MNO Blog – Motorcycles, News, Opinions

Today, October 15th is Blog Action day. As a blogger I am supposed to write something about the enviroment. Bloggers get to pick there own subject to write about, but the post should be geared toward the enviroment. The choice for me was easy, finding a protected Florida wildlife species to photograph for the story was not as easy.

Meet the Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus), a protected wildlife species found mostly in northern and central Florida and some parts of southern Georgia but have been found to be declining in numbers.

I took a ride over to Erna Nixon Brevard County Park to see if I could find a gopher tortoise to photograph. This county park is known to have this particular form of protected wildlife roaming the area. I asked the ranger where I might find a gopher turtle, but she told me that they are usually not out until later afternoon.

I decided to walk my way up the nature trail and see if I would get lucky even though it was just after twelve noon. I walked up the path til I reached the wetland area of the park with no luck. Then took a walk up the opposite side of the trail to the wetlands and still had not spotted a turtle. As luck would have it, as I was exiting the trail just past the main pavilion I spotted this big guy chomping on some grass.

Many bikers and motorcycle enthusiasts ride the “loop” when visiting the Volusia County area including Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach during the two big Florida Motorcycle events every year. Bike Week and Biketoberfest attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to this area and most will make plans to ride the loop during these events.

Many of you readers have noticed the signs “Save the Loop” posted in homes and along the 23 mile stretch of road from Daytona to Ormond Beach. The loop is a natural habitat for the gopher tortoise and like the turtle, this land is threatened by development. One such development called Plantation Oaks brings threat to this enjoyable natural Florida scenic ride as well as the lives of over 900 gopher turtles. Read Permit to Kill to see more on how this developer bought his way through a permit loop hole.

It is sad to see more and more of the natural Florida ecosystem losing out to high dollar homes and multi-million dollar golf courses. Along with the natural beauty and surroundings of this land we are also killing off our wildlife, like the gopher tortoise.

Technorati Tags: blog action day, daytona beach, ecosystem, endangered wildlife, florida, gopher tortoise, enviroment, melbourne, ormond beach, the loop, volusia county

We hit Sanford early morning for bikefest, not sure why we left so early, but we did. We hit the local McDonalds for breakfast and I am really not sure why we did, but we did. After killing time in town with breakfast and stopping to get some super 8 tape, we rolled back into the event area close to 9:00 am.

With fall here, which we do not experience in Florida, the days are getting shorter so the early morning lighting sucks for taking pictures. The back neighborhood streets are beginning to remind me of Daytona Beach with the ride quiet signs as WESH channel 2 news reports complaints about the noise.

Local news reports an expected growth for the Sanford motorcycle event, but if there was it seemed minimal to me. There did seem to be a larger amount of biker event vendors. There were more tattoo vendors then the previous year and more parts and accessory vendors made the walk down East Seminole a little more interesting.

One truly notable vendor we came across was Redz Custom Airbrush where their motto is “boring paint should be a crime”. The custom airbrush paint work on this bike was anything but boring. The amount of work spent on the detail of this paint shows right down to the rivets.

The Can-Am Spyder demo rides were a big hit. You could see trails of these things buzzing around the area all day.

A pretty unique 3 wheel vehicle called the Spyder Roadster powered by the Rotax V990 engine. I listened as most of the comments of the demo riders were positive.

This year the Bikefest visitor’s were treated to two stunt rider shows. About every hour and a half there was a street bike stunt show followed up by motocross jumpers.

These riders were good, performing 3 at a time doing wheelies, stoppies and burnouts. They had a pretty awesome finish to the show were all 3 bikes would slide in together and the rider would dismount. The kind of stuff you do not do on the open roads.

They moved the bike show out to the main event area this year which was kind of nice, but from a photographer’s view the grass could have been cut deeper before opening day.

I needed to find a nice looking purple motorcycle to submit to the Flickr Lupus Awareness group purple photos and I found this sharp looking custom built by JZ Riders of Sanford. I looked through most of the pictures that had been submitted to help create Lupus awareness and I had not seen any motorcycles, so I think I was able to send in something unique with this motorcycle picture.

I guess these pie eating contests are going to come back into style at motorcycle events. I shot the contest this year at Leesburg and Sanford now too. If Daytona decides to have an eating contest, I am hoping they will do Krystal hamburgers. I can eat a sack load of those little guys.

Daytona Biketoberfest is coming up this weekend!

