THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, June 14, 2012 A
brendan@weirs.com inNEW HAMP SHI R E FOOL * Live Free *A FLATLANDER’S OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE DON’T MEAN TO YELL!! I hope
by Brendan Smith Weirs Times Editor
you’ l l be a b l e t o hear this c o l u m n okay this week… IT’S MO- TOR - C YC LE W EEK
HERE IN THE WEIRS AND SOMETIMES I HAVE TO SHOUT TO BE heard above the noise of pass- ing bikes. I guess I’ve GOTTEN
USED TO IT OVER THE YEARS. I THINK this is my fifteenth Bike Week here at what we call Ground Zero. I don’t have a MOTOR-
CYCLE MYSELF SO, I GUESS I’LL NEVER UN- DERSTAND what the at- traction to it all is. But now, at 56 years old, I Don’t THINK THAT I’M GOING TO BE FINDING OUT ANY TIME SOON. The first motorcycle
week I experienced living in Laconia was IN 1986. IT WASN’T A WEEK THEN, IT WAS ONLY A WEEK- END. IT WAS REALLY JUST TENS OF THOU- SANDS of bikers cram- ming into Weirs Beach for a couple of days, a bunch of people selling T-shirts, greasy food and people with signs asking girls to SHOW THEM THEIR YOU-KNOW-WHATS. (IF I HAVE to explain that then you are truly new to Bike Week.) Now the thing is spread
over nine days and it cov- ers a lot more areas of the state. The guys with the SIGNS HAVE BEEN DIS- COURAGED BUT THE T-SHIRT AND greasy food vendors seem to have grown. I read that the bike week has gotten QUI- ETER OVER THE YEARS, THAT THE RIDERS ARE AGING AND SOME are even dying off. Maybe less greasy food and a few more salad bars might
be helpful. But I’m NOT MAYOR BLOOMBERG. BIKE WEEK OBVIOUS-
LY BRINGS IN A LOT OF MONEY AND PORT-A- POTTIES TO THE AREA. THAT’S ALWAYS A GOOD THING - FOR DIFFERENT REASONS. THE restau- rants are full all week and that makes every- one glad, especially the folks at the DEPART- MENT OF TRAVEL AND TOURISM AS THAT NINE PERCENT TAX is money in their treasury. (Live Free but Pay Room and Meals Tax.) Seems like a lot of bik-
ers smoke cigarettes; hopefully they buy them here so the STATE CAN MAKE MONEY OFF THAT TAX AS WELL. Governor Lynch was re-
cently awarded an award for doing so much for promoting Bike Week, though I’m not sure ex- actly what. I KNOW HE COMES DOWN HERE FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES EACH YEAR AT THE start of it to make some kind of speech and then hightails it as far away as he can get till it’s over. I guess no other governor has dared make such an enduring commitment. What a guy! (By the way, I’m running for Governor again and I promise to give the start of Bike Week at least a half hour each year. Now, that should get me some votes….and a few awards.) Here at The Weirs Times
OFFICE WE ARE RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO THIS THING CALLED THE DY- NO-TUNE ALL WEEK. It’s where riders bring their bikes to get fine tuned. For a good fifteen min- utes at a time, they re- peatedly rev the engines of the bikes to their full capacity, then do some tuning up and do it again, and again, and again. I AM WRITING THIS SENTENCE RIGHT NOW
AS THE DYNO-TUNE IS GOING ON AND IF I COULD MAKE THE LET- TERS OF THESE WORD ABOUT TEN TIMES BIG- GER YOU MIGHT UN- DERSTAND JUST WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. I AM YELLING TO DAVE, WHO IS FIVE FEET FROM ME, TO ASK HIM IF HE KNOW HOW I CAN MAKE THE LETTERS BIGGER BUT HE CAN’T HEAR ME. Whew! Now we get a break until the next one. Working in The Weirs
for fifteen years, I have sort of gotten used to Bike Week (EXCEPT FOR THE DYNO-TUNE). In fact, even though I don’t ride a motorcycle, I have LEARNED TO ENJOY IT WHILE I AM HERE. BUT WHEN AND if I make it home at night, I like to pull the blinds and turn on the TV real loud. But then again, I do that ev- ery night anyway. By the time you read my
next column, BIKE WEEK WILL JUST BE HISTORY AGAIN. SOMEONE WILL guess how many bikers came to the state and no one will care. They’ll also guess how much revenue they pumped into the economy, and a lot of people will care. After about a week,
Weirs Beach will be all cleaned up and the Port- a-Potties will be gone. We will get ready for all those CRAZY PEOPLE FROM LAWRENCE, MASS, WHO COME ON THE Fourth of July. Let’s pray that never turns into a week.
Brendan Smith wel-
comes your comments at
brendan@weirs.com.
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