The fifth annual Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride (DGR) is on again worldwide on September 25 2016 and for the first time the chosen charity is the Movember Foundation.
DGR has set a fundraising goal of $US5 million to be invested by the Foundation in local and global prostate cancer research and suicide prevention programs.
Last year, DGR raised more than $US2.3m into cancer research with more than 37,000 smartly-dressed gentlefolk riding in 410 cities.
This year they are aiming for 50,000 riders in more than 500 cities across 90 countries.
DGR was founded in 2012 by Sydney rider Mark Hawwa after seeing this photo of actor Jon Hamm playing Don Draper in the TV series, Mad Men.
In the first year, DGR raised just $277,000 by 2,500 riders across 64 cities but by the third year had passed $1m from 235 cities in 55 countries.
“We are just blown away by the traction and the enormous support over the past four years,” says Mark.
“It’s fantastic to see so many different countries and cultures uniting together to offer much needed support toward prostate cancer research and suicide prevention programs.”
For the third year, Triumph Motorcycles is the official sponsor and will give away bikes to the top fund raisers.
DGR is not only a great charity fund raiser, but also a celebration of the art of being dapper and the style of classic custom motorcycles.
While no bikes are turned away, they encourage riders on cafe racers, bobbers, scramblers, street trackers and other hipster customs.
We’d love to be able to ride again on either our Bonneville T100 or the newest edition to our MBW garage, a Triumph Scrambler.
However, we will be riding scooters around the Greek island of Kefalonia and the closest DGR event to us is Patras on mainland Greece which is a 100km ferry ride away!
But here is a video of last year’s ride which we attended on our 1981 Honda CX500 project bike.