Ah, Rhody. It was where we popped our run cherry and where we cut our biker teeth. It was (and still is) held in Florence, on the Oregon coast, every May to celebrate the blooming of the very large and rather striking indigenous bush, the Rhododendron. The straights would be doing their thing around the city for the weekend but Old Town belonged to the bikers. From Friday afternoon to Sunday evening it truly was bikes, booze and broads.
One of my favorite Rhody memories is of a club member jumping the curb at the end of the street and blasting down the length of the block on the narrow and very busy sidewalk creating all sorts of mayhem. The thing was that he was just having fun and nobody got pissed. It was just what went on there.
These pictures are from ’82 and ’83. I love the bed roll, sleeping bag and throw-over saddle bags on the bikes in the top pic. Just the essentials for a weekend run, and nothing else. The second picture is a shot of Old Town. People would be hanging out, shooting the shit and checking out the bikes. The third is of a youngster who rode his bike in the Sunday parade. The following year he showed up with a new deep red paint job and looked a bit more hardcore sporting a leather biker’s cap. Needless to say, the crowd loved him (and his sister). And as for the last one, well that’s yours truly at age 25 with my first Harley.
I’ll be posting more pictures of Rhody and other runs from time to time.
No comments:
Post a Comment