Limpnickie Lot is back!!

I'm so thrilled -- during Bike Week, we hung out at the Limpnickie Lot at Stone Edge Skate Park in South Daytona.  We had heard they weren't going to make it back for Biketoberfest, but we're very pleased to report they will be at the skate park -- on U.S. 1 across from Miller's Custom Parts -- Thursday through Sunday!

To see how much fun we had during Bike Week, read my older post about where all the cool bikes are, or check out this video:

LIMPNICKIE LOT (Daytona 2008)

Hope to see you there!  Note: The lot will most likely be empty on Thursday from about 1 p.m. on, as everyone rides up together (try to catch them on U.S. 1, it's quite a sight) to Willie's Tropical Tattoo in Ormond for Willie's old-school show.  You definitely don't want to miss that!

Getting packed for Biketoberfest

We live in Melbourne now, Suntree/Viera to be exact, but that's not going to stop us from joining in all the craziness at Biketoberfest! We may be camping out at Edgewater Wednesday night, at the home of Black Knight Choppers, or we might just ride up early Thursday for Willie's Old School Chopper Show at Tropical Tattoo in Ormond Beach.

Be sure to check out my Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/onthefender. I'll figure out how to embed the tweets sometime soon.

Leave me a comment and let me know where you'll be this weekend! Ride safe.

Harleys and skate punks and paintball, oh my!

This morning, we headed east, over to the Ocean Center and the Harley-Davidson show. As we drove, we noticed a bunch of pickup trucks headed in the same direction, many with bikes tied down in the beds. "Oh. . .it's Wednesday. Check-in time at the hotel," we realized. It was also pretty clear that the crowds were a lot heavier today, especially in the Main Street area. Everywhere the parking was exorbitant -- $10 for cars, in some places even $20 for cars. We thought that was pretty outrageous, even if admission to the show was free.


We lucked out, however, in the cheapest -- and friendliest! -- place to park that was also really convenient: the lot next to Calvary Baptist Church, on Earl Street at Hollywood Avenue. It was only a block from the Ocean Center and Daytona Lagoon; a mere $5 for cars and $3 for bikes; the people working it were as nice as could be, and they offered free water, coffee, tea and cookies along with biker-themed Bibles, blood pressure checks and bike blessings. What more could you want!

First off, I can't believe that in the two and a half years I've been in Daytona that the construction next to the Ocean Center doesn't look any different. *shrug* As you head toward the main entrance, today was the "ride-in show," which I guess meant you just parked your bike wherever you felt like it. We didn't mind, as most of them were pretty cool and unique, like this one from Quebec called the "General Lee." (Yes, it's got a Hemi, or so says the giant logo on the back fender.)

Inside was pure Harley mania. People really make it into a lifestyle, with clothing, accessories, even paintings and sculptures (we liked a painting of Elvis strumming a guitar next to a Harley under a tree). They have this new seat called the Rocker, where it looks like a regular single seat, but then a second seat flips out behind it, and folds back under when not in use. It LOOKS like a good idea, but I swear these were all designed by men, or by women with smaller-than-average rear ends. I haven't sat on one yet, but just by the looks -- and how I felt on that Softail seat on Monday, which was about average size for a seat that doesn't have a backrest -- I can tell it wouldn't work for me. Oh well. . .

We did see a cool new bike called the Cross Bones -- Will was very impressed. He hasn't owned a Harley since his Fat Boy in 1989, but he said he'd actually buy this bike, if he were in the market for a new factory bike. Let's see if I can find a pic. . .

He wants to test ride one; I guess I'll just chill out while he does, since there's no back seat for me.

After the Ocean Center we said goodbye to the Christians guarding our car and went looking for more black bikers on MMB Blvd. The guy in the Harley info booth swore they had a giant trailer there -- "you can't miss it!" -- and gave me a map that showed some park I've never heard of, off some street I've never heard of, off some road I HAD heard of. Well, we never found it, nor the can't-miss trailer. We did see a bit more crowds, and a LOT more vendors. Note to self: That street's got to have the best food in all of Volusia this week, must come back to eat.

