Bike Week Tips

by bj max
MaxFlat6@aol.com
Issue #65--April 2004

Bike Week, the annual winter migration of motorcyclist to Florida, is one of the largest gatherings of motorcycles in the world and has been since 1934. Daytona International Speedway is still the focal point of Bike Week. But over the years events have expanded to Daytona Beach and surrounding areas. To put all this into perspective, we were lodged at the San Marco Inn in St. Augustine, a full sixty miles from the speedway. Even this far from the epicenter of festivities, motorcyclists filled every room.

The weather is always in doubt for Bike Week. It's still winter in March even in the Deep South. Temperatures can and do drop below freezing at times. But here's a tip. If you want to avoid cold weather during bike week, buy an electric vest. Stan, David and I bought Aerostitch Kanetsu vests at one fifty a pop in anticipation of frigid temperatures. Evidently, Mother Nature took pity on us after our disastrous trip last year and the weather was not only mild, it was downright tropical. We did have a little wind, but hey, it's March.

With Bike Week and spring break running in conjunction with each other, traffic was brutal. It's roughly three-quarters of a mile from I-95 to Daytona International Speedway and it took us a good half-hour to cover it. We dived into the first parking lot available. Normally we would have spaced ourselves tight so as to get two bikes into one parking place. But after the robber barons that inhabit the speedway collected ten bucks per bike, we allowed ourselves the luxury of full parking spaces.

Our expensive parking fee did have advantages. We had lots of elbow room and easy access to the speedway- it was only a few short steps to the entrance. Once inside, there was so much to see it was overwhelming. We couldn't make up our minds where to go first. Like kids in a candy store, we strolled around gawking at anything and everything, sneaking furtive glances at the pretty girls and in general acting like hicks on their first trip to town. Everybody that was anybody was here. Harley-Davidson, BMW, Honda, Bushtec, Cruiserworks, Aprilla, Boss Hoss, Chevrolet. It went on and on, with endless tents and hardware scattered up and down the perimeter of the racetrack. It was a dazzling display of mechanical splendor.

Tip #2: Take plenty of money. Everything was overpriced. A small bottle of water was three bucks. A diet Pepsi was three fifty and a can of beer was four fifty. Hamburger, fries and a coke? Ten bucks. The exception, strangely enough, were tickets, which I thought were reasonable. General admission was twenty-five dollars. There were also thirty five-dollar tickets and forty-dollar tickets. Floyd, an old Bike Week veteran, (Tip #3) advised us to buy the twenty five-dollar tickets then sit wherever we please. Apparently the event is never even close to being sold out. We took his advice, bought a twenty five-dollar ticket and enjoyed the race from a forty-dollar seat.

One of the preliminary races held up the 200 for a bit. Some kid blew a motor and spewed oil all over the racing surface, bringing out the red flag. Everything was put on hold for about an hour. The 600cc guys put on a good show, as did the BMW boys. The sun was really beating down and I don't tan, I burn. After the start of the Boxer Cup, David and I decided to stretch our legs and hike to the bikes for sunscreen.

As I rifled through my saddlebags looking for the anti-burn lotion, Mike Kneebone and Bob Higdon came strolling by. Mike (as I'm sure y'all know) is President of the Iron Butt Association. Bob is the IBA's attorney as well as a motojournalist of some notoriety. I had spoken briefly with Mike the night before at the IBA banquet, but many members were vying for his attention. This made conversation with him impossible. This chance meeting allowed me to chat with Mike for twenty minutes or so and I learned that he's really a nice guy. I also learned that Bob Higdon is a crusty old curmudgeon. Mike and Bob were not at the speedway for the race, but to check on a couple of Honda Nighthawks. This was their bike of choice for an upcoming ride across Russia. Don't even ask 'cause I don't have a clue as to why this bike was chosen. We wished them luck on their trip, finished our errand then drifted back into the speedway for the Daytona 200 that was about to start.

Daytona International Speedway is so big (2 ? miles) it's hard to find a seat where you can see a lot of the action. We chose to sit at the point where the riders enter turn one of the road course. We chose well. When the starter's flag was thrown, Eric Bostrum, the pole sitter, lead the pack off pit road and into the first turn right in front of us. He thrilled the crowd with third gear wheelies as they powered away. I wished I had brought my binoculars. A few more turns and the riders come back to us and screamed onto the high banks then howled down the backstretch at velocities approaching 200 MPH. If these super tuned superbikes can't eek out 200 MPH on a high-banked speedway, I can't help but question the validity of the Hyabusa's claimed 203 MPH top speed.

One of the most interesting aspects of the race was the fight between Aaron Yates and Anthony Fania. Fania drifted into Yates as Yates attempted a pass on the outside of a hairpin turn. There was a horrific crash. Both riders were on their feet immediately and you would think they would be happy to be alive. Yates, instead of dropping to his knees and thanking his creator, threw a conniption fit. He kicked Fania then head butted him while Fania tried to walk away. Nasty behavior by a so-called professional. (Yates was later fined $5000.00 dollars and suspended for one race, as he should have been.)

The finish wasn't as good as some 200's of yore. In the closing laps Matt Mladin on the Yoshimura Suzuki pulled away by seven seconds (yawn). This left Miguel DuHamel (Honda) battling his teammate Jake Zemke for second, a duel in which Miguel would come up four tenths of a second short. Overall, I guess it was a pretty good race. I wasn't bored, but then it was my first time to see bikes at 195 mile per hour up close. The best race was yet to come, that being the sprint from the parking lot to I-95.

Fifty thousand motorcyclists trying to squeeze onto a six-lane boulevard with an assortment of flustered locals in SUV's and ill-mannered spring breakers in Jeeps is something to behold. Exciting just ain't a big enough word to express what I felt as I accelerated out into that morass of rubber and steel. On I-95 traffic was already backed up for a mile or more. I was glad. At least it was safe. But after a mile of creeping along like snails, everybody's right foot started gettin' itchy. When the road finally opened up and the pack broke free, everybody floor boarded whatever they were driving and all hell broke loose.

Albert Einstein said that the mass of a body in motion varies with velocity, which, if applied to traffic, means that if everybody else is doing ninety miles an hour then Bubba, you'd better be doing a hundred. Everybody was going in all directions, zooming in and out and driving like crazy people. One guy came from out of nowhere and passed me on the shoulder. A blur, a blip, a dip and a dart and he was gone. I mean long gone. He was in a pickup truck. The sport bike crowd was just as bad - weaving in and out and lane splitting at hypersonic speeds. How those lunatics got through all that traffic I'll never know. Some of 'em didn't. We actually witnessed two motorcycles get together and go down. The entire scene was nerve racking. I took my first real breath an hour later when we rolled off the Interstate into the parking lot of the Cracker Barrel. I was exhilarated just having survived such a wild ride. In celebration, I treated myself to a country-fried steak with all the trimmings, a killer meal that was probably more deadly than the traffic up on I-95.

Will I go back? Probably not. The weather is always iffy. The crowd is oppressive and the traffic is insane. (The last time I checked, there were nine motorcycle related fatalities at Bike Week this year.) With an estimated half million motorcycles in attendance, no matter where you were there was always a constant rumble in the background. You couldn't get away from it. I don't care if you were in a restaurant, a bathroom or a bank vault, that rumble was your constant companion. Someone once said that there is a direct correlation between one's lack of intelligence and one's tolerance for noise. If that statement is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then I would probably have been very successful as a nuclear physicist.

Happy Motoring.

M.M.M.