Technorati Tags: bikefest, sanford, motorcycle events, biketoberfest, daytona beach, bike shows, custom motorcycles

Australian cyclist Geoff Thomas spent 156 days and traveled over 9,000 miles on the very same bicycle that he used to ride from coast to coast in his homeland, Australia. Geoff set out on his bicycle towing the custom single wheel trailer from New York City on April 28th 2007. His goal? To ride his bike on a “lap” around the USA.

Geoff told me that he wanted to accomplish more than just riding from coast to coast across the United States as many have done. Geoff set his goal much higher. He wanted to do an actual lap around the US by mapping out his course from New York up into the northern states and then continue on until he reached the west coast in the state of Washington.

Then bike south down the west coast before heading back east to cross the lower southern states traveling mostly on side roads and ending his southern ride here in Melbourne, Florida before heading up the east coast returning to his original starting point New York City.

Now, of course Geoff has cycled long distance rides before and although he had set this lap around the USA as a personal goal he wanted to put it all towards a cause. Geoff was diagnosed with Lupus in 2003 and quickly learned that the disease is not only mysterious, but it is also not well known. It is for this reason that he began to contact different Lupus organizations about sponsoring his lap so that he could raise a bit of charity money for them, but more importantly to create a better awareness of the auto immune disease.

I first learned about Geoff Thomas, The Lap and Bikeusa2007.com  when I found an article about him in The South Bend Tribune. By this time he had already put over 800 miles behind him and he was still looking for a charity to contact him so that he could promote their cause. Being a member of Lupus.org and reading his story, gave me the idea that I wanted to help Geoff establish a communication with the Lupus Foundation. I sent an email to Geoff and contacted my local chapter for the Lupus Foundation trying to help get them together. I was delighted to receive a response from Geoff by email and we continued to communicate from then on. Very shortly after, Geoff had finally made contact with the Lupus Foundation and he posted the news on his web site www.bikeusa2007.com that he was riding for the Lupus Foundation. As Geoff continued on his journey, he began to pick up even more charity organizations as well as a few more dealing with Lupus. He also began to draw the attention of some of the mass media and local newspapers and television stations would catch up with him when he rode into town.

I was happy to learn that Geoff’s plans were to bike on into the southern part of Florida and I would get a chance to meet him as he was going to be stopping in to Melbourne, Florida. The”other Melbourne” as many refer to my city, as opposed to the Melbourne Vic Australia. Geoff and I communicated by email and then later by telephone and he had expressed that he wished to do a lap on the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. I thought that was a great Idea and it would seem that something of this nature would generate a great deal of media attention which would benefit promoting Lupus awareness and give the Daytona Speedway some attention for something that had not been done before.

I started the task of trying to make contacts with the media relations department at the speedway. When I say it was a task, I mean I spent 3 days being tossed from one department to another and from one person to another and nothing accomplished but leaving unanswered voice messages on speedway executive’s voicemail boxes. It seemed I was hitting nothing but dead ends in getting this accomplished, so I turned to a mass media reporter for help. It seems nobody ever wants to talk to you once you announce you are an independent news writer and journalist. Of course making contact and getting a mass media journalist to hear you out is another task as well. However, I did finally talk to a real person at a local news station for Daytona and Orlando area. WESH channel 2 news reporter Claire Metz was good enough to answer my telephone calls and sent me the names of media contacts at the Daytona speedway. She seemed interested in the story, if I was going to be able to get Geoff on the track.

I finally was able to talk to the lady that organizes track activities and I explained how I wanted to get the track opened for just a small amount of time in order for Geoff Thomas to ride a lap on his bicycle around the speedway track. I pointed out that this was for a good cause and how we wanted to try and bring more awareness to the disease. This lady blew me away when she told me that she would have to charge me mega-bucks for just those few minutes and it would not be worth my effort. Okay, so much for the Daytona International Speedway being a charitable corporation. So much for being able to get any type of news coverage in the Daytona Beach area. I really hated having to tell Geoff that I had met a total dead end in Daytona, but he took it well and continued on toward Florida.

As he approached the Melbourne area in Brevard County, I tried to get some coverage in the local newspaper Florida Today. I called the chief editor and explained that I had a really great human interest story and told him about how Geoff was riding his bike around the USA and had already covered 8,000 miles. I told him about Lupus and how the disease was not well known though it has developed in over 1.5 million Americans. Well, this guy proceeds to tell me how “people do things for charity all the time” and referred me to his cycling editor. This is just the type of apathy and uneducated people that I was trying to reach. The very same people that I was trying to get involved in the media, were just not interested! It is the same type of apathy toward Lupus with our government when funding is passed out for research on diseases.

