Sand Hills bike rally a roaring success

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/08/2022 (1228 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CARBERRY — The Sand Hills Casino parking lot was completely packed Sunday for the organization’s inaugural bike rally, which attracted more than 600 attendees from across the province.

Even with temperatures hovering around 30 C, the crowd seemed to be in good spirits when the Sun arrived around 1 p.m., with some barbecue and live music serving as a vibrant side attraction to the rows of new and classic motorcycles on display.

While Sand Hills is no stranger to providing some automotive spectacle through its annual classic car show, general manager Jeff Melcosky said he still wasn’t exactly sure what to expect for the casino’s first attempt at hosting a bike event.

“I know there’s a lot of riders in the Westman area. I wasn’t overly concerned that we might not get people,” Melcosky said on Tuesday. “That’s why I figured we’d get a couple hundred, maybe 200-300 people. But we got way more than that.”

The sheer popularity of Sunday’s rally also came as a pleasant surprise to Doug Webster, who currently serves as the president of the Winnipeg Harley Riders Association.

Since the association has organized similar show and shine events in the eastern part of the province, Webster and his crew were hired to handle logistics for this past weekend, making sure that all the attendees riding into Sand Hills parked their bikes in an orderly fashion and followed the rules.

Despite this being the WHRA’s first attempt to put together a bike rally in Westman, Webster said that everything went smoothly even as the crowd swelled far beyond their expectations.

“We didn’t have any issues with people stepping out of line,” Webster said Sunday afternoon. “Everybody was very well behaved, and that’s always good to see.”

The scale of Sunday’s event came as a surprise to Brandon resident Mike Fontaine, who attended the rally alongside his friend with a 2017 Harley-Davidson Road Glide and 2016 Harley-Davidson Wide Glide in tow.

For someone who has been riding bikes for three decades now, Fontaine said he has never seen a motorcycle gathering of this size in Westman, even though he knows there are small but dedicated groups sprinkled throughout the region.

“It’s good to see people come out of Winnipeg, too. You don’t usually see that,” he said. “They’re usually stuck around the Perimeter [Highway].”

Because of the overall success of Sunday’s rally, Melcosky said he’s hoping to turn it into an annual summer event at Sand Hills, which bodes well for local motorcycle enthusiasts like Fontaine.

“Yeah, I think I would totally go back,” he said. “The more events we can find locally, the better … especially if you’re a weekend warrior and you can’t go too far.”

The Sand Hills Casino first opened its doors in June 2014 on land owned by Swan Lake First Nation. The 31,000-square-foot facility is Manitoba’s third Indigenous-owned casino.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson