Yesterday I took a much needed half day off. Erie was having their 2nd annual "Roar on the Shore" bike rally, so I decided I would spend the day doing that. It was a perfect day for riding, so I rode into Erie and checked things out when it opened up at noon. I visited the vendors set up downtown, which included Orange County Choppers, Drag Specialties, Big Dog Motorcycles, your usual array of corndog and cheese steak vendors, and a slew of motorcycle related stuff.
The organizers were planning a ride, or parade they called it, from the Casino outside of town into the downtown area. It was supposed to be lead by Peter Fonda, but we got Dee Snider and some dude from a tattoo show instead. Not that we saw them..... They were planning on a little over 3,000 bikes. They got, according to the news this morning, 15,000!
Here are some pics.
Here we are, waiting like cattle for the slaughterhouse, for the parade to start. The casino is the building waaaaay in the background.
A terrible shot of my buddy's bike and mine.
The casino is located next to the only mountain in NW PA, the landfill. I remember when it was all flat! You can't make them out, but the motorcycles are filing out in the pic, by where the lightposts are. They had been leaving for probably 30 minutes. You can see the group close to me knows we will still have quite a wait.
Not five minutes into the ride, a third of the group (me included) came to a complete stop for about 30 minutes. I think they took everyone on the scenic route to avoid tying up where I90 exits onto RT 97, just 1/4 mile from the casino, but they tied up a dozen other roads in the process. There were people lined up along the roads and sitting in lawn chairs. Had they been thinking, they would have been selling cold beverages at this point.
Once we got going again, and out of the sticks, the roads were lined shoulder to shoulder with people watching us go by, waving, yelling.
Finally, 5 miles and 1-1/2 hours later, downtown Erie.
I think I saw Hoot there! (lol)
Some people really ought to learn to enjoy riding by themselves.
Needless to say, 15,000 bikes tied up the town pretty good. The main drag, State St, which leads down to the bay, was blocked off to cars for 12 blocks, but you could still ride your bikes through and park. A big party atmosphere, which is totally unlike Erie. I guess our younger mayor is doing things to get us more on par with other resort towns. He's leading the parade around the peninsula today, on his Big Dog! You can see not everyone rode their bike down. Lots of people, bands, food, the LCB must have allowed the bars to sell beer outside. It was really weird seeing this in Erie.....
A bike from Drag Specialties. I want one.
So that's what I did yesterday.......
The organizers were planning a ride, or parade they called it, from the Casino outside of town into the downtown area. It was supposed to be lead by Peter Fonda, but we got Dee Snider and some dude from a tattoo show instead. Not that we saw them..... They were planning on a little over 3,000 bikes. They got, according to the news this morning, 15,000!
Here are some pics.
Here we are, waiting like cattle for the slaughterhouse, for the parade to start. The casino is the building waaaaay in the background.
A terrible shot of my buddy's bike and mine.
The casino is located next to the only mountain in NW PA, the landfill. I remember when it was all flat! You can't make them out, but the motorcycles are filing out in the pic, by where the lightposts are. They had been leaving for probably 30 minutes. You can see the group close to me knows we will still have quite a wait.
Not five minutes into the ride, a third of the group (me included) came to a complete stop for about 30 minutes. I think they took everyone on the scenic route to avoid tying up where I90 exits onto RT 97, just 1/4 mile from the casino, but they tied up a dozen other roads in the process. There were people lined up along the roads and sitting in lawn chairs. Had they been thinking, they would have been selling cold beverages at this point.
Once we got going again, and out of the sticks, the roads were lined shoulder to shoulder with people watching us go by, waving, yelling.
Finally, 5 miles and 1-1/2 hours later, downtown Erie.
I think I saw Hoot there! (lol)
Some people really ought to learn to enjoy riding by themselves.
Needless to say, 15,000 bikes tied up the town pretty good. The main drag, State St, which leads down to the bay, was blocked off to cars for 12 blocks, but you could still ride your bikes through and park. A big party atmosphere, which is totally unlike Erie. I guess our younger mayor is doing things to get us more on par with other resort towns. He's leading the parade around the peninsula today, on his Big Dog! You can see not everyone rode their bike down. Lots of people, bands, food, the LCB must have allowed the bars to sell beer outside. It was really weird seeing this in Erie.....
A bike from Drag Specialties. I want one.
So that's what I did yesterday.......