Quick fact: 1.5 million US citizens suffer from lupus, the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, MD, USA) allocated only US$88 million for research in 2005, down from US$96 million in 2003. Lupus will receive another US$25 million from non-profit organizations, according to Duane Peters, Vice President for Advocacy and Communications at the Lupus Foundation of America (Washington, DC, USA). There are about one million patients diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the USA, and research received a total of US$2,981 billion from the NIH this year.

This makes no sense!

When Geoff arrived in Melbourne we talked by telephone and agreed to meet at the motel he was staying at in Melbourne Beach the following day. Geoff was diagnosed with Discoid Lupus, the very same type of Lupus that effects Cindi, the love of my life. Cindi and I went over to meet with Geoff and  spent an hour or so just chatting with him and talking about the many things that he had experienced during his ride around the country.

As we were talking I started looking at this bicycle that had traveled across Australia and now was doing a lap around the U.S. I noticed this bike has no pedals! I have never been a big fan of bicycle riding myself, but every bike I have ever owned had pedals.

Seems that a real bicycle made for this sort of trip has no pedals. Instead, there are special shoes designed with a metal tab that slides into the clamp where a pedal should be. So, we learned a little more about Geoff and his equipment and talked about how people really need to be more aware of the disease Lupus. Meeting Geoff in person it was easy to understand how he was able to accomplish such a fantastic journey. He is in great condition, of course, but more importantly he is a very laid back guy. His out look on life, the trips he has experienced and all the obstacles he ran into along the way was you just got to keep movin on mate.

Geoff is an inspiration for both Cindi and myself and it was a pleasure to watch him meet his goal.

So, what is Lupus?

Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that can target your joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, heart and lungs. The great majority of people affected are women. For reasons that aren’t clear, lupus develops when the immune system attacks your body’s own tissues and organs. Three main types of lupus exist — systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), discoid lupus erythematosus and drug-induced lupus. Of these, SLE is the most common and serious form of the disease, frequently causing swollen, painful joints, skin rash, extreme fatigue and kidney damage. In rare cases, mothers can pass antibodies to their babies during childbirth (neonatal lupus erythematosus), though the mothers themselves usually show no signs of lupus. The outlook for people with lupus was once grim, but diagnosis and treatment of lupus has improved considerably. With proper care, most people with lupus can lead normal, active lives.

No two cases of lupus are exactly alike. Signs and symptoms may come on suddenly or develop slowly, may be mild or severe, and may be temporary or permanent. Even the distinctive rash that gives the disease its name “lupus” is the Latin word for “wolf” because doctors once thought the rash resembled a wolf bite doesn’t occur in every case. Most people with lupus have one thing in common, however, and that’s the tendency of the disease to get decidedly worse in episodes called flares and then to improve or even disappear completely for a time.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease, which means that instead of just attacking foreign substances, such as bacteria and viruses, the immune system also turns against healthy tissue. This leads to inflammation and damage to various parts of the body, including the joints, skin, kidneys, heart, lungs, blood vessels and brain.

Someone YOU know has Lupus!

Like the disease itself can be mysterious and misunderstood, so too can the Lupus patient. Being supportive of your loved one or friend that has Lupus is important, but understanding them is very important. Aside from the effects of the disease itself, the Lupus patient will be effected by the medications that they have to take. Understanding that just because they don’t look sick, they are is important. If they say they do not feel well, understand that they truly do not and be supportive of them. I love Cindi very much and I am supportive of her and understand her when she can’t sleep or is emotional. If you have a friend or loved one that has Lupus, show them that you care by listening to them and understanding them. Join a support group in your area and attend the meetings with them. Get involved and become a Lupus advocate by writing the government. Explain your outrage to your congressman and senator in the amount of funding given to other groups with less effected. Remember, the noisy wheel gets the oil!

Be sure to visit Geoff Thomas’ web site www.bikeusa2007.com and read more about his lap around the USA. His site is full of interesting stories and facts like the fact that he had 44 flat tires during his journey!

Read more on Lupus and get involved at www.lupus.org

Participate in the up coming Walk for Lupus Now!

