Vice President
Road Captain Rumblings
Greetings, Border Riders members and friends of the club…
As I'm sitting here writing this on Friday, it is beautiful, clear and sunny outside. But not yet warm. But that is just around the corner.
Time to think about our bikes conditions. There's nothing worse than a surprise out on the road! Victoria day is coming up in May and that's going to be a fairly long ride for most of us so it's important that our bikes are ready to go. It only takes a couple minutes to do a quick rundown on all the lights, turn signals, brake lights, tire tread and pressure. Is it time for an oil change? I discovered last week that my high beam is burned out and I need to replace it.
Also, check out the really fun riding skills courses that Team Oregon offers. Even for those of us who don't live down there it's worth the trip. And Stan C., Jason S., and I all have discount cards for classes if anybody is thinking about going down and having a ton of fun and learning how to ride better. It's challenging and very rewarding, I highly recommend it to all motorcycle riders for skills, confidence, and safety. And I may have already mentioned this but, it's a ton of fun!
See everyone in Vancouver, Washington in a few weeks for our April club meeting.
Dale C.
Road Captain
Treasurer’s Ramblings
Secretary Thoughts
A Brother’s Birthday
We have two brothers with a birthday this month:
Dennis H on April 11th
Dale C on April 29th
Take a moment out of your day to send a birthday wish!
2026 Events
April 4 - Day rides
April 18 - Monthly meeting in Vancouver WA
May 2 - Day rides
May 14-18 - Victoria Day, Pine Flats. Ardenvoir WA
June 6 - Day rides
June 19-21 - Union Creek Campground near Baker City OR
June 27-29 - Team Oregon motorcycle skills classes
June 30 - July 5 - Special camping and riding event in central OR
July 17-19 - Coho Campground near Montesano WA
Aug 1 - Day rides
Aug 14-16 - Sutton Campground near Florence OR
Sep 5 - Day rides
Sep 18-20 - Ruckle Park on Salt Spring Island BC
Monthly Meet & Greets
BRMC members will be available for interested individuals to meet and learn more about the club and how to get involved. For locations and times, check out the following list of times & location. Watch our FB for last minute details or changes.
Portland: Meet & Greet - 1st Wednesday of the month, now a moveable feast! 5:30pm at a restaurant in the Portland area. Watch the newsletter and/or Facebook for last minute details.
Vancouver BC Meet & Greet - The club is looking for a host for this event, please contact Dennis if you are interested.
Seattle: Meet & Greet - 2nd Wednesday of the month, 6 pm at someplace new. Watch the newsletter, website or Facebook for exact location. We usually meet for dinner at 6 pm followed by the M&G at 7.
Member & Guest Non-Sanctioned Day-Rides
In addition to the club's monthly M&Gs, local rides frequently happen on the 1st Saturday of every month. Additionally, members & guests going on an impromptu day-ride, or to some other activity, will post their plans on our FB page so others can tag along. Again, watch our FB page for last minute details or changes.
To learn more about local event’s, impromptu events, or to check status on any event, check out our FB page or email the Road Captain at Captain@BorderRiders.com.
Hey, did you notice that trend? Yep, keep an eye on our FB page for last minute changes and details for all events.
Contributions of Photos & Stories
Please feel encouraged to send us your photos of our activities to News@BorderRiders.com. Please be aware that often your email client or and/or our storage system might downgrade the file size/image quality.
Club Archives - We are working hard to consolidate the digital archives. We recently added over 4,000 new photos going back to 2004, but there are still lots of gaps.
We need your help!!! Please consider scrubbing your image archives and submitting them to the club in the original size. This will help us complete the picture. (You will be given instructions on how to upload them to our Google Drive.)
Create folders if needed and include the year and month first, then your name. Event name is helpful but not required. For example:
2021 03 Seattle Day Run – Don Pics
2025 01 Don Pics
2025 02 Don Pics
Also, if you do anything interesting outside the club, we’d love to hear about it. Send us a short story with some photos and we will try get it into the next newsletter. It doesn’t have to be motorcycle related to be interesting. We are very diverse.
If you have photos and stories to share, please send to news@borderriders.com