Our Vacation, part two: Bike Week
...Saturday morning we got up, packed up our stuff from the motel and checked out. Caleigh's favorite part of staying at a motel is getting to watch TV. At home, when she gets to watch TV at all, it is generally educational stuff (OK, and American Idol) but at a motel she gets to watch TV-Land etc and on this trip got to learn all about Andy Griffith and Mayberry.
We headed south from North Conway with our destination being the train station in Merideth. Along the way we stopped at a restaurant that we chose because is had a huge number of bikes in the parking lot. Lots of bikes usually means good food. It was! The place had home made hash and eggs and eggs Benedict. Then it was on to Merideth.
In Merideth, which is right on Lake Winnipesaukee, we stopped at a mini-mart to get Wendy a coffee and a pack of band-aids for Caleigh. She had fallen and scuffed her knee several times the day before and sitting in her car seat for an hour and a half gave her a lot of time to think about it and blow it a little out of proportion. A band-aid seems to make any kind of hurt better, even if it does not have Shrek or Little Einsteins on it. It's a small price to pay for happy kid who is trapped in a car seat. Now we are really getting into the bike week crowd, the traffic is starting to look more like a parade.
Bike week, now in it's 84th year, attracts motorcyclists from all walks of life. Generally some 300,000+ bikes cram into the lakes region for the week immediately proceeding Father's Day. The demographics change over the years, but people are all the same. As we sat in traffic, headed for the train station, we speculated on who-was-who. One group of early twentysomethings on sport bikes were goofing around and attempting to show off, Wendy pointed out that they are new to it and I agreed. These were people who had only recently learned to ride, but were young, stupid and cocky. The kind of people we used to call "future statistics".
Tucked in behind them was a guy on a cruiser bike, with a half helmet and a short, grayish beard. You could tell he wasn't with them and was sort of embarrassed to be seen with them. He was a confident, experienced rider, probably rides to work every day. At the red light, he passed us to get away from the "future statistics".
A few hundred yards later, we paused to let a group of sport bikes pull out of a driveway. Similar in appearance, this group was much more confident and weren't acting like dumbasses.
At the gas station was a group from NY on assorted cruiser bikes who were around our age, and another group of older guys with custom choppers. Not the $50,000 yuppie bike kind of choppers that you buy from a famous custom shop, real home built choppers built as a labor of love and creativity by real guys in their own garages who dreamed them up, cut their own fingers with sharp metal when bobbing the fenders, burned their arms with cutting torches when raking the front end, and got overspray on their own boots when painting the tanks. They sat there drinking coffee, watching the sportbikers and no doubt wondering what the hell happened to their lifestyle.
We hadn't told Caleigh that we were going to ride the train to the Weirs. She had been on a train once before on a day-trip to Boston, but was too little to remember it. After we parked the car, we told her that we could go look at the old-fashioned train and made a big deal about seeing a real train this close up. We let her buy the tickets, but had given her the impression that they were for a train museum, not telling her that she would actually get to ride in it.
We got in line with what seemed like a few hundred other people and she got real bored, real fast, so we tried to keep her distracted so she would realize what we were in line for. As we got on the train, she got a little nervous that we had gone somewhere that we weren't supposed to. As it started moving, she figured it out and a huge grin came over her. The people around us congratulated her on her first train ride and her first time at Laconia.
If I did the math right, my first time going to Bike Week was 18 years ago. It was different then. A different crowd. It was rowdy and the police kept the peace, but pretty much left bikers alone. Unless you were being truly obnoxious and either being dangerous or really, really stupid, people were just free to do whatever came to mind. These days, since Harley-Davidson changed their marketing strategy, everybody and his accountant is a "biker". A lot of the nouveau bikers want to look the part and act the part, without really living it. Sort of like being biker reenactors in that it is a persona they put on for the weekend.
They have really changed the face of things. Stuff that will get you arrested nowadays: burnouts, loud pipes, open containers, "indecent" exposure. I'm not condoning these things for daily life, but there is a time and place for everything, and bike week was the time and place for anything. You will even get a ticket for "coasting" your bike down the hill after sitting in traffic for hours and shutting off your engine to give it a break as you coast down towards the Weirs. What used to be a wild, everything goes weekend has "evolved" into a glorified flea market, complete with an assortment of stands selling cell phone accessories.
