Lincoln Bike Rally Returns

This year's Lincoln Bike Rally was "busier than ever," according to Tina Bundtrock, the national event coordinator for the Tenacious Dames Riding Club, which has organized the rally since 2019.

"We had more turnout for our poker run this year than the last couple years." Bundtrock said.

The town's 7th rally last weekend brought riders from around Montana as well as Canada, Washington, Oregon and one rider from as far away as Durango, Colo.

"In my opinion, she wins the award for the longest ride; almost 1000 miles just to come to Lincoln, see Overtime and meet us," Bundtrock said.

This is the fourth year the Tenacious Dames have coordinated the rally since they took over the task in 2019, but only the third time they've hosted it. Bundtrock they'd been planning a rally for 2020 but called it off after health officials concerned about COVID-19 threatened to make an example of them if they went forward with it.

Bundtrock said the Lincoln Bike Rally has proved popular with bikers.

"Honestly it been a lot less 'drama' event for bikers," she said. "A lot of non club riders who don't belong to a club come to this one for the fun. It's carefree, everyone in Lincoln's friendly, they're super supportive."

Nevertheless, she said there are some serious challenges to continuing with it and admitted its possible this year's rally may be the last one.

One of the key challenges is the lack of accommodations for such a large event.

"Putting 'heads in beds.' We don't have enough places for people to stay," she said. "We don't have enough camping spots, we don't have enough RV spots. Losing the Sportsman hurt us. People would come and stay Friday through Sunday, but unfortunately a lot of folks don't have campers, they don't have travel trailers that you can put your bike in and come up."

"Event insurance is crazy. It has limited what we've been able to do. They won't let us do the Bike Rodeo," she said, adding that the company they had last year didn't even like overnight camping.

We've got challenges and it's kind of hard to overcome those. It's kind of like balancing a scale," she said. We haven't officially made a decision as a club. Between national and state, we have not come together and discussed what this looks like. Do we continue as a group to stay in the Rally business? It takes a lot of work."

Bundtrock feels the Tenacious Dames really need partnerships to help make it work if it's going to have a future. In the last couple of years, they've taken on 100 percent of the expenses, paying for everything from the bands to the porta-potties.

"There are behind the scenes challenges people don't see and they don't understand," she said.

The Bike Rally began as a Lincoln Valley Chamber of Commerce event in 2014, but lost money every year for the next three years and was canceled in 2018. Bundtrock, who had helped coordinate the first Rally, saw how popular it could become and felt the Great Falls chapter of the Tenacious Dames could bring the necessary experience to the table. They approached the Chamber about taking it over in 2019 rather than letting it die and the board, which at the time had several other events to deal with, agreed.