Daytona
Bike Week 2016
By Peter THORP-LEVITT
It was a dream finally realized; it was March 10th
and I was going south, with my motorcycle, to Bike Week in Daytona, Florida! For the past 75 years this has been an exciting first ride of the season for many bikers, especially we snow-bound Canadians. I had the privilege of sharing the 27 hour drive
down with Mike Welch, our Canadian Chris- tian Riders (CCR) club leader. Mike and I drove without stopping, except of course for the neces- sary pit stops and to address one minor equipment malfunction. The cause was a dragging electrical cable which resulted in a lighting system failure to our gigantic 45 foot triple-axle trailer that our club bikes were loaded in. Despite the lateness of the hour, darkness and snow, Mike quickly repaired this potentially show-stopping snag with his usual ingenuity and patience at the halfway point in our journey near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Once the repairs were completed, we had a quick snack and were back on the road with little time lost. The trip was doubly exciting for me because,
after riding a modern Triumph Thruxton 900 café racer for the past 10 years, I had a “new” ride that, until very recently, never thought I would own; an old school 2001 Harley Davidson Road King Clas- sic! We were on our way to sun and surf and I was
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going to see what the old girl could do. Long before retiring in October after more than
30 years in the army, I had fantasized about turning right out of my neighbourhood south of Ottawa to be part of a winter adventure such as this, instead of left to my usual humdrum work routine. Bike Week, retirement, the H-D and the newly formed CCR bike club collectively provided the necessary inspiration. Crossing the border at Ivy Lea proved unevent-
ful, both on the way there and back home a week later. As I look back, our ‘profile’ was revealing as we two 60 year old grey-hairs obviously posed no concerns to the attentive border guards. After safe passage south across the international border we began to observe the environmental and cultural changes that one would expect on such an odyssey. Unfortunately, due to our aggressive schedule and lateness of the hour, these were restricted to gradu- ally disappearing snow beginning in southern Vir- ginia and the gentle southern accents, as revealed at rest stops during our infrequent bio-breaks. Excitingly, the closer we got to our destination the more bikes we saw that were actually being ridden as opposed to being trailered like ours. Once we arrived at our destination an hour south
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