Meet Cindi Odom

Source: Mayoclinic.com

Technorati Tags: lupus, cycling, long distance cycling, sle, discoid, health, medicine, lupus awareness, disease, Geoff Thomas, bicycle, Melbourne, daytona beach, australia, lupus walk

Got to hurry! The Burke Real Ride is coming up this weekend, Sunday May 20th. You can purchase your Real Ride tickets here. Portions of the proceeds will benefit to Boggy Creek Camp that serves enrich the lives of children who have chronic or life threatening illnesses. So like most every motorcycle ride or run, you get to have a great time among friends and help those out in need.

You can read my post  Coverage of the Burke Real Ride about last year’s ride to see more about how the event went and meet some of the WTKS Real Radio 104.1 personalities like Daniel, Black Bean, Drunky the Bear and Dirty Jim. Yea, I know the Drunky the Bear link goes to his my space profile. Drunky is one of my my space friends, so I had to give him a plug.

This year The Monsters will be performing at Destination Daytona were the ride will end, but lunch will be served and the party begins. If you missed The Monsters in concert during Leesburg Bikefest, here is your chance to see them again. Don’t miss out this time.

Real Riders will get entry into the ride, lunch and a Real Ride T Shirt.

Shannon, Cindi and I should get shirts for all the promotion that I do …. hint hint. We will be there at the 12:00 start off form Ker’s Wing House in Altamonte and taking pictures along the ride and during the party at Bruce Rossmeyer’s. See you there!

Check out WTKS 104.1 Real Radio for The Monsters and The Shannon Burke Show and not to forget SBK

Technorati Tags: motorcycle events, real ride, destination daytona, florida, motorcycles, daytona beach, ormond beach

Melbourne, Florida – Dr. Raymond Adamcik and a few other medical friends were involved in a local Melbourne pub crawl Saturday night all dressed up as comic book super heroes.  Adamcik was costumed as Captain America as well as a few other of the crawl participants. Doctor Adamcik got carried away with having a good time and wound up in jail.

Witnesses at the On Tap Pub on Strawbridge Ave. in downtown Melbourne said that Adamcik was approaching women with a burrito stuffed in the tights of the Capt. America outfit he was wearing. The doctor went to extremes moments later when he allegedly grabbed a female bar patron’s genitals. The boyfriend of the women did not care for the actions of  the Captain America impostor and a confrontation began. The fight did not go far and no one was seriously injured, but the boyfriend decided to call 911 so the police could arrest the superhero look a like.

The Melbourne Police report states that, because there were so many cartoon characters inside at the time, all captain Americas were asked to go outside so that he (Adamcik) could be identified. The complaining female patron picked the doctor out of the line up of  4 or so captain Americas as the one who touched her.

 Adamcik was arrested for battery and disorderly conduct and was taken to the Melbourne Police station for booking. It was during booking procedure inside the Melbourne Police Department were Adamcik added a couple more charges to the evening. Adamcik requested to use the restroom and was observed trying to dump what appeared to be a bag of cannabis in the toilet. The officer attempted to retrieve the bag before it went down, but was only able to grab a “joint” that was still floating. The added charges for Captain America’s restroom ordeal were possession of cannabis under 20 grams and destruction of evidence. Adamcik has managed to find his name and picture all over the web today for his Saturday night pub crawl fun.

Technorati Tags: crime, weird news, melbourne, florida, palm bay

I have to admit, I do not watch much television, I listen, but seldom watch. Tonight was one of the times for me to watch with the first airing of Motorcycle Mania 4 on TLC. Commercials, wow! Cindi commented on how there was so many of them. My answer to her, “would you rather pay to see this, or let them pay”? So with that said, in the review of tonight’s show, I will include our top picks of use of air time to pay the bills.

With just the opening few seconds of the show, I was ready to go back to Daytona Beach and do bike week again. Working during these events takes from a lot of the fun, but hey, its still a great job. One of the best things about watching Motorcycle Mania tonight was that it was filmed during bike week and watching the show was exciting for that reason.

For those of you that watched the show tonight, I am sure you could see how busy custom motorcycle builder Russell Mitchell was during the live build. However, Russell, like many other celebrity builders will almost always take the time out to talk to fans. It was a pleasure to speak with and meet Russell in Daytona. Speaking of fans, one of the highlights of  the show tonight was watching Russell autograph a fans head. This was not a normal autograph though, this was done in the form of a tattoo. Though Russell claimed that he had not been on the controlling end of the tattoo gun before, he did an excellent job of signing the guys head for life.

