Thunder on the Beach motorcycle Rally 2011

Sorry this post is a little late...ENJOY!!!

April 28, 2011 packed and ready to go (around 6:30am) to Thunder on the Beach motorcycle Rally

and do a short visit with my mom and dad in Port Saint Joe, Florida. Started out as a beautiful day for a ride but ended up turning cold and had the look of rain.

Made it to mom’s house around 2:00pm, lunch was ready and I ate like a pig.

More or less, just hung around the house the rest of the day just shooting the bull with mom waiting on dad to get off work around 7:00pm.


Friday morning after a big breakfast, I decided to ride to Panama City beach to check out the rally. Road down the beach checking out the bikes as I putted along,

I was surprised how few bikes there were on the streets. The rally seemed down compared to 2008, the last time for me to attend the rally. Don’t get me wrong there were tens of thousands of bikes but just not the same as 2008 rally and it was Friday.

I pulled into one of the bikini bike wash,

as this was my hangout in 2008. (Old habits die hard) and snapped a few photos of passing bikers.

After that I headed back down the beach towards the Port, and made a wrong turn that ended up being a right turn. This ended up being a little road under heavy construction but near the end there were vendors set up in several locations…

more just t-shirt places, good place to get off your bike and walk around a little. Ended getting me a rally patch, but held off on the t-shirt…at 6’5” even the biggest shirt only fits once, one wash and they shrink to half its size.


Ended up getting home with a BAD headache, not sure what happened. I guess going all day without eating or drinking in the hot sun may have had something to do with it. Ha-ha. The next morning my dad did not have to go into work until 1:30pm so I spent the first part of the day with them…score…more free food. Dad took mom and me out to lunch at Papa Joes oyster bar & grill…food was most excellent!

I had the shrimp po-boy dad had crab paddies and mom had the fresh oysters…we also had some of the biggest fried crab claws I had ever seen as an appetizer. Mmm, Mmmm good to everything…nice call pops.


After dad went to work, I headed back to the rally around 3:00pm, got to say kind of the same old same old, just not that much going on. I snapped quite a few photos of riders,

I’ll post all of them on my faceBook account, here they are enjoy….

Thunder 1
Thunder 2
Thunder 3
Thunder 4

Woke up early Sunday morning around 5:00am (you guessed it to another huge breakfast) then after saying my goodbyes I was off…Petal, Mississippi here I come…got home around 12:00pm…nice ride.


Thanks mom and dad for the great weekend and all the free food!!!

I gained (I’m not kidding) 8 pounds in four days….good eating…back on the tuna fish now…

Till next time


Big Al