Bike Week Final Saturday Wild
Posted in Bike Shows, Bike Week, Daytona Beach, Editorial, Florida, Local, Motorcycle Events, Motorcycle Pictures, Motorcycles, News, Ormond Beach, State, Travel, Volusia County, Weather on March 12th, 2007Staying 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.
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