Unfortunately, I was not present during any of the time that John Mellencamp was around, I would of like to have met him as well. He seems to have settled down in the years past. I remember seeing him live in Orlando back in the seventies where he racked up thousands of dollars in fines for using prohibited language on stage. I expected to hear more of John’s music, but was satisfied to see him do a unplugged version of “Pink Houses” during the presentation of his original Exile Cycles Mellencamp Rigid.

First good commercial goes out to the TLC reality show Real Deal where Richard Davis is trying to teach some bikers how to make money in real estate by fixing up houses. He leads in to a statement about drinking and … a guy holds up a nail gun and continues driving nails. Then a guy sitting in the class with hair standing straight up ask how long it will take for a persons smell to come back after working on a socket that the electrician left live.

Russell and the guys from Exile Cycles get ready to start the build and once they seem to have everything in place and ready to go, Russell announces that they do not have a full bottle of the gun blue stain to start the frame. Now, it appears that he will only have four days to finish the bike, were it was originally planned he would have five. No sweat, right?

Next good commercial was done by BMW motorcycles. The entire commercial was free of words and was composed of motorcycle stunt video footage. Great commercial to get your point across without saying anything.

Back to the show where Iraq war hero, Capt. David Haigh is presented a custom motorcycle built by chopper builder Bill Dodge with the help of Paul Cox and Keino. The custom motorcycle was given to him on the Hard Rock Roadhouse stage were he got to see it for the first time. I was not around during the presentation, but my hat goes off to Bill Dodge and his sponsors for showing their support for Capt. Haigh and our troops in Iraq.

Thanks goes out to Amour All for the next commercial that made us laugh while the Bud Light commercial was, well not so funny. Back to the show and the final day of the build. Russell completes the wiring on Mellencamp’s bike and wants to hear it run before he calls it a day. The crew gets the bike gassed up and ready, and with a final check, Russell touches two wires together and the engine fires right up. Next up, Russell celebrates by doing a burnout that heats the exhaust pipes up cherry red and draws the attention of the Daytona Police. NAPA auto parts follows up with a commercial full of hot rod burn outs without the cops.

The ending scenes of the show are of Russell and John riding around the Daytona loop and up Highway A1A with John Mellencamp’s new song Freedom Road playing. It was a pretty good show with too many commercial interruptions that remind me of why I do not sit in front of the television to often. It was cool to see all of the bike week happenings on TV, but I would rather live it.

Technorati Tags: exile cycles, motorcycles, bike week, television, motorcycle mania

Russell Mitchel of Exile Cycles had only 5 days to complete a custom motorcycle build for singer/song writer John Mellencamp for tonight’s premiere airing of Motorcycle Mania 4 on TLC and he did it on Main Street, Daytona Beach during Bike Week 2007.

Once completed, the motorcycle built by Mitchell is presented to John Mellencamp during bike week. Russell Mitchell and John Mellencamp go for a ride together after the bike is presented on the final Friday of bike week 2007.

Motorcycle Mania is produced by Hugh “Chopper” King who also produces The Great Biker Build-Off series. While Russell was building a custom motorcycle on Main Street, Hugh King was out and about filming other bike week events in the Daytona Beach area. We spotted Hugh filming during the women’s cole slaw wrestling at the cabbage patch bar in Samsula, Florida.

Be sure to check your local television listings for the correct time and channel in your area for tonight’s episode of Motorcycle Mania 4.

Technorati Tags: hugh king, john mellencamp, motorcycle mania, motorcycle news, motorcycles, russell mitchell, television, tlc, motorcycle news

Wow, I have been busy the past months. I am happy to announce that the long awaited publishing of my 2007 edition of my bike week pictures is taking place as I type this post. There are already over 650 pictures posted at the newly designed Daytona Motorcycle Rally site. So far, I have uploaded some of the most requested bike week pictures of motorcycle ride on the loop, bike week bars and  bike week babes.

Included in the next upload of files will be pictures taken at some of the most popular bike week events such as the world famous cole slaw wrestling held at the Cabbage Patch Bar during bike week and biketoberfest.

I also have some pretty good photos taken at the A A A Welding Bike Week block party held in Deland of a motorcycle stunt show performed by Kyle Woods. Of course I have a Daytona Main Street gallery as well as pictures taken at Destination Daytona.

No bike week photo album would be complete without pictures taken at the famous Rat’s Hole Custom Motorcycle Show where they held the first V8 build-off and there were plenty of custom rides, choppers and babes.

I also wrote a article about the bike week scene for Motorcycle USA online publication and contributed some photo work as well. You can check out the article by clicking here.

