Our club began in 1974 as the BMW Bikers of Metropolitan Washington to connect BMW Motorrad enthusiasts living in Washington DC, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. The repetition of the first initials of the marque was a creative stroke which led to the establishment of our landmark event, the Square Route Rally (SRR). To this present day, many club members deliberately misspell route with root to honor our founders. Since our founding days, our ranks have been blessed by Iron Butt legends, endurance rally fiends (and Iron Butt rally finishers galore), and countless helpful and fun adventurers. We've hosted countless tech days, maintaining, repairing and maybe occasionally breaking motorcycles. We've been a voice for motorcycle safety in the area and were instrumental in gaining motorcycle access to the High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the area. All of these accomplishments were done by people – people whom we'll profile more fully as these pages grow, but also people like you who will build our future (and tomorrow's history).
If you're a club member, there will be a draft of our history from the founding until the 1980s in a coming link in the membership portal.
Read archives of our Between the Spokes newsletter at https://bmwbmw.org/BTS.
Stroll through our old (read only) club forums at https://www.bmwbmw.org/forums/ and look for us to steal old forum and other content “blasts from the past” on this site.
You can help build our history in two ways:
- Be a part of the future - join the club and contribute however and as often as you can.
- Help us fill out the history – we especially need help filling the gap between the early '80s and about 2001. Just contact the club secretary via the form below with your ideas.