Given all of those changes, it is little wonder that the activities are shifting to places elsewhere in NH. On Thursday, the Mt. Washington Auto Road is closed to cars and only allows bikes to go up. There are organized events in places further and further away from Laconia, which is the traditional center of things, since the weekend rally began as motorcycle races at the track there. (the track is now New Hampshire International Speedway, a stop on the NASCAR circuit)
The weather was warm, sunny and dry. Perfect for attracting a big crowd. A big crowd it was! By the time we got to the grilled alligator stand, they were all sold out of gator meat and I had to settle for chicken (it was AWESOME chicken though). Caleigh had earned some money by being good, keeping her pull-ups dry etc and she chose to get a bodypainting done on her arm of three pink flowers, she also carefully picked out a red, white and blue pinwheel. We stopped at a few less-then-crowded spots to enjoy out drinks, ice cream etc and to people watch.
It's always interesting to look at the world through Caleigh. She is just full of self-confidence, and takes away what she wants from an experience. For instance, a small group of folks wearing "Witch City Cycles" patches walked buy us. The guys were dressed in biker chic of jeans, black t-shirts with trendy logos on them, and leather vests with patches. With them was a rather well-endowed woman who was dressed sort of like a cat. Sort of. She wore jeans, black leather chaps, suspenders, cat ears, and on her upper body she wore large pink pasties in the shape of paw prints. (probably one of the most photographed people there) When she walked by, Wendy and I exchanged glances, wondering what Caleigh's spin on this would be. Caleigh pointed...we braced ourselves...she exclaimed "Look! She has CHAPS!!!".
There were some funky custom bikes, but not nearly what you would have seen just five years ago. There was mostly just a sea of V-twin Harleys. The crown was pretty interesting though. Not "interesting" like in the old days, but interesting to speculate on demographics. It was a mix of squeaky clean people bedecked in black leather vests that have never gotten wet because they have never ridden in the rain, people who hope to have bike someday but for now content themselves with the t-shirts and jewelry that allow them to pretend that they do (the type that idolize Orange County Choppers and wear stuff with the West coast Choppers logo like it is a religion), folks who actually ride, but don't care if they appear in public in a not-bike-related t-shirt and shorts, and a lessening proportion of outlaw biker types who really are outlaw bikers (as opposed to just making a fashion statement).
Up in the Rally Headquarters area, we watched a guy make a painting in a matter of minutes with cans of spray paint. He did it while sort of dancing to annoying Euro-techno dance music. It was pretty cool, techno music notwithstanding. His web address as shown on the banner behind him isn't valid, but I did come across a video of one of his performances here.
The high point of the day for Caleigh was the train ride, with a close second being when I allowed her to use the video camera.
We were getting tired of walking around, so we climbed about the train again and went back to the car. We let Caleigh play with the camcorder on the train, and I'm sure it will be interesting to watch with her later.
On the way home, we stopped at Bobby's Girl Diner after getting off course a little. In the parking lot of the diner was a tractor-trailer done up as a museum about Indian motorcycles. At first, I thought it was a project of the Indian Motorcycle Museum in Springfield, MA, but it was actually just one guy's collection! He had a bunch of memorabilia and probably 10-12 bikes in it, displayed very well. He even had an Indian Papoose, which was sort of a one lunger minibike that was designed to be dropped with airborne troops so they would have vehicles to get away from the drop zone on. I talked with the guy who owned them and learned a lot about old Indians.
Dinner was at the diner, which stayed open late. Awesome waitress, great old fashioned diner food, great atmosphere. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the area! Kids who finish all of their food get to pick a toy out of the "treasure chest".
Caleigh fell asleep on the way home and I carried her to bed dressed in the clothes she wore for the day.
I had apprehensions about traveling with a 5 year old, but we had a great time. Last night, I scrolled through the pictures in my digital camera, and found that out of 63 photos, 52 of them involved Caleigh!
This was a short one as far as vacations go, but we really needed it. This business takes a lot out of a person, and a lot out of a family. Now and again you have to step back and recharge.
We are taking today off as well. We are going out for Chinese food, then going grocery shopping, then tomorrow it's back to the grindstone! I've started to big "to-do" list in order to get ready for the Fort Ticonderoga event, which is coming up in just two weeks. See you there!
