It has taken more than a year of recruiting to get this far, but organizers need just one more motorcycle rider to sign up for specialty Blue Ridge Parkway tags so the tags can go into production.
Bob Henard loves the days he hops aboard his 1990 Honda Gold Wing in Raleigh and heads west, logging about 500 miles to find good mountain music and cruise the Blue Ridge Parkway.
"The thing's priceless," he said of the parkway. "I hope we can preserve it. We've been given a heck of a gift."
That's why he's been promoting the Blue Ridge Parkway motorcycle tag that the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles hopes to make available in cooperation with the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation.
But he also joked about the small ulterior motive he has.
"I want my motorcycle tag," Henard said. "I've wanted it for a long time."
More than 27,000 Blue Ridge Parkway tags have been put on cars, trucks and SUVs since the program started four years ago. It's the most successful specialty-tag program in the state's history and has raised about $500,000 to help the Blue Ridge Parkway, said Houck Medford, the director of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation.
With that in mind, Medford figured it would take maybe a few months to get commitments on the 300 motorcycle tags required for the new program.
"What we found is the motorcycle market is so fragmented with interest groups, it's hard to reach all of them," he said.
And even though there are a lot of people who ride motorcycles on the Blue Ridge Parkway, motorcycle riders account for a small percentage of the total driving public.
There are about 7.2 million registered cars, pickups, SUVs, vans and station wagons in North Carolina, and only about 213,000 registered motorcycles, according to the Division of Motor Vehicles.
In October 2007, representatives of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation started going to motorcycle rallies, sending out information to motorcycle clubs and doing other outreach. They have almost 300 on order.
Once the motorcycle tag goes into production and people can easily get them when they renew their tags, Medford said, he expects the program to take off.
The Blue Ridge Parkway motorcycle tags will cost $30, in addition to the regular license fee.
Out of the extra money, $20 will go to the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation and its efforts to promote and preserve the parkway, and $10 will go to the state's roadside wildflower program.
Henard, 59, a consultant and engineering physicist, signed up 18 riders at a Gold Wing rally in Asheville this past fall, and has handed out many more applications and talked to lots of riders.
"It's been a long, hard struggle," he said.
He rides about 180 miles just to get to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but still remembers the feeling when he and his family came to North Carolina from the Midwest. They camped at Linville Falls in the early 1990s and grew to know the Blue Ridge Parkway like the back of their hands, Henard said.
"The first time I saw the Appalachians, I fell in love with them," he said.
■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.
■ For more information on the Blue Ridge Parkway motorcycle tags, call the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation at 336-721-0260 or visit www.brpfoundation.org.
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