Back to Stone Edge we went; that place is starting to feel like a second home. We chilled with Cochise and his son, then Willie from Tropical Tattoo came by, and he's sort of like biker royalty around these parts, so everyone went to say hello. The skaters started their thing -- I think they were from some team called Bacon because that's what all their shirts said; it's hard to taxonomize this strange species but you can normally tell by the plumage of their t-shirts. I was up on the top level of the park, looking out at the paintball field, and one tall skater told us to watch a certain area and make sure no one came by. He didn't clearly explain why. All of a sudden he came from the other end of the park, jumped onto the upper level just next to us and flew WITH THE UNDERSIDE OF HIS BOARD RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE to the bowl on my left. Yeah buddy, no one came by, but you didn't mention I might lose my head.

I wasn't mad, actually it was awesome. :-) I WAS mad, however, that Will's never-run-out-of-charge camera battery had finally given up its ghost, and it was sitting dead around my neck, and even a slowpoke like me could have gotten that awesome shot, because hello, it was right in front of my face, and he did it like 10 times. LOL.

So, out on the paintball field -- which was really small by the way -- Cochise had set his old sticker-covered bagger in the middle. Um, Cochise, why would you do that? we asked. Oh yeah -- to get splattered by paintballs. Is this guy cool or what? Obviously, because all the young builders followed suit, and suddenly there were like 6 bikes crowding out there, including some pretty sweet choppers -- ouch. Anyways, the skaters and the bike builders and the chopper magazine editors battled for paintball supremacy at VERY close quarters. I don't know who, if anybody, won, but as they say, a fun time was had by all. Oh yeah, and the bagger's got a bunch of pink splotches on it now:

BIKE WEEK DEATH TOLL: 6
COMING THURSDAY: Willie's Chopper Show, and, um, a bunch of other stuff that I can't even remember what's happening.

Cochise rocks the airwaves

Our buddy Cochise, who chops bikes and trucks, was on Doug Kosarek's Wake Up Daytona radio show on WNDB Tuesday morning. In the short space of 15 minutes, they managed to cover topics such as police presence, the size of the crowd, taxes, political candidates -- it was awesome! Hopefully Cochise will be back on Doug's show again soon, it was really fun to listen to them.

After that we went to Mary McLeod Bethune Cookman Boulevard to find some black bikers, because Will was working on a story about them. They were really hard to find -- seriously. We had to drive around quite a lot before we actually found some people with bikes. Again, we're told they're coming later. . .we did see this guy with a cool setup, big speakers on his bike, and his iPod hooked up to it. Sweet!

After that we went up to Willie's Tropical Tattoo, to see what's going on up there, and so Will could talk to the original owner of his Triumph, a tattoo artist from New York who only comes in during special events. Sucker Punch Sallys had a trailer up there, but just one lonely kid manned the booth, and basically he was telling everyone to go back down to Stone Edge. We've been told that there are big shows Wednesday and Friday at Stone Edge, but Thursday is the show up at Willie's, and everyone from Stone Edge will be there -- I think they're basically closing up the park so they all can go up. Or maybe they'll leave one lonesome kid down there, to point the way up to Ormond?

That kid was cool though -- he did let me sit on one of their choppers, which had the coolest paint job, to look like wood. I banged my leg getting on -- apparently choppers have lots of stuff that stick out from them! Yeah, not like getting on a bicycle. Oh well. :-)

Destination South Daytona

Guess what? I found some bikers! And we actually saw some bikes as cool as -- even cooler -- than our own.

We haven't been to Destination Daytona yet -- it's on our list this week -- but we did hang out close to home, at Stone Edge Skate Park in South Daytona. The bikes we saw here were night and day from the ones on Beach Street and Main Street -- many of them were rusty, all of them were choppers, and absolutely all of them were cool.

It was a much different vibe here. At first, a skate park seemed an unlikely spot for a chopper show, but the new pro skaters are all into bike culture, and all the builders are punk rockers. The older generation -- and they are here, covered from head to toe in tattoos -- don't always understand these kids, but they do understand the "screw you" aspect of punk rock, which is what got all these guys into the chopper lifestyle in the first place.

(Photo above taken by William, because he's much faster on the draw than I am. The skater is from the Led Sled crew, and the rider is Tattoo Duke Miller, a photographer for Cycle Source magazine.)