P.S. later tonight I'll be cropping pictures from the trip and will be adding links to them to these two posts, so check back tomorrow to see a few pics of Bike Week!
We headed south from North Conway with our destination being the train station in Merideth. Along the way we stopped at a restaurant that we chose because is had a huge number of bikes in the parking lot. Lots of bikes usually means good food. It was! The place had home made hash and eggs and eggs Benedict. Then it was on to Merideth.
In Merideth, which is right on Lake Winnipesaukee, we stopped at a mini-mart to get Wendy a coffee and a pack of band-aids for Caleigh. She had fallen and scuffed her knee several times the day before and sitting in her car seat for an hour and a half gave her a lot of time to think about it and blow it a little out of proportion. A band-aid seems to make any kind of hurt better, even if it does not have Shrek or Little Einsteins on it. It's a small price to pay for happy kid who is trapped in a car seat. Now we are really getting into the bike week crowd, the traffic is starting to look more like a parade.
Bike week, now in it's 84th year, attracts motorcyclists from all walks of life. Generally some 300,000+ bikes cram into the lakes region for the week immediately proceeding Father's Day. The demographics change over the years, but people are all the same. As we sat in traffic, headed for the train station, we speculated on who-was-who. One group of early twentysomethings on sport bikes were goofing around and attempting to show off, Wendy pointed out that they are new to it and I agreed. These were people who had only recently learned to ride, but were young, stupid and cocky. The kind of people we used to call "future statistics".
Tucked in behind them was a guy on a cruiser bike, with a half helmet and a short, grayish beard. You could tell he wasn't with them and was sort of embarrassed to be seen with them. He was a confident, experienced rider, probably rides to work every day. At the red light, he passed us to get away from the "future statistics".
A few hundred yards later, we paused to let a group of sport bikes pull out of a driveway. Similar in appearance, this group was much more confident and weren't acting like dumbasses.
At the gas station was a group from NY on assorted cruiser bikes who were around our age, and another group of older guys with custom choppers. Not the $50,000 yuppie bike kind of choppers that you buy from a famous custom shop, real home built choppers built as a labor of love and creativity by real guys in their own garages who dreamed them up, cut their own fingers with sharp metal when bobbing the fenders, burned their arms with cutting torches when raking the front end, and got overspray on their own boots when painting the tanks. They sat there drinking coffee, watching the sportbikers and no doubt wondering what the hell happened to their lifestyle.
We hadn't told Caleigh that we were going to ride the train to the Weirs. She had been on a train once before on a day-trip to Boston, but was too little to remember it. After we parked the car, we told her that we could go look at the old-fashioned train and made a big deal about seeing a real train this close up. We let her buy the tickets, but had given her the impression that they were for a train museum, not telling her that she would actually get to ride in it.
We got in line with what seemed like a few hundred other people and she got real bored, real fast, so we tried to keep her distracted so she would realize what we were in line for. As we got on the train, she got a little nervous that we had gone somewhere that we weren't supposed to. As it started moving, she figured it out and a huge grin came over her. The people around us congratulated her on her first train ride and her first time at Laconia.
If I did the math right, my first time going to Bike Week was 18 years ago. It was different then. A different crowd. It was rowdy and the police kept the peace, but pretty much left bikers alone. Unless you were being truly obnoxious and either being dangerous or really, really stupid, people were just free to do whatever came to mind. These days, since Harley-Davidson changed their marketing strategy, everybody and his accountant is a "biker". A lot of the nouveau bikers want to look the part and act the part, without really living it. Sort of like being biker reenactors in that it is a persona they put on for the weekend.
They have really changed the face of things. Stuff that will get you arrested nowadays: burnouts, loud pipes, open containers, "indecent" exposure. I'm not condoning these things for daily life, but there is a time and place for everything, and bike week was the time and place for anything. You will even get a ticket for "coasting" your bike down the hill after sitting in traffic for hours and shutting off your engine to give it a break as you coast down towards the Weirs. What used to be a wild, everything goes weekend has "evolved" into a glorified flea market, complete with an assortment of stands selling cell phone accessories.
