Daytona Bike Week

Craziness. That is really the only word to describe Bike Week. It wasn’t hard to find the epicenter; just followed the two-wheeled traffic right down to Main Street. The scene was, well... crazy; thousands of bikes, and double the number of pipes. The streets were a littered with headlights and reflected chrome. The air was filled with sound, but more than that; it was filled with vibration.

In a sea of frenzied sound waves the rumble of my own pipes was muted. The feel of my engine as I worked first gear up and down disappeared. I felt everything and nothing at the same time. I felt every bit of bedlam surrounding me, numbing my individual feeling. Yet I struggled to be conscious of myself. It was simply surreal. Just as I had become assimilated to the mayhem, I had an even more surreal experience. I left. My senses returned and instead of feeling not myself, but all around me, I was reacquainted with my engine and pipes, my own sense of touch and hearing.

Imagine a hundred busy anthills. Between these anthills are thousands of hectic ants desperately trying to get to the next hill. Each luminous ant has a voice that it is waiting for you to hear. At a standstill the congested pile of ants rumbles and growls, then at the slightest break, the pack surges ahead while announcing their satisfaction with high pitched shrieks or a low aggressive roar.

The next day I hit the vendor area and spent a couple hours milling about thousands of custom bikes. Each bike was outrageous in it’s own right. In a landscape of bikes with wild paint, chrome, and stretched proportions, the bikes that stood out to me were the ones that spoke quiet and confident with clean lines and simple paint.

For all the cool things that Bike Week offered, it took away what I really enjoyed about riding. I enjoy the Biker Fraternity. At Daytona, the bond nearly disappeared simply because there were so many bikers. Gone was the impromptu conversation about destinations and the journey there. The biker wave disappeared. The uniqueness of being a biker in a world of non-bikers was gone; reduced to the level of car drivers on the interstate. In having so much, the small pleasures were gone, and I left Daytona Bike Week strangely disappointed.