Oh yeah, and my husband picked out his birthday present. He really REALLY wants this for his bike. I dunno, I'm still thinking about it:

Some of the bike builders here are Sucker Punch Sallys, Nash Motorcycle Co., the local awesome painters French Kiss Kustoms from Deltona, Led Sled, Street Smarts and Bling. Cycle Source magazine was there, and Cochise was hanging out with them, and we spent a lot of time over there, and plan to for most of the week -- it seems to be where all the cool kids are!

(I'm a day behind in updating these, I'm sorry, I'll try to do better later today!)

Um, where are all the bikers??

So we drove around this morning -- to Beach Street to visit a friend who restores Alfa Romeos, and, um, there was no one there. No one except Vinnie and Cody from OCC, in their giant RV with their picture on it, and a few bikes parked across the street.

Here's a noise comparison -- we stood right on Ballough Road and had a conversation, and the number of bikes rolling by was not enough to drown us out.

OK, so let's hit Main Street and see if we can find any bikes cooler than ours, so we can steal their ideas.

There was NO. ONE. THERE.

As in, we drove the length of Main without even STOPPING. And Full Moon Saloon? Deader than the graveyard up the block. Unbelievable. The upside? We didn't see a single bike cooler than ours.

You could say it's the economy, but a friend had a better theory -- most of the hotels have 3- or 4-night minimum stays, so either people were here this weekend (and it did seem like there were more people there on Friday) or they're coming Wednesday night. "Monday's the transition," he said. Um, oh well, ok, if you say so. But the fact is, there were more people here on Biketoberfest.

Since Main Street's dead, and we're hungry, we head back over to the Denny's on ISB for lunch -- crowded, but not much more than usual, and not that many bikes in the lot. We go to the Speedway, park without a problem, and sign up for the free Harley test rides. If you have a motorcycle endorsement, this is the easiest way to just hang out and ride bikes ALL DAY.

Well, we didn't have all day, so we only rode one. We had forgotten Will's helmet so I ended up with a full-face helmet, the first time I had ever used one. It was actually kinda cool to block the wind out, but I wasn't used to it and kept bonking Will in the back of his helmet -- he wasn't too happy about that one.

We rode a Harley Softail Springer -- I don't exactly know what that means other than there are springs on the front end which makes it. . .er, springier? It looked like this one:

Anyways, I spent most of the ride trying not to bonk Will in the head, or fall off the back -- I don't know if it's because he's a big guy or my butt's too huge, but I BARELY stayed on that seat. Or maybe it was the fact he was doing 70 mph up Midway Avenue behind the Speedway. A sheriff's deputy was parked in his cruiser facing us but didn't care; I guess he was just watching out for jerks popping wheelies. The bike did go pretty fast, and was pretty cool. "Hey, this retails for $20,000," Will said. "Heck, better to get a car!" I said. "Well, no," he replied. "It's a lifestyle choice." True.




BIKE WEEK DEATH TOLL: 5
COMING UP: Where the bikers REALLY area. Also, Cochise on the radio!

First post

Sorry, couldn't think of a cleverer title for that one!



Anyway, it's late Saturday/early Sunday, and due to work commitments I haven't really gone out and seen anything bike-related yet. It didn't even seem like there was a lot of bike traffic around yet; weird.

Oh! Here's our bike. It's a 67 (or 68? I can't remember) Triumph chopper, and our daughter has named it "Hot Wheels."




Yeah, it just has a sheet of aluminum for a seat. William SWEARS this is comfortable. Yeah, OK.

That fender? Yeah, it came off a BOAT TRAILER. How trashy is that? Apparently that's the new look now -- dirty, rusty, trashy. I kinda like it.

Daytona's definitely a Harley town, but Triumphs are acceptable as "cool," especially if they're vintage, because of their novelty; sort of how if you see a really old Jaguar tooling down the road you'll say huh, that's cool. And for those of you who know something about English bikes, or English cars, and their wiring, all that's been fixed on this bike. It's been changed from points to magneto or some other X-Men character, and has Mikuni carbs. I have no idea what that means but I've heard my husband say it a lot, so I gather it's important.

Tomorrow, I will venture out and actually get some pictures. Maybe we'll hit the flea market; there's LOTS of craziness to come out of that!



BIKE WEEK 2008 DEATH TOLL: 2

COMING SOON: A primer on motorcycle gangs, also known as "1-percenter clubs."