Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Bike nights

Bike nights in the August humidity are swirling soups of sweaty riders, motorcycles of all kinds, and lots of noise. From the V-Twin and sportbike riders bouncing their rotating assemblies off of electronically controlled rev limiters, to the amplified MC's constant monologue pulsing from the portable A/V system, noise is everywhere. But the noise I can handle, what gets tiresome is the people. People are everywhere. Some are cool, most are just background extras(I would fit in this bunch), and a few act like assholes.

You get all kinds: The musclebound badass whose bike is little more than a $50k accessory which will spend most of its usable life parked next to an Escalade or Hummer. There's the squid sportbike rider, complete with shorts, wife beater t-shirt, sneakers, and full-face helmet. You get the girl riders that make sure everyone knows they are a girl and that they ride. Occasionally, you'll see the ancient drunk Harley guy, his scraggly beard a dingy coat over a weathered face that has more crags and crevices than an eons-old rock formation. You get a sprinkling of single women, a few of whom ride their own bikes, but almost without exception, your average bike night is the last place on Earth you'd go to meet a lady. It's just not that kind of a crowd.

But it is a CROWD. If 2,000 bikes show up, which is an average night at the local Quaker, Steak, and Lube, you've got at least 2,000 riders, plus another 500 or so passengers. On a night like tonight, I would venture to guess that attendance surpassed 2,000 bikes by a significant margin, and many of those bikes had passengers. On top of people connected directly to bikes, you have vendors, the facility's staff, and an unknown number of cagers who are either meeting riders, or perusing the parking lot, checking out the two-wheelers that overflow the parking lots. All told, there is a considerable mass of people meandering around a limited amount of space, all while bikes come and go continually. It's a busy place, and I generally have a good time. It good to get out into large crowds once in a while, if for no other reason than to remind myself why I spend so much time avoiding larger groups of people.

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Posted by Erik @ 8/08/2007 11:42:00 PM