Tuesday, March 26, 2013

DAYTONA BIKE WEEK

 
 On March 9th I rode to Daytona Bike Week with 3 other bike riders from the park. The trip over was about 120 miles. Louise and the other women decided to stay home so it was a guys day out.  We spent the day walking around several of the vendor areas and riding around Daytona. This was my first trip to Bike Week and what everybody says is true, it's a zoo. There were so many bikes that it was hard to find a place to park the bike and it don't take up much room. The bad thing about the trip was when I tried to take a picture, I found out that I had left the battery at home. We had a great time looking at all the bikes and all the bike "stuff". We went to Ormond Beach to the bikers mall. There is a BIG area that has all kinds of bike related stores. We had to park about a mile away and ride a tram into the stores area. As one of the fellows that went with us said " there are acres of bikes here".
 
On March 16th, Louise and I went with friends Brock and Leola to the Daytona 200 Bike race. We to rode over in a truck this time. This was the first bike race that we had ever been to. The race was a rode race where the track is laid out with a bunch of horse shoe turns and lots of "s" curves. This time I remembered the battery.
 
 As you can see in the pictures, when they go around the horse shoe turns they really lay the bikes over. There were 3 races of different distances. The main was race was 200 miles long. The shorter races were actually a lot more interesting. In the 200 they got so spread out that you lost track of who was leading. In the end the winner was ahead by 28 seconds and had lapped all but 8 of the other racers. In the short races they were close together for the whole race. We had a great time but don't know if I would go to another race of this type. We could see about half of the track from out seats. We were able to position ourselves  so we could see 2 of the horse shoe curves and we were able to see them going around the 31 degree banked track on one end. On the back stretch they reached speeds of over 200 miles a hour.
 




In the parking lot we spotted his bike with a just married sign on the back. One of the signs was written in Oriental symbols. I don't think they were locals.
 
Today was our last day of work here in Florida. We will be here for another week or so while waiting for our new eye glasses to show up. We plan on taking in some sights here that we haven't had a chance to get to yet. Then the plan is to head for Texas for while. We have not committed to work anywhere for the rest of the year. I think we will take some time off  and just sight see for a while.

Till next time
Duane and Louise


2 comments:

where's weaver said...

Duane...really...no battery...oh dear. Glad you learned your lesson...hehe

The pictures are great! I could never sit there and watch. It would make to way too nervous.

I asked in my comment back to you where you were going next. I now have my answer. Wish our timing was a bit better so we could meet up in Alabama. Glad you are going to take some time off to sightsee. Enjoy your week.

The Bright's said...

Good idea... just kick it for a while... Go on Vacation!