You can escape the cold, but you can’t escape the warmth of the people of the Wyoming Valley — though you really have to admit that in the early days of March it is nice to meet up in a warmer clime. That’s what happed mid-week in Daytona at Bucky’s Crab House on Route 1 just two miles south of the famous Iron Horse Saloon. Good food and great friends.
It all started with an e-mail from Stan Daniels, one of the founding fathers of the Wyoming Valley Motorcycle Club. Out of the blue I got an e-mail from Stan saying that he’s been going to Bike Week in Daytona for more than 20 years; did we want to meet? He was trying to organize a meet-up of the people from this area who would be down there for the event. I was in.
I wasn’t quite sure just who all was going to be there, but I thought it would be nice to see some faces and license plates from home. There were somewhere in the range of 200,000–500,000 bikes roaring around from all over the world and just about every state in the union, so it was great to find a quiet local eatery to enjoy a great seafood lunch with some friendly faces from back home.
Bucky’s has been a favorite meeting place of Stan’s for many years now, and with good reason. It’s easy to find, serves great fresh seafood and is known by those from this area who have traveled to Bike Week in the past.
Those in attendance were Cheryl and Dan Hilstolsky, Darren and Doug Hall of Cool Rides Band and Doug’s wife, Sue, David and Michele Martin, Rodger Shoemaker, Stan Daniels and my husband and I. We made an even dozen Valley people meeting to talk about the snow and rain we were missing back home.
The biggest joke that we had all shared was the “Bike Week Special” pricing on just about everything! Of course, the joke was on us since that really meant that the pricing went up for Bike Week. Wasn’t that special? What was really special was having a friend that didn’t make it call in from home. Wayne Miller, aka Dude, called to see if everyone had made it to the meet and asked the obvious question of how was the weather. We really hated to report that it was 85 and that the sun was shinning. The report from back home was rain and flooding.
All too soon lunch was over and people had to go their separate ways. Stan was headed off to Winter Park to visit a friend with a very rare motorcycle called a Henderson Excelsior. This bike was made back in the early days after the World War I, around the same time as Harley-Davidson and Indian were making their first bikes. But like the VHS and Beta wars, there was really one bike that made it through to this day, and that’s the Harley. I am told that the Indian is making resurgence but that the Henderson is gone for good.
The rest of us decided to head to the Speedway to test drive some of the new bikes from the dealers who were showing there. The Speedway might be most familiar to you as the place of the Daytona 500, the opening race of the NASCAR season. This week, however, it was home to a gazillion bikes and dealers and vendors for everything from sunglasses to lug nuts and, of course, shirts of every kind. No wonder everyone who lives in Daytona loves Bike Week. I am told that in town vendors on Main Street pay $1,000 to the city before they even begin to pay the vendor fees.
So off we went down International Speedway Drive and right into the Speedway. This week was free admission into the infield. We were allowed to go right through the tunnel and onto the infield.
Cheryl wanted to try the Boss Hoss bikes again. She went on them yesterday. These are custom trikes or bikes with two back tires and one front tire, kind of like your first tricycle when you were a little kid. These babies, however, run about $48,000 and have a Chevy V8 motor. Don’t ask me why, I haven’t been able to figure it out myself.
After a long day of walking around the venue riding bikes, sitting on bikes, looking at bikes and, of course, buying a sweatshirt, it was time to part ways, parting as friends. Now we’ve planned to meet up again back in the Valley where we can reminisce about the sunny days of Bike Week. All of this is thanks to Stan, who took the time to contact everyone and organize a day to remember.
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