The Motorcycle Riders Foundation (MRF) is continually monitoring the ever-changing situation with the outbreak of COVID-19 around the country. First and foremost, we care about everyone’s safety, and are closely monitoring the situation and guidance from the Federal Government and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), to ensure we are giving you the most up-to-date information possible. Earlier today, the leadership of the MRF hosted a phone call to discuss the potential impacts of our lobby day, “Bikers Inside the Beltway,” which is slated to be held on Tuesday, May 19th in Washington, D.C. We have determined that we will proceed with lobbying on Capitol Hill as scheduled as we do not have any information that we will be prohibited from doing so at this time.
What we know right now?
As we reported in our “Riding Free from D.C.” weekly update, Congress decided to suspend any public access on Capitol Hill starting on March 12 through April 1, 2020. Over the weekend, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a recommendation that for the next 8 weeks, events with 50 people or more cancel or postpone in-person events. Bikers Inside the Beltway would be outside of that window of the CDC recommendation. If anything changes in Federal Guidance in the coming weeks, we will continue to update you with that information as we receive it.
Making Travel Arrangements
Last week, we received communication from our event host hotels, Clarion Inn and Governor’s House Inn, to ensure us that they are working hard to ensure our event is successful. If you have already booked a room directly through the hotel, they have a standard 24-hour notice cancellation policy. If you booked through a third-party travel vendor, we advise you to review your bookings policy if you need to modify your travel plans. While most attendees ride to D.C., we understand that some of our members need to fly to D.C. for the event. If you haven’t booked your travel, we strongly encourage you to book options with built-in flexibility like free cancellation, changes or consider travel insurance if it’s offered.
BITB 2020 deadline to register online, order an event t-shirt and book your hotel room at the group rate is Monday, April 27th. If we feel that we might have to postpone the event, we will decide by that date to give everyone adequate notice to alter their travel plans. For more information or to register for the event, please visit https://mrf.org/events/
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