Saturday, April 22, 2006

April 22 -- The Rumble of Harleys

Yes!! Marco and I got to see another great local tradition this morning!

Every year there are four things that happen in our little St. Croix Valley on the third weekend in April, or thereabouts. One is that the sun comes out and the trees turn green and it is usually the first beautiful weekend of spring. Two is the Afton Lakeland Elementary School carnival. Three is my birthday. Four is the first great motorcycle rally of the year.

Today we saw the motorcycle rally!

We started hearing the roars of motorcycles around 9:30 am. Towards 10am Marco and I rode our bikes (pedal bikes - big geeks) over to our local dive bar parking lot, the Beach Bar. Here there were at least 300 bikes with their riders, and more arriving every minute. Everyone was in black and leather and bandanas and silver earrings. One platinum blond woman had flames up the back of her jacket and rode a pink Harley. Big burly men had tall chopper handlebars, and mustaches like handlebars to go with them. Guys with cigarettes hanging off their lips rode bikes with huge fat tires for fast turns. Some bikes had sidecars for extra passengers. They all got in line in the main road, filling up both lanes and causing minivans and regular cars to pass on the shoulder, their suburban drivers either looking amused or freaked out.

At 10am they took off in a big roar. They left towards Afton in the morning sun. The roads there are twisty, narrow and scenic so they are always a big favorite for motorcyclists. Every year of my youth this weekend always brought this same roar of motorcycles. It lasts for hours. You can hear it throughout the entire valley. It's almost two hours later now and I can still hear motorcycles going up the road.

So we get birds and leaves and flowers in the spring. And we also get the roar of Harleys. This is my town.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home