Another Bike Week is history
This past weekend wound up the 2010 Laconia Bike Week. Every year a couple of hundred thousand biker show up in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire for a day, a weekend or the whole week.
This year, I managed to spend three days in motorcycle-related activities. First, I rode up for the day last Tuesday with my friend Bob. He started riding last year and had never gone to bike week before. We went to see the manufacturer's demos at Funspot to check out the new Royal Enfields, went wandering around looking at bikes, vendors and people at the Laconia Roadhouse located at the Weirs Beach Drive-in (the epicenter of activities), had some food at the Broken Spoke Saloon, and stopped by the Rt 104 Diner on the way back out of town to see the mobile Indian Motorcycle Museum that a guy sets up there every year and as luck would have it, there was also a classic car cruise night going on at the same time. Got myself a pretty good sunburn that day.
On Friday, Wendy, Caleigh and I went bike shopping at a couple of the bigger dealers in the Concord/Manchester area and found a bike for Wendy. She has short little legs and can't reach the ground from a tall old Jap bike like mine. What we found for her was a scaled down cruiser style bike called a Hyosung Aqulia. It is a 250 V-twin that sits really low and only weighs 366 pounds (by comparison, my vintage Suzuki GS weighs in at over 600 pounds and is at least 10" to 12" higher in the seat. After leaving a deposit on it, we headed up Rt 93 to Laconia to get dinner and see what we could see on Friday night.
Saturday came, and we were back out on the road to go pick up her bike. We went in her Jeep, and on the way home she followed Caleigh and I home. She hasn't ridden since before Caleigh was born, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea for her to get on it in Manchester and ride it the 100 miles home through bike week weekend traffic.
I think I got more riding time in during the last week than I did in all of last year. Now that Wendy has a bike, maybe we'll be more inclined to take the bikes to go places as opposed to going in the Jeep.
This year, I managed to spend three days in motorcycle-related activities. First, I rode up for the day last Tuesday with my friend Bob. He started riding last year and had never gone to bike week before. We went to see the manufacturer's demos at Funspot to check out the new Royal Enfields, went wandering around looking at bikes, vendors and people at the Laconia Roadhouse located at the Weirs Beach Drive-in (the epicenter of activities), had some food at the Broken Spoke Saloon, and stopped by the Rt 104 Diner on the way back out of town to see the mobile Indian Motorcycle Museum that a guy sets up there every year and as luck would have it, there was also a classic car cruise night going on at the same time. Got myself a pretty good sunburn that day.
On Friday, Wendy, Caleigh and I went bike shopping at a couple of the bigger dealers in the Concord/Manchester area and found a bike for Wendy. She has short little legs and can't reach the ground from a tall old Jap bike like mine. What we found for her was a scaled down cruiser style bike called a Hyosung Aqulia. It is a 250 V-twin that sits really low and only weighs 366 pounds (by comparison, my vintage Suzuki GS weighs in at over 600 pounds and is at least 10" to 12" higher in the seat. After leaving a deposit on it, we headed up Rt 93 to Laconia to get dinner and see what we could see on Friday night.
Saturday came, and we were back out on the road to go pick up her bike. We went in her Jeep, and on the way home she followed Caleigh and I home. She hasn't ridden since before Caleigh was born, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea for her to get on it in Manchester and ride it the 100 miles home through bike week weekend traffic.
I think I got more riding time in during the last week than I did in all of last year. Now that Wendy has a bike, maybe we'll be more inclined to take the bikes to go places as opposed to going in the Jeep.
posted by MVTCoPete | 8:24 PM
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