Given all of those changes, it is little wonder that the activities are shifting to places elsewhere in NH. On Thursday, the Mt. Washington Auto Road is closed to cars and only allows bikes to go up. There are organized events in places further and further away from Laconia, which is the traditional center of things, since the weekend rally began as motorcycle races at the track there. (the track is now New Hampshire International Speedway, a stop on the NASCAR circuit)
The weather was warm, sunny and dry. Perfect for attracting a big crowd. A big crowd it was! By the time we got to the grilled alligator stand, they were all sold out of gator meat and I had to settle for chicken (it was AWESOME chicken though). Caleigh had earned some money by being good, keeping her pull-ups dry etc and she chose to get a bodypainting done on her arm of three pink flowers, she also carefully picked out a red, white and blue pinwheel. We stopped at a few less-then-crowded spots to enjoy out drinks, ice cream etc and to people watch.
It's always interesting to look at the world through Caleigh. She is just full of self-confidence, and takes away what she wants from an experience. For instance, a small group of folks wearing "Witch City Cycles" patches walked buy us. The guys were dressed in biker chic of jeans, black t-shirts with trendy logos on them, and leather vests with patches. With them was a rather well-endowed woman who was dressed sort of like a cat. Sort of. She wore jeans, black leather chaps, suspenders, cat ears, and on her upper body she wore large pink pasties in the shape of paw prints. (probably one of the most photographed people there) When she walked by, Wendy and I exchanged glances, wondering what Caleigh's spin on this would be. Caleigh pointed...we braced ourselves...she exclaimed "Look! She has CHAPS!!!".
There were some funky custom bikes, but not nearly what you would have seen just five years ago. There was mostly just a sea of V-twin Harleys. The crown was pretty interesting though. Not "interesting" like in the old days, but interesting to speculate on demographics. It was a mix of squeaky clean people bedecked in black leather vests that have never gotten wet because they have never ridden in the rain, people who hope to have bike someday but for now content themselves with the t-shirts and jewelry that allow them to pretend that they do (the type that idolize Orange County Choppers and wear stuff with the West coast Choppers logo like it is a religion), folks who actually ride, but don't care if they appear in public in a not-bike-related t-shirt and shorts, and a lessening proportion of outlaw biker types who really are outlaw bikers (as opposed to just making a fashion statement).
Up in the Rally Headquarters area, we watched a guy make a painting in a matter of minutes with cans of spray paint. He did it while sort of dancing to annoying Euro-techno dance music. It was pretty cool, techno music notwithstanding. His web address as shown on the banner behind him isn't valid, but I did come across a video of one of his performances here.
The high point of the day for Caleigh was the train ride, with a close second being when I allowed her to use the video camera.
We were getting tired of walking around, so we climbed about the train again and went back to the car. We let Caleigh play with the camcorder on the train, and I'm sure it will be interesting to watch with her later.
On the way home, we stopped at Bobby's Girl Diner after getting off course a little. In the parking lot of the diner was a tractor-trailer done up as a museum about Indian motorcycles. At first, I thought it was a project of the Indian Motorcycle Museum in Springfield, MA, but it was actually just one guy's collection! He had a bunch of memorabilia and probably 10-12 bikes in it, displayed very well. He even had an Indian Papoose, which was sort of a one lunger minibike that was designed to be dropped with airborne troops so they would have vehicles to get away from the drop zone on. I talked with the guy who owned them and learned a lot about old Indians.
Dinner was at the diner, which stayed open late. Awesome waitress, great old fashioned diner food, great atmosphere. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the area! Kids who finish all of their food get to pick a toy out of the "treasure chest".
Caleigh fell asleep on the way home and I carried her to bed dressed in the clothes she wore for the day.
I had apprehensions about traveling with a 5 year old, but we had a great time. Last night, I scrolled through the pictures in my digital camera, and found that out of 63 photos, 52 of them involved Caleigh!
This was a short one as far as vacations go, but we really needed it. This business takes a lot out of a person, and a lot out of a family. Now and again you have to step back and recharge.
We are taking today off as well. We are going out for Chinese food, then going grocery shopping, then tomorrow it's back to the grindstone! I've started to big "to-do" list in order to get ready for the Fort Ticonderoga event, which is coming up in just two weeks. See you there!
P.S. later tonight I'll be cropping pictures from the trip and will be adding links to them to these two posts, so check back tomorrow to see a few pics of Bike Week!
posted by MVTCoPete | 8:45 AM
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