A day at the beach

Some of the things we do here in South Florida is head to the beach. My friend Al, whom I went to Daytona with, gave me a call and said he and two other guys want to ride on our HD cycles to the beach. Now that sounded like a great idea as Ft. Lauderdale strip is a real nice place to cruise. And to add to the pleasure of a nice ride it is spring break. Yes, all the college kids are here strutting their stuff up and down the beach. And all the old guys head to the beach to have a gander. So Saturday morning around 10:30AM three bikes pull up to the house, I jump on my bike and off we go. Now it is a pretty neat sight to see biker dudes on their Harley's. We head on down to the beach with the wind blowing through our hair (what little hair we have) smiles on our faces, the sun shinning, what a glorious day. We get to Ft. Lauderdale beach and there they are, thousands of sun tanned college students strutting their stuff. So we drive the strip down to the famous bar, "The Elbow Room", and pull over to decide on what we are going to do. Now here we are on the famous Ft. Lauderdale strip, 4 biker dudes, lots of pretty gals on the beach.....you know what we were thinking. Dave spoke first, " I'm pretty hungry". Al responds, Yea I could go for a burger. Paul, says, "Lets go to Shooters on the intracoastal for lunch". So forget the beach, the pretty girls, we are big bad biker dudes and eating is very important to us. So we hop on our bikes and head to Shooters. We drive over the bridge only to find that Shooters is back on the other side. So we head back and pull up to the parking lot of the resturant and find out that there is only valet parking . The question is do we hand this guy our keys and let him drive our bikes into the intracostal or do we park them ourselves. With 4 bikes we only take up 1 spot. The guy tells us it will be $20.00. Now you ask yourself , I have to pay the valet $20.00 so I can go inside and then pay to eat? We all said, "no way", and drove at least 100 yards to where there were parking meters. We fit all 4 bikes into 1 space for $1.25. Now Shooters is really nice and we sat outdoors near the intracostal. While we were eating a rather large yacht pulled up and was preparing to dock. There were 2 guys standing on the rear of the boat and we noticed that no one was driving this boat. Now this one guy was acting like he knew what he was doing. He had a hand remote and was steering the boat. Wow, pretty cool. I wonder if they have a remote so I can stand outside of my car and park it? We ate our lunch and decided we should head on home. But first we had to stop at a man's candy store. You guessed it, a tool store. We finished our day at the tool store and said our goodbyes. All in all it was a great day in sunny Florida.

Daytona Bike Week 2009

When you own a Harley Davidson you must attend Daytona Beach Bike Week. My wife Claire, had bought me a HD Road King for my 65th. birthday. I bet you are thinking crazy! Maybe she took out a huge life insurance policy on me? I am not a bad biker dude. Wannabe maybe. I am retired, married Claire December 20, 1975,  I
have 3 sons, Randy, Brian, Rob and 1 daughter, Sherri. I also have three Grandchildren, Cameron,MacKenzie, and Camryn. So you ask, "what am I doing riding a bike at my age"? Unknown to many, I am a neighborhood biker dude that likes to put put around town topping out at 50mph. Well now, Al a friend from the gym asked me if I wanted to drive to Daytona. Being a neighborhood biker dude never riding my bike on I-95, I had my doubts. I am 66 years old, never road a bike on I-95, Daytona is 250 miles away...... What the heck, I said yes. So I headed over to Al's house where I met Joe. Joe is from NY and had his bike shipped down. The three of us hopped on our HD's and off we went. We started out on A1A from Pompano Beach to West Palm Beach. Passed my old house where Donald Trump now lives. We then went onto I-95 and continued on to Daytona. Took us 5 hours to drive the 250+ miles but we made it. We did not have a motel room but Al said, "no problem". No motels, no motels. Al called a friend and he was able to book us a suite just outside of town. Pretty cool. It was dark by the time we got to the motel. We had started off for the motel and headed on I-95 going the wrong direction. After 5 miles we were able to get off and head back in the right direction. Off the ramp and to our motel.....well we turned to soon and now we are back onto I-95. So we drive another 5 miles get off and head back to the motel. We are now tired. We checked out our room, 1 bed and a pull-out couch. Now we are three grown men and we each wanted our own bed. Solution, we got two rooms. Now off to dinner. There was only 2 places to eat, a sandwich shop and a pizza joint. We decided to get pizza. We walked in at 10:00pm, and we were told they just closed and can't help us. We are off to a good start in Daytona. We went to the sandwich shop. Next day off to the beach to find another motel. Luck was with us, we found two great rooms on the ocean and only 1 mile from main st. Daytona was fun and we had a good time. We spent two nights there and headed home Sat. afternoon. Joe had his bike shipped back to NY from Daytona and he flew home. Al and I drove back home. It was dark when we hit West Palm so we had to slow down. Took us 6 hours to get home. Will I do it again. Hey, I'm 66 years old, not an easy task for this old guy.