Head on over to Daytona Motorcycle Rally Bike Week Edition and check out the 2007 Bike Week Pictures.

Technorati Tags: babes, bike week, coleslaw wrestling, daytona beach, deland, florida, motorcycle news, ormond beach

I guess one of the biggest draws to the famed Daytona Beach’s Main Street during bike week is for the cruising. Whether you choose to walk or ride this strip of bars, shops and restaurants that are packed along Main Street beginning at S. Peninsula Dr. that continues up to Ocean Ave., it is a people watching safari. Two and three wheeled vehicles of all shapes and sizes and covered with everything imaginable will appear on this strip at least once during the ten day Florida Motorcycle Event. Men and women from all over the world will visit Main Street to shop, eat and drink will checking out the masses that migrate to Daytona Beach annually for bike week.

Wet T shirt and bikini contest are almost an hourly event as the bars attempt to draw in thirsty spectators. Beer Tub Babes, half naked, draw the eye of people passing by while every cell phone with a camera is in hand to grab a shot to bring home as a souvenir of the visit to Daytona Beach, Florida.

The motorcycle industries top names also appear in this area. I was lucky enough to catch custom motorcycle builder Russell Mitchell of Exile Cycles working on a build at Automatic Slim’s on Main Street next to Dirty Harry’s saloon. The bike Russell is working on was to be presented to John Mellencamp and will be featured in Motorcycle Mania 4 to be aired in April.

With all the things to see on Main Street, the number 1 attraction? Babes. Biker Babes, Beer-Tub Babes, babes in chaps and bikini babes.

There is always plenty of great looking eye candy on the strip in Daytona.

More Bike Week Babes on my Bike Week Daytona web site.

Technorati Tags: bike week, motorcycle news, daytona beach, florida, motorcycle events

Staying at home in my bed after tent camping for 6 nights made it hard to get out of the sack early Saturday morning to return to Daytona Beach for the Rat’s Hole custom bike show, but I did. The annual Florida motorcycle event was not extremely busy the first few days, in fact up until Wednesday the bike week scene seemed tamed. Putting aside the nightly party that was happening on our end of the campgrounds, but that is another story all together.

As promised, the weather for the first Saturday was cold and wet and the cold did not give way to warmer temperatures until Monday. The good thing was that out of the 10 days of bike week we only seen rain one day. We postponed our Daytona Loop photo shoot until Sunday due to the in climate weather on Saturday.

It is hard to wrap up nine days of bike week into one article, so I am not going to try. I am still in the process, but closed to finished, of sorting out the pictures that we took during our visit. The final Saturday of bike week was wild and crowded. Running late coming from Melbourne and getting caught in the Daytona Speedway traffic did not help. It took nearly an hour to get from the International Speedway Blvd. Exit of I-95 to the Daytona Lagoon were the Rat’s Hole bike show was being held.

For the first time, the Rat’s Hole featured a V8 Chopper build-off! The bikes and the main stage were set up in the Tidal Wave Pool that normally holds 500,000 gallons of water. The water was gone for the event…. wonder where they put 500,000 gallons of water while the bike show was set up? Any way, the show was held under blue skies and there was plenty to keep our cameras busy. I will do more on the Rat’s Hole later.

Heading down SR A1A to Main Street later in the afternoon to check out the happenings, we found that Main Street was wall to wall. Where there were not bikes, there were people and no room left for either. For the final Saturday of bike week 2007, Main Street took on the look of the bike week of days gone by. It was almost a feeling of “let’s see how far we can take this” pushing the red line on what would get by. It was a good thing and a good feeling to see people having fun, real fun. None of this”I am shocked at all this” looks. For Pete’s sake, if you want family atmosphere head over to Orlando. It is probably too late for the city to revive the entire event back to Daytona Beach, but it looks like they may get a day of the old days.

There were just as many people the entire time of Bike Week, with the exceptions of a lot of Floridians riding in for the day, it is just that they are more spread out now. US 1 has become the new Main Street and a lot of the traffic has been pulled to the North with the opening of Destination Daytona along with other anchor industry leaders like Corbin. New biker bars, custom chopper and motorcycle dealers and tattoo shops are popping up all around the Ormond Beach area. I will get to all this later on as well.

So, I am back from Daytona and will try to get as much information about what happened at the event posted in the next day or so. Keep an eye out for them.

Technorati Tags: motorcycle news, bike week, daytona beach, florida, motorcycle events, bike shows